Be Wise, Don't Plagiarise! - Learning Technology Hub

This a staff page which covers a range of information related to use of TurnitinUK, including:

code of practice for effective use of Turnitin
storage of personal data
external requests to view student papers
copyright of submitted papers

Please direct students to the Be Wise, Don’t Plagiarise pages on myNapier which include guidelines for referencing practice and the use of TurnitinUK.

Code of practice for effective use of TurnitinUK

A code of practice for effective use of TurnitinUK was developed by a working group of the University LTA Committee in 2011 and covers the Purposes, Principles and Processes for use of TurnitinUK.

Storage of personal data

When submitting papers to TurnitinUK then associated personal data is also stored, namely the Student/Instructor’s name, University ID (matriculation number) and the Institution name. Students personal data is not stored in TurnitinUK if the instructor uses batch upload to store the papers anonymously, or uses code names instead of student names during submission. See the student Regulations and Data Protection pages for further information.

Submitted papers are stored in the TurnitinUK student papers database unless the tutor has selected the ‘No repository’ option in the assignment settings. Submitted papers and the originality reports are only available to the class/module instructors. They are not available for viewing by other students or instructors in other classes/modules or other institutions.

During online matriculation students are required to indicate that they have read the Data Protection Statement, and this document includes the sentence,

Throughout your studies at the University, staff may use the online services of Turnitin®UK, a text matching service for assessment and referencing practice and/or GradeMark® UK, an essay marking tool. More information on both services is available from Be Wise, Don’t Plagiarise!

While the potential use of Turnitin Feedback Studio is highlighted at the earliest opportunity, you must direct students must to this Be wise, don’t plagiarise pages where full details of the service are available.

External requests to view student papers

You may receive an email request (below) from an instructor at another institution to view a student paper that was submitted to a module that you have access to. This request is initiated by clicking on the source link and using the permission request button (pictured). You should not ignore this request since it would be regarded as a valid request under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.

General practice is for the module leader to permit access to view the paper by replying to the email. However unless you have obtained the student’s explicit written consent to the retention of their name and/or other identifiers, you must check carefully that the body of the text does not contain any information which identifies the student, either directly or indirectly, as without the student’s explicit consent, a failure to delete this data would be a breach of the Data Protection Act.

Dear [name of instructor owner],
Turnitin is forwarding this request on behalf of [name of requesting instructor], an instructor at [another university]. This instructor requests your permission to view the paper, “The Great Big Siege of Bologna,” submitted to your [module code] at Edinburgh Napier University on 31/02/19.
This instructor has found a 13% match to this paper in a paper submitted to his or her [requesting instructor’s class] class.
If you chose to grant permission to the instructor to view the paper, simply reply to this email. Please confirm the text of the student’s paper is displayed in your reply email. By replying to this email, you will be sending an email (including the text of your student’s paper) to the requesting instructor, [name of requesting instructor].
The text of the paper previously submitted to your class is included below. Please remove any identifying student information in the text below to respect the privacy of your student prior to sending.
Thank you for using TurnitinUK,
The TurnitinUK Team

Note that student papers are not made available to any other users within the TurnitinUK system. TurnitinUK auto-generates the following e-mail request, and attaches a copy of the student paper to the email. The copy contains text only and has all formatting removed, including any images.
Contact Stephen Bruce (TurnitinUK Administrator) if you have any queries related to this.

Copyright of submitted papers

iParadigms, the parent company of TurnitinUK has no interest in acquiring the intellectual property rights for the content submitted by students. The University does not normally claim ownership of work produced by undergraduate students. However the University reserves the right to require any student engaged in research or development work to assign to the University all rights to that work. The copyright of papers is not altered by submission to TurnitinUK, and for further information on this please consult the University’s Intellectual Property Policy.