Turnitin compares submissions against current and archived Internet pages, periodicals, journals, publications, and a repository of previously submitted papers. This is dependent on the settings of each individual assignment.

The similarity score is a percentage of a submitted paper's matches to sources; it is not an assessment of whether the paper contains plagiarised content. The Similarity Report is a tool for instructors and students to easily find matches or similar text within submitted work. For information on how your submission is setup or to discuss your similarity report, contact your course leader or departmental office. The Turnitin website also has good advice on interpreting the similarity report that you receive.

To access your submission's similarity report, carry out the following steps:

1. Go to bb.imperial.ac.uk, enter you Imperial College username and password and log in
2. Navigate to the course that contains the Turnitin assignment you would wish to view the grade of
3. Locate the assignment and click on the assignment name
4. Details of your submissions will be listed here. Select the score (%) located under Similarity to view your submitted assignments originality report
5. Your assignment will open in a new window, please ensure your browser allows for this by allowing pop-ups.

For further details on viewing similarity reports in Turnitin, please see the Turnitin support page.  

Resubmitting a paper

Some assignments may be set up to allow students the ability to overwrite their previous submissions until the due date. This option is enabled by an instructor on an assignment-by-assignment basis. 

You are allowed three resubmission attempts where the Similarity Report will generate immediately. After three attempts, you'll have to wait 24 hours before a new Similarity Report can be generated.