Turnitin needs no introduction. Almost everyone related to higher education is familiar with this name.
Turnitin was founded in 1997 for the help of teachers and students. Since then, it has been used by many institutes and professors.
So, what is Turnitin? What are its features? And how to use it?
Turnitin:
Turnitin is an online originality checker with an ever-growing database. It is used by institutes, teachers, and students to check their work for any duplicated content.
It is multilingual and has three main features.
● Originality checker:
The main feature of Turnitin is its originality checker aka plagiarism checker. It is famous for its humongous database that has access to multiple educational libraries present online.
It checks for the uniqueness of the submitted paper by comparing it with those present in its database. Each matched source is shown at the sidebar with the percentage of duplication.
The matched lines are highlighted with red colours while the original lines remain intact. It also checks the citation.
Students submit their assignments to their professors in the inbox which is located on the dashboard. They can only submit when the teacher has asked.
Meaning that Turnitin allows teachers to have full control. Students cannot use it without the permission of the professor. Once the teacher gives an assignment or paper, students get notified by mail.
● Grade mark:
The second main feature of Turnitin is the Grade mark. This feature enables the teacher to add comments on the selected part of the submitted document.
They can give grades as well. Turnitin has taken the comment thing to a whole new level. Teachers can even add voice notes. The commented part becomes highlighted.
The teacher can add an additional comment or advice as feedback. They can select commonly used correction options like punctuation, composition, usage e.t.c.
● Peer Mark:
Peer mark is similar to Grade Mark. This feature allows fellow-students to add comments if the teacher allows. This gives the student, who submitted the assignment, a different point of view.
Why do we need an alternative to Turnitin?
Turnin is no doubt a very great platform but its application is limited. Writers and bloggers cannot benefit from it as much as a teacher or student.
It is because Turnitin was introduced for educational purposes. No doubt, their database is huge but it is limited to academic resources. It is not very efficient in catching plagiarism in blog posts and articles.
Another drawback of Turnitin is that you cannot check the same document twice. Once you run a document, it gets stored in the database automatically.
So, after you make changes where duplication was first found and check for originality again, you will found duplication where first-time wasn’t. Turnitin does not allow to save as draft or final submission. It is a one-time go.
Lastly, it is expensive. An individual teacher or student cannot afford a subscription. It is only affordable for institutes and companies.
Alternatives:
The most important feature of Turnitin is its originality checker. Back when Turnitin came into the online market, it did not have much competition.
But today there are many plagiarism checkers that can replace Turnitin. Below is a website that is a potential alternative to Turnitin.
Check-Plagiarism
The plagiarism checker of check-plagiarism.com is a strong competition of Turnitin. The developers of this tool are confident of it being the no.1 plagiarism checker.
This tool can check text against millions of sources which include online libraries, webpages, dictionaries e.t.c. This is the place where it outshines Turnitin.
Secondly, it allows many queries to users, unlike Turnitin. If your school or institute is integrated with Turnitin, you can scan your document at this site first to save the trouble and then submit it on the Turnitin.
Lastly, it allows free users some quires with limited words as well. Registered users get to search for more words and there is no limitation on premium users.
Their other tools are also very helpful to writers.
Paraphrasing tool:
The next best tool is the paraphrasing tool. It used mostly right after using a plagiarism checker. Writers use it to remove the detected plagiarism.
After pasting the text or uploading a document, click paraphrase. You can choose from three options. The standard version performs basic paraphrasing by changing synonyms.
The Advanced and AL versions change sentence structure. This removes any risk of possible plagiarism. There are further 3 options in the AL version.
Readability checker:
A readability checker is a tool that allows users to know which age group can read their text. It checks for vocabulary, sentence structure, and word choice.
Looking at all these things this tool gives a score. You can find the score table in the description of this tool to know what the score represents. This is used to make sure that the text is understandable by the majority of age groups.
It gives a detailed report about the document. This report includes keyword density, information about the sentence length e.t.c. So, for writers, it is a very useful tool.
Plans:
- Free: 1000 words with basic scan
- Registered: 1500 with a little in-depth scan
- Basic Premium: 5 to 15000 with deep search
- Company Premium: unlimited with deep search
It is obvious check-plagiarism out runs Turnitin in the plans field as well. Buying a plan would suffice for all the tools. This means the user doesn’t need to buy a plan for individual tools.
All the tools accept multiple formats of documents along with the pasted text. Some tools also allow entering URLs.
Conclusion:
Turnitin is the go-to choice if institutes that want to facilitate their teachers and educators. But for personal and individual use, check-plagiarism is a better option.
