SafeAssign Originality Report Updates

To coincide with a new release of Blackboard (we will be upgrading over the summer) the SafeAssign Originality Reports have had a change of style, to make them easier on the eye.

An example of the new look and feel is below:

A long with the layout are some improvements, now when you click on some highlighted text, you are presented with the text from the document and the original source, as shown below:

A SafeAssign originality report provides detailed information about the matches found between a submitted paper and existing sources. The report identifies all matching blocks of text. You and your students need to determine if the matching text is properly referenced. Investigating each match prevents detection errors due to differences in citing standards. 

The originality report displays the list of potential sources and identifies which sources were searched to return the available results. If students cited any of the sources correctly, you can remove them from the overall score as they are not instances of plagiarism.

The "Send" feature which allowed you to send a report to another user has been removed, now you need to "Print" and choose to print as PDF, which allows you to then forward the report.

Below is a guide showing how to interpret the scores generated by the report, but as always, this is just a guide.

Sentence matching scores represent the percentage probability that two phrases have the same meaning. This number reflects the reciprocal to the probability that these two phrases are similar by chance. For example, a score of 90 percent means that there is a 90 percent probability that these two phrases are the same. There is a 10 percent probability that they are similar by chance and not because the submitted paper includes content from the existing source—whether appropriately attributed or not.

The overall SafeAssign score indicates the probability that the submitted paper contains matches to existing sources. This score is a warning indicator only. Review papers to see if the matches are properly attributed.

• Scores below 15 percent: These papers typically include some quotes and few common phrases or blocks of text that match other documents. Typically, these papers do not require further analysis as there is no evidence of plagiarism.
• Scores between 15 percent and 40 percent: These papers include extensive quoted or paraphrased material, or they include plagiarism. Review these papers to determine if the matching text is properly referenced.
• Scores over 40 percent: A very high probability exists that text in these papers was copied from other sources. These papers include quoted or paraphrased text in excess, and need to be reviewed for plagiarism.