The Missouri S&T campus subscribes to two different originality-checking services. Both are free to use, but each serves a different audience. To best use each tool, carefully match your needs and desired outcomes to what each tool offers.

What are the key differences?

• Turnitin was made specifically for classroom use; its focus is on undergraduate-level student compositions and reports. Turnitin focuses on indexing and checking against the major journals, casual web sources, and other student-submitted papers from Missouri S&T and colleges around the country. Turnitin offers tools for student feedback and revision, and also allows for students to see their own originality report which has a formative benefit for them. Turnitin is integrated into the campus LMS (Blackboard), and there is no limit to the amount of papers that can be uploaded. Turnitin is primarily intended for undergraduate-level student work.

• iThenticate is not intended for classroom use; its focus is on theses, dissertations, and research articles for publication written by authors at or above the graduate-level. iThenticate focuses on indexing and searching against all accessible web sources and other published field literature not typically found on the casual web, and it has none of the classroom-specific features that Turnitin offers. iThenticate is a standalone web service, and is not integrated into the campus LMS. iThenticate does not allow non-account holders (i.e. undergraduate students) to see originality reports, because iThenticate is intended to be a confidential and formative document review tool for academic authors. iThenticate DOES NOT upload or index a copy of the document being checked. iThenticate is primarily intended for professional and higher-level academic work.

You can read a bit more about the differences between Turnitin and iThenticate here: http://www.ithenticate.com/resources/academic#compare

To use Turnitin, simply create a Turnitin assignment to which students may upload a file. You can find a tutorial here: http://edtech.mst.edu/support/blackboard9-1/createturnitin/

To use iThenticate, submit a request via the IT Help Desk ticketing system by calling (573) 341-4357, or visit http://edtech.mst.edu/support/ithenticate/ and fill out the online access form.

I hope this information will help save you time and aid your teaching and scholarly publication.

TL;DR – Turnitin is for undergraduate students, iThenticate is for graduate level and above authors