iThenticate is a Web-based service that identifies material that matches text from documents found in an extensive database. Highlighted text will include text that has been properly quoted and cited so it is not necessarily plagiarized. You'll just need to verify that every highlighted section has been properly quoted, summarized or paraphrased. As a result, iThenticate makes it easier for you to identify and attribute any material in your manuscript that you may have unintentionally plagiarized.

Faculty can submit the document by email to researchintegrity@ttu.edu. For files too large to attach, please use Texas Tech's Large File Transfer Service and include the url in your email.

The iThenticate similarity report will be emailed to you within two business days. You must be the author or have the author's permission in order to submit documents. Acceptable document types are: Word(.doc), Word XML(.docx), Text(.txt), PostScript(.ps), PDF(.pdf), HTML(.htm), WordPerfect WPD(.wpd), or RTF (.rtf).

Graduate students must work with their faculty mentors, faculty advisor or committee chairperson to obtain scans.  Any scans requested by faculty on behalf of students will be returned to the faculty member that submits the request.  

In addition to current and archived Internet content, submissions are compared to more than 60 billion web pages and 105 million content items from leading academic publications, including Ebscohost, Elsevier, IEEE, Nature, ProQuest, and Wiley-Blackwell.

The bold, highlighted color-coded text in the report reflects the words that matched other published works in iThenticate's database. The color and number corresponds with a source listed in the "Sources" section of the report. Black, non-bolded text did not match sources in the iThenticate database.

iThenticate calculates an overall similarity index percentage for the report. Naturally, the lower the percentage match, the better; however, acceptable match percentage levels can vary significantly for each document. Authors should pay more attention to the strings of matching text (bold, highlighted color-coded) than to the overall percentage match. The main function of the report is to help catch phrases or passages that may not have been cited and used correctly.

The iThenticate website gives additional information about understanding the similarity percentage.

Yes. iThenticate does not exploit, resell or share submitted manuscripts. iThenticate does not add your manuscript to any databases.

You retain all rights to your work. iThenticate does not exploit, resell or share submitted manuscripts. iThenticate does not add your manuscript to any databases.

Ethical use of iThenticate requires that it be used only for an author's own work.

iThenticate reports can take anywhere from a few minutes to a full day to generate, depending on the total nationwide volume of documents being submitted to iThenticate. For this reason, the OR&I guarantees a two-business-day turnaround for iThenticate reports. However, most of the time reports are generated and returned within the same business day.

Contact us if you experience technical problems with iThenticate.