iThenticate is a software program marketed by Tunitin that is designed to be used to screen written material for originality and to check for instances of plagiarism in submitted documents. 

How it works

The iThenticate software compares the uploaded files against >7052 billion web pages and 74 million content items from leading academic publications. When the iThenticate comparison process is complete, a “similarity score” is generated.

Graduate School Acceptable Similarity Score

The Graduate School allows for up to 12% similarity in reports submitted to TDS. If all efforts to reduce the score to 12% or less are unsuccessful, the student’s advisor must submit to TDS via email an explanation for the high score (e.g., terminology, formulas, etc.). The Dean of the Graduate School will review the report and either provide recommendations to improve the score or accept the paper as submitted.

How to get access to iThenticate

The Office of Academic Technology creates and maintains iThenticate licensed accounts on behalf of faculty. All faculty supervising thesis and dissertation students can obtain access to iThenticate by obtaining a license through Tina Freeman (tina.freeman@tamuc.edu). Once you have been granted access, click the following link for access to the iThenticate website: https://www.ithenticate.com/

Preparing a Document for iThenticate

Before uploading a student’s document to iThenticate, remove the following pages and save as a new document.

1. Preliminary pages (title page, signature page, copyright page, abstract page, acknowledgements, table of contents, list of tables, and list of figures)
2. References
3. Appendices
4. Vita

 Setting Exclusion Criteria

Set your iThenticate account to apply the following criteria automatically. To apply these criteria, do the following:

1. Log in to your iThenticate account: https://app.ithenticate.com/en_us/login
2. Click the Settings tab (click the tab located in the Documents pane).
3. Check the following boxes:
   1. Exclude quotes
   2. Exclude bibliography
   3. Exclude Phrases
4. Exclude Small Matches (enter 9 for the word count), and

Scroll to the bottom of the page and click “Update Settings.”

Running a Report

Follow the steps below to run a report:

1. Log in to iThenticate (https://app.ithenticate.com/en_us/login),
2. Click “Upload a File” (located in the task pane on the right side of the screen),
3. Type in the student’s name and whether the document is a proposal, thesis, or dissertation,
4. Select the file to upload, and
5. Click “Submit”

Saving the Report as a PDF

Follow the steps below to save the report as a PDF.

1. After the report is processed and a similarity score is generated, click the score under the Documents tab.
2. The report will open in a new tab. To save the report as a PDF, click on the small printer icon in the bottom left corner of the screen.
3. Depending on your browser, the PDF report may automatically open in a new tab or it may appear as a download.  Once the PDF is open in a new tab, save the PDF to your computer.

Additional Resources

The iThenticate website houses a large collection of training resources.  Also, see the helpful video tutorial on Plagiarism under the TDS/Zoom and YouTube Presentations.

If you have any questions, please contact Thesis and Dissertation Services, 903-886-5968.