These tests were performed by Dr. Susan "George" Schorn, Writing Coordinator for the School of Undergraduate Studies. If you have any questions regarding this report please contact Dr. Schorn directly.

2015: Six test essays consisting entirely of unoriginal text were assembled with the help of undergraduate instructors and library staff, and submitted to TurnItIn. Of the 37 sources in the sample, TurnItIn correctly identified 15, and indicated partial matches for six others. Sixteen of the sources were wrongly classified as "original" by TurnItIn.

Total Sources: 37

Found: 15 (40%)

Partial: 6 (16%)

Not Found: 16 (44%)

Found original source	Found
Found enough text in a non-original source to infer plagiarism, or found non-viewable source	Partial
Classified as "original"	Missed

Document Name	Original Source	TurnItIn Result
Test Essay One	GMU History News Network	Missed
	Société des architectes modernes	Missed
	Salem Mercury (newspaper)	Found
	Brainia.com	Found
	echeat.com	Found
	Twitter feed of @ShaunKing, 3/10/15	Missed

Test Essay Two	San Diego International Law Journal	Missed
	Journal Of Democracy	Partial
	Popular Music & Society	Found
	Contemporary Music Review	Missed
	Muziki: Journal Of Music Research In Africa	Found
	Immigration	Found

Test Essay Three	The Columbian (Vancouver, WA newspaper)	Missed
	Paris Review	Partial
	Encyclopedia of the American Constitution.	Found
	MIT Open Courseware	Found
	Plwikipedia Google Chrome translation	Missed
	Wikipedia; word & sentence boundary changes	Missed
	The Riveter	Found

Test Essay Four	UT CLA Student Affairs web page	Missed
	Goodreads	Found
	Change.org	Found
	Tumblr post by user unlikehisname	Missed
	McDougal, Throes of Democracy	Partial
	Buchsbaum, Ralph. Animals Without Backbones	Partial
	Newberg et al, Why God Won't Go Away	Missed

Test Essay Five	http://www.ntsb.gov/ Word and syntax changes	Missed
	http://www.ashpmedia.org Edits & patchwriting	Missed
	Wikipedia patchwritten w/ other sources	Found
	http://www.nwf.org patchwritten	Found
	http://www.smithsonianmag.com patchwritten	Missed

Test Essay Six	Pinkwater, Daniel. Fish Whistle (Kindle)	Found
	Wolcott, James. Wild in the Seats (Kindle)	Missed
	Wikipedia with simple word substitutions	Found
	Wikipedia: word subs, deletions, re-positioning	Missed
	Wikipedia: word subs and sentence boundary shifts	Missed
	Wikipedia: phrase shifts, word & punctuation changes	Missed

2007: Six test essays consisting entirely of unoriginal text were assembled with the help of undergraduate instructors and library staff. These essays were submitted to TurnItIn and SafeAssign, and also subjected to targeted Google searches. Of the 23 sources in the sample, TurnItIn correctly identified eight. TurnItIn also indicated partial matches for six of the sources. It wrongly classified nine of the sources as "original."

SafeAssign performed more poorly than TurnItIn, correctly identifying eight sources, providing partial matches for two others, and wrongly classifying 13 as "original."

Google searches of the essays (using word strings containing three to five nouns) correctly identified 21 of the 23 sources.

Software

TurnItIn

SafeAssign

Google

Percentage of sources found

60.76%

43.4%

91.3%

Ratio of

sources found:sources missed

14:9

10:13

21:2

Document Name	Original Source	TurnItIn	SafeAssign	Google
TeapotDomeTEST.doc	1. George Mason University’s History News Network	P[i]	Y	Y
	2. Wikipedia	Y	Y	Y
	3. U.S. Senate	Y	N	Y
	4. GIGA Quotes	Y	N	Y

ShakespearePlag.doc	5. All Free Essays	Y	N	Y

Test essay (Ostrow)	6. Hispanic Online	Y	Y	Y
Test essay (Ostrow)	7. American Prospect	Y	Y	Y

journalandbookTestEssay	8. Geographical Journal	Y	Y	Y
	9. Applied Animal Behavior Science	N	N	N
	10. A Faith Interrupted (book)	N	N	Y
	11. Tools of Radio Astronomy (textbook)	N	N	Y
	12. A03 Judicial Findings: Liens	P	Y	Y
	13. Babelfish translation of Web page	N	N	N

NightWatchAnalysis	14. Echeat.com	N	P[ii]	Y

Race and Culture	15. Counterpunch	N	Y	Y
	16. Newman, David (textbook)	N	P	Y
	17. Encyclopedia Britannica	P	Y	Y
	18. MIT Open Courseware (syllabus)	N	N	Y
	19. Penn State Department of Anthropology	N	N	Y
	20. Rokeach, Milton, 1973. The Nature of Human Values	P	N	Y
	21. Turner, Victor. Symbols in African Ritual	P[iii]	N	Y
	22. Turner, Victor. The Forest of Symbols	Y	N	Y
	23. Weber, Max. Economy and Society	P[iv]	N	Y

Y = found original source (for Google, indicates find on first page of results)

P = found non-original source or found unviewable source

N = did not find source

[i] [i]TurnItIn found three sentences of the primary source on George Mason U’s site, but attributed two additional sentences from the same site to a student paper.

[ii] SafeAssign found a single sentence of the essay at echeat.com, but did not flag any of the remaining text. SafeAssign also flagged an (apparently) entirely coincidental match with the sentence fragment “Almost like you could reach out and touch it.”

[iii] TurnItIn found some text embedded in a 13-page German-language PDF at University of Basel, Switzerland.

[iv] Cannot tell if this match links to the original source. TurnItIn’s link is to a subscription-only site.