Plagiarism prevention
The Vice-Rectorate Teaching provides a centrally managed software tool for plagiarism prevention to teaching staff. Access is available to University of Bern staff only – students are NOT permitted to run similarity checks themselves.
The University Library offers information and consultation services on plagiarism prevention as well as on interpreting similarity reports: Goto information page UB
Short Link: www.link.unibe.ch/turnitin
Background
What is plagiarism?
When writing a scientific paper, one cannot avoid building on existing knowledge and using and citing relevant literature. If you use external sources without indicating them and present the findings as your own ideas, this is considered abusive for two reasons:
1. it is intellectual theft and
2. the copyright is violated.
Not only the literal adoption of entire texts or individual text passages, but also a paraphrasing or translation of foreign statements without marking the origin can be considered plagiarism.
Why plagiarism check?
Plagiarism is not only a violation of the law, but also a sign of a lack of scientific maturity on the part of the author. The institution providing academic education, i.e. the University of Bern, must ensure that graduates have this scientific maturity. Thus, plagiarism prevention means quality assurance. In addition, the damage to the reputation of both the author and the institution providing the academic training is enormous if plagiarism is discovered after the publication of a work.
How do you recognize plagiarism?
There are several ways to detect plagiarism. Software can help by marking text passages that have been used in the same or similar way in other sources before. However, the final decision about whether plagiarism is present or not is always up to human judgment.
Software
The University of Bern relies on a centralized solution for plagiarism detection that guarantees maximum flexibility. The Turnitin software is intuitive to use and provides detailed test reports that can be edited interactively. Turnitin can be used with a Switch eduID, which is linked to a campus account, via a browser login.
The target group are lecturers and administrators (central administrations) at the University of Bern who are in charge of quality assurance of written work.
Students do not have the option to scan papers.
The coverage of the sources checked is very wide, and paid services are also taken into account. Particularly important is the check against the private pool, in which internal works of the University of Bern have been located for at least 5 years. Various algorithms are used in the check, which can, for example, recognize citations or exclude/include bibliography.
Access to the Turnitin portal of the University of Bern Login via eduID (Problems? with eduID)
Quickstart Turnitin
1. Go to the Turnitin homepage: Login via eduID
2. Sign in using your eduID (this is the same login you use for ILIAS and the library)
3. Launch Turnitin Similarity (click on “Start”)
4. When opening Turnitin for the first time, configure your desired settings. You can:
- Include or exclude specific sources (including all is recommended)
- Exclude quotations and the bibliography (recommended)
- Save your settings
5. Click on “My Files” and upload one or more papers
6. Enter the title of the paper and, optionally, the first and last name of the person who wrote the text (only the title is required and will be auto-filled)
7, Leave the documents in your files so they can be included in the University of Bern’s private repository and used as a reference for future work.
- Exception: If you have uploaded scanned exam questions, please delete them afterwards
💡 Tip: You can organize your documents in folders
Help with interpreting the similarity report can be found here: Interpreting the similarity report (external page)
Support
The Vice-Rectorate for Teaching centrally provides the software Turnitin in its Similarity version.
Information and advisory services on plagiarism prevention as well as on interpreting similarity reports are offered by the University Library: To the University Library's information page.
Turnitin itself provides extensive support for the Similarity product:
Support in the Faculties
To best accommodate the different conditions at the various institutes, support for the application is provided decentrally within the individual faculties. You can find the contact person responsible for your area in the list below.
2nd Level Support
The Support Center for Innovative Teaching & Learning Technologies University of Bern (ILUB) serves as the interface between the contact persons and the software provider.
In addition, upon request, we provide contact persons with best-practice examples featuring schematic process flows for various scenarios, as well as advice on possible implementations.