What is Similarity Index in Plagiarism

Plagiarizing Assignment
Name
Institution
Turnitin is renowned software that is employed to check papers for plagiarism. It aids students and writers to determine if they have copied other peoples’ ideas, texts, or other creative work. The tool marks the areas of any work that have been matched to other sources such as electronic books, electronic journals, and websites. The act of plagiarizing is a serious issue among students and researchers. However, with the Turnitin software, it has now become possible for students to deliver polished and free-plagiarized work. Consequently, accusations and punishment that results from plagiarizing have been eliminated.
Similarity index is the percentage of text in any work that matches to other sources. The similarity index of my week two assignment was 45%, and the source that constitutes the highest match with my work was a journal written by Stanford University. When the similarity index is high, this does not necessarily mean that the student or writer has plagiarized because the written text could have been matched against quotations that have been accurately referenced or a common phrase employed in context to the topic (Dessus, 2017). Similarly, a similarity index that is low does not mean plagiarism has not occurred because there are many sources that Turnitin software does not check against such as new web content and password guarded sites.
Some of the changes that I would make to my paper based on the review of Turnitin include paraphrasing peoples’ ideas and texts as I embark on doing my assignment so that I can avoid cases of plagiarism. Paraphrasing can also aid to achieve a similarity percentage that is acceptable to my instructor. Another change includes refraining from using sites that are password guarded as sources of information so that I can eliminate the probability of the Turnitin software being able to detect plagiarism. I should also avoid using new ...