SafeAssign Originality Reports

After a paper has been processed by SafeAssign, an Originality Report will be available that will show the percentage of text in the submitted paper that matches existing sources. It also shows the suspected sources of each section of the submitted paper that returns a match. The faculty can then delete matching sources from the report and process it again. This procedure is useful to ascertain if the paper is a continuation of a previously submitted work by the same student.

A SafeAssign Originality Report provides detailed information about the matches found between a submitted paper and existing sources. These matches are instances of potential plagiarism, but faculty must investigate each match to determine whether it represents plagiarism, poor paraphrasing, lack of citation, or simply coincidence.

The Originality Report displays the list of potential sources and identifies which sources were searched to return the available results. If students cited any of the sources correctly, you can remove them from the overall score as they are not instances of plagiarism.

Accessing the Originality Report

To access the Originality Report, click Course Tools in the Control Panel, then click SafeAssign; on the next page, click SafeAssign Items, then click the name of the appropriate SafeAssignment. Alternatively, the Originality Report can be accessed in the Inline Grading view of an Assignment through the Grade Center. Once on the inline grading view, click the SafeAssign link, then click the View Originality Report button.

Safe Assign Figure 1

Viewing the Details of the Originality Report

The Originality Report opens as a small pop-up window with the text of the submitted document visible. The document appears on the left, and details about the plagiarism check, including percent matching and citations that may have been plagiarised, are displayed in the right column. 

Safe Assign Figure 2

The details side bar includes when the student submitted the material, what percent was found to match other sources, and information about the other sources.

To process a submission again without one or more of the identified sources, click the Select Sources & Resubmit, then click the checkbox in front of the source(s) and click the Resubmit button. The report will reprocess (this may take a significant amount of time, based on current demand for SafeAssign), and the excluded sources will be listed but crossed-out.

Material that matched content from one of the sources will be highlighted. To turn off highlighting for a source, click the highlighter icon next to it. To limit the highlighted material to only that from a single source, click the highlighter icons next to all other sources to turn the visibility off. Click a highlighter again to turn the highlighting back on.

Safe Assign Figure 3

Content that matches one of the sources is highlighted and the source is identified by number. Click the highlighted content to view a comparison of the submitted text with the source text. If the Source is available on the web, click the URL to view the original source directly.

Safe Assign Figure 4

SafeAssign Doesn't Generate a Report when Filename Has Special Characters

Please note that assignment submissions with special characters (i.e., #,:,*,space, etc.) are not evaluated by SafeAssign and will not generate a report.

It is recommended that users only include numbers, letters, hyphens, and underscores in their filenames. In cases where student users have already made a submission, change the assignment setting to allow multiple submissions and then ask them to resubmit the document after making the appropriate filename change.