iThenticate is a Turnitin product and, as such, uses the same plagiarism-detection method as Turnitin. iThenticate and Turnitin are the industry-leading software programs to check the originality of text against other sources. The software identifies text copied verbatim from other published and internet sources that is not properly quoted, or that is patchwritten, which means it is not appropriately paraphrased.

NPS has a license for the software. iThenticate is not perfect, but it is one aid against plagiarism.

iThenticate is a Turnitin product and, as such, uses the same plagiarism-detection method as Turnitin. However, iThenticate has some unique features that make it a better match for our needs at NPS:

• By default, iThenticate does not save uploaded documents to its cloud repository. This is in line with NPS cybersecurity policy.
• Whereas Turnitin struggles with documents over 100 pages, iThenticate can easily handle documents up to 400 pages long.
• Unlike Turnitin, iThenticate searches the ProQuest dissertations database and internal documents, which helps us identify more matches to academic sources.
• Also unlike Turnitin, iThenticate does not include class papers from other universities in the similarity report results. This eliminates a good share of false-positive matches to sources that cannot be easily tracked down.
• iThenticate offers reporting features that are easier to use and more powerful than Turnitin's.

Although iThenticate does not come equipped with Feedback Studio, Turnitin's learning management function, its interface filing structure still allows users to create folders and groups, much the same way Turnitin sorts documents by classes. NPS faculty and staff, as always, may use Sakai for learning management needs.

iThenticate algorithmically checks for unoriginal content. Its scope includes a vast repository of previously uploaded documents, published materials, and the internet. When a document is uploaded for analysis, iThenticate compares every phrase of five or more words (by default) in the document against everything in its repositories. It regenerates the document with any matches color-coded; this is the iThenticate “similarity report.” Each matched source is given a color and number.

The report also assigns a percentage to each source/color, which indicates the percentage of the whole document that matches that source. A composite percentage is given as well, indicating the percentage of the whole document that matches all identified sources.

The report can be viewed in iThenticate's Document Viewer by the person who uploaded the document for review or downloaded from iThenticate as a PDF.

No.

iThenticate recognizes the structure of passages, so that a passage with simple word substitutions (e.g., "helped" in place of "assisted") will still trigger a match. Unlike patchwriting, paraphrasing will not trigger a match.

Not necessarily.

In a document formatted with a template (such as an NPS thesis), standard or form text may account for 5% or more of the content. Numerous footnotes with common or lengthy source titles or URLs can contribute sizably to the composite percentage, which iThenticate calls the "similarity index."

We have seen theses with a similarity index of 6% that contain significant documentation or plagiarism concerns, and other theses with indexes above 20% that are uniformly well-documented.

No.

Studies show that its algorithm catches about two-thirds of unoriginal material (see Carl Straumsheim, "What Is Detected?," Inside Higher Ed, July 14, 2015).

Also, iThenticate can't identify well-paraphrased passages that lack citations, unattributed images, including data or text embedded in images, or material copied from sources not in its repositories (e.g., undigitized books, articles behind paywalls, CUI documents).

No.

Although iThenticate offers a purchasable add-on capability for detecting use of generative AI, the NPS account does not have this capability. Studies show that current technology for generative AI detection is untrustworthy and misleading (see "Generative AI Detection in Higher Education Assessments," Wiley, 2025).

No.

iThenticate is much like a spell-checker: it simply identifies matches of a certain length to passages found elsewhere.

Matches can include genuinely plagiarized or undocumented material, but they also include false positives, or matches that do not meet the definition of plagiarism. Therefore, a human must review every match in the report to determine if documentation or revision is needed.

Here is a partial list of false positives:

• Common phrases, such as "This page intentionally left blank" (5 words), "This thesis contains an introduction and background chapter" (8 words), "In an era of Great Power Competition between the United States and China" (13 words), and "I would like to thank my advising team for their support throughout my time at NPS…" (16 words)
• Longer proper nouns, such as Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics
• Book titles (which are italicized, not between quotation marks)
• Boilerplate NPS thesis template text
• Footnote-style citations
• Long URLs
• Direct quotations that span two pages (iThenticate stumbles on page breaks)

Usually.

iThenticate's Document Viewer hyperlinks its color-coded passages, which sometimes lead to the original web source. If not, Googling the color-coded text may locate the source.

Faculty can use iThenticate to scan any papers students submit for class assignments, or only those papers that show signs of potential plagiarism.*

We recommend letting students know on your syllabus whether all or some papers may be run through iThenticate, and that students are expected to adhere to the Academic Honor Code.

*Publicly releasable documents only; iThenticate is not approved for CUI, PII, or PHI.

Advising teams may want to run publicly releasable drafts of their advisees’ chapters through iThenticate as the text is developed, so they can guide students early on.

Or advisors may run a Near-final Draft thesis through iThenticate before they or their student signs the Thesis Release and Approval Form (TRAF). The TRAF attests that the thesis is compliant with the Academic Honor Code (student), meets academic standards (advisors and chairs), and is ready for release (student and faculty).

If plagiarism, in even draft chapters, appears extensive and intentional, faculty have the option, per the Honor Code, to report the misconduct to the Dean of Students.

Faculty and staff.

Students are not authorized to have NPS iThenticate accounts (see “Why can’t students get iThenticate accounts?” under the FAQs, Additional Policies).

Email a request to software@nps.edu.

No; the software is relatively user-friendly. See the iThenticate User Guide.

That said, it takes practice to differentiate between real problems and false positives in similarity reports. Contact the GWC at writingcenter@nps.edu if you'd like one of our trained staff members to analyze a similarity report for you.

Click here for instructions.

Word docs, text files, and PDFs. LaTeX files can be saved as PDFs and then uploaded.* For a full list of supported file types, see the iThenticate website.

*Publicly releasable documents only; iThenticate is not approved for CUI, PII, or PHI.

Yes.

It won’t allow documents over 40 MB or 400 pages. To submit a large .doc file, first convert it to PDF, then save the PDF as a "reduced size" file.

By keeping a human in the loop who is knowledgeable about citation and documentation practices, and proficient with the software.

Thesis office and writing center staff are trained to review each passage iThenticate highlights, and to help authors determine if there is plagiarism or a documentation issue. 

For more information, see the GWC's "Approach to Plagiarism Prevention and iThenticate" handout, and the TPO's citation guides page.

Yes.

Particularly if iThenticate flags passages that contain field-specific common knowledge or typically unquoted technical language (such as mathematical variables). Advisors can help students determine when foundational concepts or language should be cited, and when it does not need to be.

The TPO, as the NPS unit that publishes theses, is responsible within its resource base for publishing theses that do not contain knowingly plagiarized material or personally identifiable information (PII), meet copyediting and formatting standards, have all necessary signatures, are properly marked with the faculty-designated distribution statement, and have permission to use copyrighted material.

iThenticate is an automated tool that allows users to more easily and quickly:

1. Identify issues with verbatim copied material that hasn't been quoted
2. Identify incomplete paraphrasing
3. Teach proper citing, quoting, paraphrasing, and documentation methods while manuscripts are still in draft stage.

Any student who has been away from academia may forgot citation norms and rules. Still, all NPS students are responsible for producing classwork and theses that are free of plagiarism, whether intentional or unintentional.

Few faculty members have used iThenticate. When used infrequently, the expertise atrophies.

Thesis processors and GWC instructors are trained on how to properly cite, quote, and paraphrase, and most maintain proficiency with the software. The TPO and GWC also share common explanations, emails, and best practices, to standardize requirements and resource availability across the departments.

This service is supplementary to efforts by students, faculty, and the Dean of Students. Students are best served when they work hand-in-hand with faculty and writing instructors toward the proper use of sources.

Yes, but only under three conditions:

1. The Initial Draft appeared to have concerns.
2. No Initial Draft was run.
3. Thesis processors notice signs of potential problems during Final Draft review.

The TPO will contact the advisors and department chair for further discussion. If the problems are minor and inadvertent, students are typically permitted to correct and resubmit the thesis. If the problems are moderate to significant or appear willful, the case is turned over to the Dean of Students (see Academic Honor Code).

Yes—this is either encouraged or required for students whose Initial Draft iThenticate report showed concerns.

The student or advisor must request an additional report by emailing Thesis Processing.

If an Initial Draft report "does not identify significant plagiarism issues," per the email, then the thesis is not eligible for a Near-final Draft report from the TPO. However, students can make appointments with the writing center to review revisions and to run additional chapters through iThenticate.

Evaluators rely predominantly on iThenticate’s markings to direct their attention. They look for material, for instance, that has been copied from another source but lacks quotation marks, block quoting, or citations; quotations that are not formatted correctly; directly quoted material that has a citation but no quotation marks; and incomplete paraphrasing.

The evaluator leaves comments on areas of potential concern, and recommends what or how to revise.

The evaluator may recommend consultation with an advisor, especially for passages that contain field-specific common knowledge. The evaluator may comment on iThenticate’s false-positives for clarity, but typically evaluators comment only on areas that appear problematic.

If the evaluator spots potential issues in the text not identified by iThenticate, such as uncited figures and tables, they may investigate further or leave a query.

See the TPO's "Advice for Acing Your iThenticate Review" for common iThenticate report comments.

They are placed as comment balloons in the PDF, typically to the right of the color-coded passage being commented on. Contact the evaluator if you cannot see their comment balloons.

When the Thesis Processing Office is overloaded, GWC staff may evaluate iThenticate reports on behalf of the TPO.

This is encouraged so students learn early the proper methods of citing, quoting, and paraphrasing. The hope is that, by thesis time, students are critically engaging sources, know the correct methods, and are following them.

For publicly releasable papers,* simply make an appointment with a writing instructor in WCONLINE and request and iThenticate report in your appointment form. The instructor will run the document through iThenticate and go over the results as part of the appointment.

*Only publicly releasable content can be uploaded to iThenticate. For CUI papers, writing instructors can consult on citation and source blending without the use of iThenticate.

No! Until NPS has its own standalone server at iThenticate (which we are working on), restricted documents should not be uploaded into iThenticate. Classified documents should never be uploaded. Students should be given this warning if your class material or their theses might include restricted information.

Currently at NPS, only faculty and members of the Thesis Processing Office, the Graduate Writing Center, and the Dudley Knox Library are authorized to have NPS iThenticate accounts. This may change in time.

Students currently are not given accounts for these reasons:

1. Students can use iThenticate's feedback to help them willfully avoid detection of plagiarism (see Marc Parry, "Software Catches (and Also Helps) Young Plagiarists," Chronicle of Higher Education, November 6, 2011).
2. If students need guidance on how to properly cite, quote, and paraphrase others' work, they are more likely to receive it if the iThenticate report is provided to them by a faculty member or writing coach.

The student author, his or her advisors and second reader, the department chair, the writing coach who is evaluating and providing the report, and the GWC/TPO Director.

Yes, but Thesis Processing reserves the right to run Final Draft, signed-off versions through iThenticate before publishing them. This represents a zero-tolerance goal for publishing theses with plagiarized material.

Although students are instructed in academic requirements for attribution in multiple ways, a sizable percentage of students write theses with some misunderstanding, ignorance, or lack of commitment to applying citation rules. The writing coaches and thesis processors are trained in how to cite, quote, paraphrase, and summarize others' work.