News & Releases

Turnitin2 Coming September 4, 2010

Turnitin2 dramatically improves delivery of feedback on student papers.

OAKLAND, Calif. -- August 5, 2010 -- iParadigms announced that Turnitin2 is launching on September 4, 2010. Turnitin2 is the next-generation version of the company's award winning, web-based plagiarism prevention, digital markup and peer review services for educators and students. This new version makes it easier than ever for middle school, high school and college instructors to check students' written work for unoriginal material, deliver substantive comments and conduct peer reviews using a single view of students' fully formatted papers.

"Turnitin2 is a major step forward in user-centered design," said Chris Caren, the company's president and CEO. "Turnitin2 brings together major innovations with a wide range of 'most requested' improvements and offers educators and their students a unique, new perspective on written work." Read the Release and to Learn more...

NY Times Education article "To Stop Cheats, Colleges Learn Their Trickery"

OAKLAND, Calif. -- July 5, 2010 -- As recently reported in the New York Times article "To Stop Cheats, Colleges Learn Their Trickery", many colleges and universities employ a variety of techniques and technologies to help prevent and detect cheating. As the article says,'The best-known service, Turnitin.com, is engaged in an endless cat-and-mouse game with technologically savvy students who try to outsmart it. "The Turnitin algorithms are updated on an on-going basis," the company warned last month in a blog post titled "Can Students 'Trick' Turnitin?"

See the Turnitin blog, 'Words & Ideas' for more updates about our tools and techniques.

Penn State MBA Applications Now Screened Using 'Turnitin for Admissions'

OAKLAND, Calif. -- June 21, 2010 -- iParadigms, announced that its Turnitin for Admissions service has been selected by the Penn State Smeal College of Business. Now, applicants to Penn State's Master of Business Administration (MBA) program will have their admissions essays verified by Turnitin for Admissions. Read more...

See coverage in Bloomberg Businessweek's Getting In blog posting by Louis Lavelle on June 21, 2010, "Penn State Checking MBA Application Essays for Plagiarism"

See coverage in USA Today posted by Scott Jaschik (of Inside Higher Ed) on June 23, 2010, "Colleges turn to software to detect applicants' plagiarism"

Scientific publishers embrace iThenticate technology

OAKLAND, Calif. -- July 5, 2010 -- NATURE released an online article entitled "Journals step up plagiarism policing; Cut-and-paste culture tackled by CrossCheck software" by Declan Butler.

Major science publishers such as Elsevier and Springer are tackling the issue of potential plagiarism in their publications using CrossCheck software (a version of iThenticate available to CrossRef consortium members). Publishers' tests of the technology have confirmed surprising levels of plagiarism in manuscripts submitted for publication; "one journal reported rejecting 23% of accepted submissions after checking for plagiarism." Read the whole article...

Turnitin Adopted by Ontario Public Schools

OAKLAND, Calif. -- June 2, 2010 -- The complete Turnitin solution has been adopted by the Ministry of Education of Ontario, Canada, for use in all of its publicly-funded and First Nations secondary schools. Starting September 1, 2010, hundreds of thousands of students and tens of thousands of teachers throughout the province will have access to Turnitin's web-based tools, including OriginalityCheck™ Plagiarism Prevention, PeerMark® Peer Reviewing and GradeMark® Digital Markup and Grading. Read more...

Language Weaver Partnership Will Enable Identification of Translated Plagiarism

iParadigms Licenses Language Weaver's Automated Translation Technology, Extends Capabilities to Identify Potential Plagiarism In Translated Documents.

OAKLAND, Calif. -- May 7, 2010 -- iParadigms announced that it has licensed Language Weaver's automated translation technology, enabling Turnitin to identify plagiarized content that has been translated from English into other languages. This capability will be incorporated into Turnitin by the end of 2010.

"Translated plagiarism is increasingly common at educational institutions around the world," said Chris Caren, iParadigms president and CEO. "It consists of students taking existing source material in one language, translating it into the language used at their institution and misrepresenting it as their own work. A number of our international customers report that this kind of plagiarism is on the rise and have requested the ability to detect it. With Language Weaver's unmatched ability to perform accurate on-the-fly translation, we can now offer a powerful solution to this problem." Read more...

Turnitin Selected as a Finalist for 2010 CODiE Awards

OAKLAND, Calif. -- April 16, 2010 -- Turnitin Plagiarism Prevention and Originality Checking has been selected as a finalist for the prestigious CODiE Awards given by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA). Turnitin is a finalist in the Best Education Reference or Search Service category. Read more...

Turnitin in USA Today article

OAKLAND, Calif. -- November 19, 2009 -- USA Today reports on the widespread problem of term papers for sale and plagiarism, and how Turnitin helps. Read the full article.

Cheating, plagiarism increases 14 percent

OAKLAND, Calif. -- November 19, 2009 -- "The number of academic misconduct violations at UCF rose 14 percent this year, according to the Office of Student Conduct. Reports from 136 students revealed the statistical data from the 2007-2008 to the 2008-2009 academic year. As defined by the Golden Rule, "Academic misconduct includes but is not limited to cheating, plagiarism, assisting another in cheating or plagiarism, and commercial use of academic materials." Nationally between 70 to 85 percent of students admit to cheating at one point in their academic career, said Dr. Nancy Stanlick, associate professor and assistant chair of the department of philosophy at UCF."

To find out about what University of Central Florida is doing about it, read the full article "Cheating, plagiarism increases 14 percent".

Announcing PeerMark™, our Next-Generation Peer Review Solution!

OAKLAND, Calif. -- November 3, 2009 -- iParadigms today announced PeerMark, its next-generation peer review product for educators. This web-based collaborative tool enables high school and college instructors to quickly create and manage peer review assignments in which students read and provide substantive comments on each other's work.

"PeerMark is the most powerful and complete peer review system we've ever developed," said Dr. John Barrie, the company's product strategist. "It delivers all the benefits of peer collaboration without the paper-and-pen hassles. It makes peer review practical and efficient for even the largest classes with hundreds or thousands of students, and it gives a big boost to teacher productivity in an era of increasing class sizes."

Peer review is a popular teaching practice, with a strong body of evidence showing that it helps improve student writing, editing and critical thinking. But in its paper-and-pen form, peer reviewing presents logistical challenges especially for larger classes. There was no simple way to distribute and share copies of papers, or manage assignments so that feedback is legible, consistent and useful. Nor do generic web collaboration tools provide the specialized features needed to design and manage assignments through the various stages of the writing process.

PeerMark eliminates these challenges and complexities. Using a simple web-based interface, teachers can set up and manage assignments, provide structured guidance and monitor the results with minimal effort. Students can easily upload, review and comment on each other's papers, prompted by instructor- supplied questions and guidelines.

PeerMark is a component of the Turnitin WriteCycle solution and will replace the previous-generation student-to-student feedback tool known as Peer Review in January 2010. PeerMark is a major improvement over its predecessor, offering greater flexibility, ease of use, integration with major course management systems like Moodle and Blackboard, and powerful features such as palette-based markup and editing tools. Current licensees of Peer Review will be able to upgrade to PeerMark at no extra charge when it becomes available. PeerMark will be available in both English and Spanish.

Other products in the WriteCycle solution include GradeMark®, for digital markup and grading, and Turnitin Originality Checking, which prevents plagiarism and ensures that collaborating students need not worry about misappropriation of their work. Download the full press release article.

iParadigms Appoints Chris Caren President and CEO

OAKLAND, Calif., -- October 29, 2009 -- iParadigms LLC, the leader in originality checking and plagiarism prevention services, announced that Chris Caren has been appointed president and CEO of the company. He has been serving in that capacity since early September, 2009.

Caren comes to iParadigms with broad management, product and strategic experience in the software industry. Chris joined from Microsoft where he was a General Manager in Microsoft Business Solutions and in the Microsoft Office group. Among his responsibilities there, Caren led global product management and marketing for Microsoft's ERP and CRM businesses.

"This is an exciting move for me," said Caren. "I come from a family of scientists and teachers, so this brings together my 15 years in the software business with my roots in the educational world. I'm looking forward to taking our Turnitin and iThenticate businesses to the next level, here in the United States and globally."

Caren's previous positions include vice president of products and marketing at Business Objects (now part of SAP), leading product marketing at Manugistics Group Inc., head of sales and marketing at an Oracle financial applications company, and a leadership role at Accenture. He holds an MBA with distinction from Kellogg Business School and a bachelor of science in engineering from Stanford University.

iParadigms LLC is the leader in textual intellectual property protection and a pioneer of web-based services for collaborative, online educational support. The company is at the forefront of using technology to increase awareness of best practices in research, teaching and learning as it relates to the use of other people's textual content. The company's product lines include Turnitin, WriteCycle, WriteCheck and iThenticate. Turnitin is the world's leading originality checking and plagiarism prevention service used by millions of students and faculty and thousands of institutions in more than 100 countries.

Teen Ink and Turnitin join forces

OAKLAND, Calif., -- September 25, 2009 -- Teen Ink offers young writers (ages 13-19) the opportunity to publish their original works in the largest teen writing forum on the planet. Teens who love to write can experience the thrill of publishing their fiction, nonfiction, poetry, art and photography in print and on one of the most heavily-trafficked sites on the web. Now in their 21st year, Teen Ink offers many publishing, writing, commenting, voting and other "social reading and writing" features for teens. Now, Teen Ink has teamed up with Turnitin to ensure that texts published in print are not only the original work of the author, but protected from unauthorized copying in the future. Check out ALL the great teen writing at teenink.com.

TurnitinUK now available in 6 Asian languages in addition to English, Spanish, French and German!

OAKLAND, Calif., -- August 9, 2009 -- Turnitin, the leader in originality checking and plagiarism prevention, announced availability of its award-winning Turnitin Originality Checking and GradeMark™ services in Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Simplified), Japanese, Korean, Thai and Malay.

These 6 Asian languages bring the total number of languages supported by TurnitinUK and GradeMark to ten including English, Spanish, French and German. The company has working relationships with hundreds of educational institutions across the Asia-Pacific region. Worldwide, TurnitinUK and GradeMark are used in over 110 countries.

"This is in response to strong demand for bringing our award-winning services to institutions worldwide. TurnitinUK and GradeMark have helped millions of English-speaking students across all disciplines become better writers and increase originality, while protecting their work from unauthorized copying." said Dr. John Barrie, PhD, founder and CEO of iParadigms, the creator of Turnitin. "Now, it's exciting to offer our services to institutions all over Asia, and empower their instructors to deliver more meaningful feedback to students on their writing."

Expanded content coverage!

OAKLAND, Calif., -- July 23, 2009 -- TurnitinUK has recently implemented a major augmentation to our search capabilities plus important new content partnerships. These changes mean vastly improved coverage of very recently updated news and information, and greatly improved reach for Internet content.

TurnitinUK & GradeMark Now Available in French & German, Too!

OAKLAND, Calif., -- July 21, 2009 -- Following the launch of our Spanish translations in May, we now offer TurnitinUK Originality Checking & GradeMark services in French and German. Access to these languages is included AT NO EXTRA CHARGE in your annual subscription! Use the drop-down menu in the upper right-hand corner of the TurnitinUK.com website to select a language and try it today.

US Court of Appeals Unanimously Affirms Finding of "Fair Use" for Turnitin

OAKLAND, Calif., -- April 27, 2009 -- The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued a published decision on April 16 affirming a lower court's finding of fair use for iParadigms, LLC, the company that provides Turnitin, in a closely-watched copyright infringement case brought by four high school students.

All three judges affirmed the lower court's 2008 finding that the archiving and use of students' papers by Turnitin for the prevention of plagiarism is considered "highly transformative" and, when considered with the other three factors of fair use, constitutes a fair use.

In March 2008, the students' case had been dismissed by US District Judge Claude Hilton when he issued a summary judgment stating that Turnitin's use of archived student works without their permission to assess originality of newly-submitted papers constitutes a fair use under US copyright law and is therefore not copyright infringement. In addition, Judge Hilton stated that such use, "has a protective effect" on the future marketability of the students' works and "provides a substantial public benefit through the network of institutions using Turnitin."

The plaintiffs appealed Judge Hilton's decision and, after conducting its own independent analysis of plaintiffs' claims, the court of appeals concluded that, "iParadigms' use of the student works was 'fair use' under the Copyright Act." Like the lower court, the appeals court recognized that iParadigms' use of the student papers for purposes of plagiarism detection is a "highly transformative" use that adds something new in purpose and character and does not harm the future marketability of the students' works. The appeals court also reiterated that, "if anything, iParadigms' use of students' works fostered the development of original and creative works 'by detecting any efforts at plagiarism by other students.'"

"The exponential growth of the Web has presented educators with exciting collaborative learning opportunities as well as daunting challenges related to intellectual property," said John Barrie, founder and CEO of iParadigms. "The dismissal of this case affirms the role of Turnitin as an important instructional support tool that helps students learn to work properly with the intellectual property of others."

The complete text of the published decision is available for download here.

Turnitin Helps School District Prevent Plagiarism

SAN MATEO, Calif. (KGO), -- March 16, 2009 -- "Using the internet to plagiarize has become a major problem here in the Bay Area and in schools across the country. A recent ethics survey by a Southern California institute shows 38-percent of high school students admit to doing it. Now, a school district on the Peninsula is going high-tech in its fight to stop cheaters." Watch the TV clip here.

teachers.tv Covers TurnitinUK

teachers.tv covers TurnitinUK in their report of the 2009 BETT conference. Click here to watch the video.

TurnitinUK to Support Anonymous Marking

To meet customer demand, TurnitinUK now offers anonymous marking within its signature GradeMark online feedback tool. This new anonymous marking feature provides TurnitinUK tutors with the ability to view and mark students' work without knowing the identity of the author.

Anonymous marking of students' work is increasingly a requirement of assessment procedures in UK universities and colleges, and is also endorsed by the Quality Assurance Agency's (QAA) Code of Practice (QAA, 2006).

Based on discussions at user group meetings a proposal was developed in consultation with several institutions, proposing four strategies to facilitate anonymous marking of students' work via TurnitinUK, and a preferred approach was then chosen by users and put forward to iParadigms, the developers.

The approach adopted will allow tutors to hide students' names from their assignment inbox and also from the Originality Report and GradeMark view to allow for unbiased marking. A flag will indicate that anonymous marking has been enabled, as shown below.

Once the post date for the assignment is reached student names will then be shown. It will also be possible to reveal student names prior to this date if necessary, however the tutor will be required to provide an explanation of why he is overwriting this setting, and this change will be notified to the central institutional account Administrator, to ensure that the integrity of the anonymous marking system is maintained.

The anonymous marking feature will also be supported via TurnitinUK integrations with Blackboard, WebCT and Moodle.

Click here to learn more about Anonymous Marking!

QAA (2006) Code of practice for the assurance of academic quality and standards in higher education [Online] Available at: http://www.qaa.ac.uk/academicinfrastructure/codeOfPractice/section6/COP_AOS.pdf (Accessed: 23 December, 2008).

Awarding Bodies Agreement

The JCQ signs a multi-year contract for Turnitin for all leading UK awarding bodies... (more)

iParadigms and CrossRef Receive Publishing Innovation Award From Largest Trade Association of Scholarly and Professional Publishers

OAKLAND, Calif., Sept. -- iParadigms(R), LLC, the leader in the field of textual intellectual property protection, today announced that CrossCheck powered by iThenticate(TM) is the recipient of the Publishing Innovation Award from the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), the largest trade association of scholarly and professional publishers.

CrossCheck powered by iThenticate, is the result of a partnership between iParadigms and CrossRef, a nonprofit membership association of more than 500 leading scholarly and professional publishers. The service gives CrossRef's participating publishers a web-based solution to help them verify the originality of manuscripts submitted for publication. The iThenticate service matches documents against iParadigms vast database of 11.4 billion pages of indexed web content and more than 10,000 professional, academic and commercial journals and publications.

"Recognition by ALPSP is an honor on an international scale," said John M. Barrie, Ph.D, president and CEO of iParadigms. "This award raises awareness of CrossCheck powered by iThenticate, and signals publishers that CrossRef is offering members a recognized, innovative tool that is on its way to becoming a highly-valued service to the publishing world."

iParadigms continues to add content through partnerships with groups such as CrossRef, which so far has added nearly five million pages of new content to its databases. More content will be added as new CrossRef members choose to implement CrossCheck powered by iThenticate.

"We are really thrilled to receive the ALPSP Publishing Innovation Award for CrossCheck," said Ed Pentz, executive director of CrossRef. "The service is already off to a great start, and this recognition further confirms the innovative power of the CrossRef model as a way to support our members."

Turnitin Goes Global

August 2008 - Turnitin can now accept papers for originality checking in 30 different languages including Chinese (traditional and simplified), Japanese, Korean and Thai. These new languages join the languages that have been previously supported by Turnitin: French, Spanish and German.

John Barrie, CEO of iParadigms said, "Recent changes to our technological platform allow us to handle submissions in a wide range of alphabets and character sets. Originality reports in alphabetic languages such as Spanish will exhibit perfect fidelity with regard to accents and diacritical marks, and support for character-based languages have opened many new global possibilities for us. We are working with our partners on fully localized interfaces to be available soon."

Papers can now be submitted to TurnitinUK at www.submit.ac.uk in the following 30 languages: Chinese (simplified and traditional), Japanese, Thai, Korean, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian (Bokmal, Nynorsk), Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Farsi, Russian, and Turkish.

For more information about global coverage, please contact us via email at sales@turnitin.com or via telephone at +1-510-287-9720 (US).

New Turnitin Look and Feel

Since the web evolves exponentially, web sites quickly become outdated in just a couple of years. As such, Turnitin itself was in dire need of an updated interface, so we recently underwent a complete over-haul.

The new Turnitin was launched to all Turnitin customers in the US, EU and Canada as of August 7th, 2008. The new interface has been in Beta testing since April, 2008, with feedback from thousands of users incorporated into the new design. Made to be easier on the eyes and easier to use, many users have already switched to the new interface exclusively and love the new look and feel of their Turnitin service.

Although some of the functionality has changed, the new interface runs smoother and faster, and works more intuitively. Instead of the cramped interface of the old-school Turnitin, the New Turnitin's spaciousness makes it more readable than before. The importance of increased readability in the new look is evident with the font sizing options that range from small, medium, to large. These options can be toggled at any time to suit personal viewing preferences.

We've also improved tools for setting up and managing courses and assignments. The tools are great for managing courses and the entire workflow process. Use our completely redesigned calendar to stay organized by setting dates, goals and deadlines.

GradeBook also had a makeover, and can still be used as an online grade book that easily exports to excel. The instructor inbox and student portfolio have been improved to help you manage all your important documents and student progress over time. Turnitin's discussion boards have been redesigned to provide a richer user interface, and a more enjoyable collaborative learning experience.

Please note that we're giving users the option of switching back to the old version using a link that will appear at the top of their Turnitin account. This option will be available until early 2009. If you have any questions regarding using Turnitin, or the new interface, please contact the Turnitin Help Desk.

To help customers learn to get the most out of the new interface, our training department will be hosting weekly WebEx sessions throughout the Fall. For information regarding attending one of these sessions, or to have a session specially tailored for your institution's training needs, please contact your Turnitin sales representative.

Judge Dismisses Copyright Infringement Complaint Against iParadigms, Provider of Turnitin.com

OAKLAND CA, March 18, 2008 - iParadigms LLC, provider of Turnitin.com and iThenticate, announced that a Virginia judge has issued a summary judgment regarding his dismissal of a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by four high school students against iParadigms over the use of the students' written works in the Turnitin plagiarism detection service.

The judge stated that iParadigms' use of archived student works to assess originality of newly-submitted papers constitutes a fair use under US copyright law and is therefore not copyright infringement. In addition, he states that such use "provides a substantial public benefit through the network of institutions using Turnitin".

iParadigms' CEO John Barrie said "The Turnitin service was created because of the pressing educational need from institutions to help students learn to produce original written work - especially in our "cut and paste" digital world. The judge has validated that our service is able to do so without infringing the copyrights of students' work."

U.S. District Judge Claude M. Hilton said that "though iParadigms makes a profit in providing this service to educational institutions, its use of student works adds "a further purpose or different character" to the works." Such "transformative" works do not violate fair use. Further, because student works become part of the database against which other students' work is compared, Turnitin helps protect the papers from being exploited by others who might profitably claim them as their own work.

Welcome To the New GradeMark!

This latest GradeMark upgrade delivers highly anticipated features as well as speed, stability, and loading enhancements. We encourage all of our users to take advantage of the new GradeMark.

Changes include:

New, adjustable QuickMark palette
The QuickMark palette can now be resized and will remember its size, placement, and open QuickMark sets from use to use.

New QuickMark symbol color
QuickMark symbols will now appear in dark orange to increase visibility against the black text of students' papers.

Rich text editing in General comments
General comments will now support bold, italic, and underlined text styles. Instructors are now also able to include hyperlinks in their General comments.

Simplified timeout recovery
If your browser loses connection to the internet for any reason, GradeMark will now notify you and allow you to sign back into grading by simply entering your password.

Enhanced navigation between papers
If you click on another paper in your inbox while GradeMark is open, GradeMark will automatically jump to that paper for grading. In addition, clicking on your browser's forward and back buttons will allow you to move to the next and previous papers in your assignment inbox.

Memory for tools
GradeMark will now remember what tool you used last and will automatically switch to that tool when you open the program. It will also remember and load the last color you chose for a tool when you switch to using that tool.

For more information regarding using the new GradeMark, please refer to the training video and user manuals listed below:

• GradeMark Training Video
• Instructor User Manual
• Student User Manual