By Sydney Beverly, MPP Student, Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy
Navigating Research Integrity: How iThenticate Supports Graduate Researchers
Find out more by attending a discussion about research integrity and iThenticate on Wednesday, January 15, 2025, at 5 pm in Garrett Hall.
Graduate students face unique challenges in advanced research, particularly when completing final projects and dissertations. One of these challenges is understanding and upholding academic integrity, which is crucial to producing high-quality, original research.
What is iThenticate?
iThenticate is a powerful tool designed to help ensure that your scholarly work meets the highest standards of academic integrity. It analyzes your writing for originality by comparing it against an extensive database of academic works, identifying potential overlaps or issues. When you upload your document, iThenticate generates a similarity report that highlights text matching other sources and provides a similarity score. This allows you to review flagged sections, address concerns, and strengthen your work before submission. By safeguarding your reputation and protecting against accidental plagiarism, iThenticate is an vital resource for graduate students committed to producing original, impactful research.
Key Benefits of Using iThenticate
iThenticate is known for its early detection of issues to identify potential overlaps, citation errors, or unintentional plagiarism early in your research process. It further allows for a comprehensive review of comparing your own individual work against a vast database of scholarly content, by comparing and contrasting analysis. Using iThenticate, gives individuals more confidence that their manuscripts, theses, or dissertations meet integrity standards before submission, avoiding public scrutiny. Know that many publications and agencies already use iThenticate to scan submissions. Thus, if you plan on submitting an article or proposal to an organization already using iThenticate, you may want to ensure that you have screened it yourself.
Common Misconceptions About iThenticate
It’s a common misunderstanding that the Similarity Report is a plagiarism detection tool. The report reveals text matches, but there can be various reasons why those arise, and situations can be explained. It is normal for some writing to match against the databases.Quotations and text cited in some way may match unless excluded. One must look beyond the fact that the text matches to investigate the source and citation to determine whether it is acceptable. Fundamentally, the tool can be use as a preventive measure before submission, rather than as a mechanism to catch plagiarism after the fact.
Many people confuse iThenticate with Turnitin due to their shared focus on plagiarism detection. However, these tools serve different purposes: Turnitin is primarily designed for educators in the classroom; it detects similarities in student submissions. iThenticate is tailored for researchers and professionals. It helps writers align their work with scholarly publications to ensure originality and proper citation. Unlike Turnitin, iThenticate focuses on professional and scholarly writing, making it an indispensable tool for graduate-level research.
Best Practices for Using iThenticate
iThenticate plays a key role in upholding the University of Virginia’s commitment to research integrity and its foundation as a “Community of Trust.” As a leading research institution, UVA encourages the integration of tools like iThenticate into writing workflows to ensure originality and ethical scholarship. Use it to refine your work and maintain the highest standards of research integrity.
Ian Novak, an MPP student and Vice Chair of the Graduate Committee, reflects: “The pursuit of truth is the ultimate goal. When we research, we seek answers that have not been found, relying on the work of others pursuing similar objectives. The research field is a Community of Trust in its own right. Deception in data can mislead other researchers, undermining progress toward truth. It’s also our responsibility to honor the work of others, recognizing their contributions. Tools like iThenticate help students uphold these principles, ensuring their hard work is both ethical and impactful” (Ian Novak, MPP 2026).
Students can ask the Director of Research Integrity and Ethics for further information at amd8hc@virginia.edu.