How to use iThenticate and anti-plagiarism reports

Processing similarity reports from iThenticate is a subjective assessment. The platform will simply show examples of possible overlap with existing texts. It will not give any judgement on whether the similarity is a problem or acceptable according to common standards. The editor performing the review must, therefore, use their judgement on whether the similarity poses any legal (i.e. plagiarism and copyright) or ethical (e.g. duplicate publication) issues.

Report Generation

As of OJS3.4 all full-service Ubiquity journals are automatically connected to iThenticate’s plagiarism detection software. Upon submission, manuscript files are submitted to the iThenticate platform and scanned for similarities across the iThenticate database.

When viewing submission files in OJS3.4, the iThenticate similarity percentage will display besides the title of the file. Clicking on the iThenticate percentage will take you to a new page showing the full similarity report.

Processing a report

iThenticate reports should be reviewed as part of the desk evaluation for new submissions. Editors should be sure to evaluate the possibility of any legal or ethical issues themselves prior to peer review. While peer reviewers may provide additional insight into potential legal or ethical issues, editors should not rely solely on peer reviewers to identify concerning material.

The iThenticate screen displays a copy of the file, which has been highlighted where similarity to existing content has been found. The right column displays the sources of the matches, along with how many words have been matched in total. The list begins with the highest percentage source of similarity and proceeds from largest to smallest.

Initial Review

When first reviewing, it is recommended to look through the article without adjusting any settings, to see all of the matching material:

  1. Check the right column first. If any sources have a large number of words matched, or a high percentage of similarity, then investigation is definitely required
  2. Scroll through the highlighted report to assess the similarity matches individually
  3. Clicking on the highlighted area will display a new box with more information, including the text of the original source. This box also includes a link to check the webpage of the original source. 
  4. If you find concerning matches then it is advisable to keep notes and a record of the external sources as you go, to help if you need to write up a summary.

Filter Settings

If during initial review there appear to be sources of superfluous similarity, then you can use the Filters settings to help sort for significant sources.

The Filters may be found on the upper right hand side of the screen, above the list of sources. Some common sources of similarity that may be filtered include:

  1. Exclude quoted text: to avoid percentages due to properly cited quotations.
  2. Exclude bibliography: to avoid percentages due to standardized bibliography entries.
  3. Exclude abstract: to avoid percentages due to published abstracts or conference abstracts that may have been presented before the final, full paper.
  4. Exclude small matches: this allows the editor to select a minimum number of words for a match to be included. If set to 10, then matches of 9 or fewer words will be excluded. This may be appropriate where a paper has a high number of matches due to technical language. Ubiquity recommends that this never go above more than 30 words when evaluating reports.

Editors should be careful not to apply any filters until they have evaluated the full report. Just because quoted text and bibliography entries are usually acceptable similarities does not mean that they cannot show signs of plagiarism. If a paper is over-reliant on extensive quotes, or if a paper shares an entire bibliography with another source, these may need further investigation.

Integrity Flags

At the top of the iThenticate report editors may select “Flags” in addition to the Similarity Report. The iThenticate algorithms analyze the paper for suspicious inconsistencies that may suggest that the authors are trying to work around the usual similarities checks.


The Flags tab will help identify two types of inconsistencies:


  1. Hidden Text: Authors who are knowingly using plagiarized material may attempt to minimize the similarity percent by adding extensive text that is not viewable in the file. For instance, adding hidden quotation marks to make the system believe text is “quoted” when using the “exclude quotes” filter, or hiding white-colored text in the line breaks to bump up the total text being scanned against.
  2. Replaced Characters: Authors using plagiarised text may also try to modify parts of the plagiarized text with characters from alternative alphabets that look indistinguishable from characters in the Latin Alphabet. By changing these characters, they may hope that the similarity report will not recognize the passages with the adjusted characters because the characters will technically scan differently from the source material. Note that Turnitin automatically swaps these characters out when scanning a submission so they will not affect the Similarity Report.

How to confirm: 

  • For most file types, you can open the originally uploaded document in a word processor or a PDF viewer. Select all text and remove its formatting or change the text color to black.
  • Temporarily switching off Exclude Quotes will allow you to see genuine matches to well-referenced sources. Large sections of unquoted text that match after reincluding quotes in the Similarity Report should be investigated further.

A flag is not always an indication of a problem, but any flags should always be analyzed carefully. If flags seem to indicate attempts to manipulate the text to minimize similarity reports, see the COPE guidelines on suspected plagiarism.

Things to look out for:

  • matched documents written by one of the co-authors
    • fine if a preprint or institutional repository (e.g. a working draft). If it’s a published article there’s the risk of redundant/duplicate publication (see COPE flowchart)
  • matches that are from authors not listed on the new submission
    • content from external sources must always be cited
  • significant chunks of text that suggest they have been taken from an existing source
    • if present, has the text been clearly quoted and cited?
    • if present and clearly quotes & cited, how long are the paragraphs? Longer than one paragraph is likely to have copyright issues if the source content is protected
  • significant number of small sections of text from the same source throughout the manuscript
    • this may suggest that a large portion of the submitted article is paraphrased from an existing source (i.e. it is saying the same thing, but edited to try and sound different)
  • whilst some similarity in Introduction and Methods sections may be expected (especially from the same author) matches in Results and Discussions sections would raise a red flag, as it suggests that the article is rehashing something that has already been published
  • matches to citations or references are not a problem. Although the filter can be used, it often doesn’t pick all of these up and will still highlight them

Next Steps

If all major similarities appear to be from acceptable sources (appropriate quotations, standardized bibliography, working drafts from preprints, etc.) then the editors may proceed to move the paper forward to peer review without issue. If other causes for concern are raised by peer reviewers, these concerns can be addressed in the appropriate stage using COPE guidelines.

If there are minor elements of plagiarism that appear to be incidental or unintentional with no misattribution of data (for instance, an author has too much direct text from another source, even while providing proper citations; minor copying of discussion materials from a non-english speaker; etc.) it may be appropriate to ask for revisions before proceeding.

In cases where intentional plagiarism seems highly likely, editors should act in accordance with COPE guidelines: 

  1. The authors should be made aware of the Submission Checklist and Editorial Policies where it states that authors agree the material is original. 
  2. Documented evidence of plagiarism should be shared and and explanation requested.
  3. If no satisfactory explanation is provided, the paper should be declined and the evidence of plagiarism should be raised with their superiors or the persons best responsible for the research governance at their institution(s).

See the full COPE guidelines on cases of suspected plagiarism prior to publication for further steps in the event authors cannot be contacted, or reasonable justification is provided. 

Additional Notes

  1. In cases where plagiarism is highly likely, the editor should attempt to fulfill all the responsibilities of engaging with the author and potentially their institution. If all cases of obvious plagiarism are simply rejected without followup, then the author will a) not necessarily know of the reason and thus not be able to change their writing process and b) they will likely just keep resubmitting the same article to other journals until one of them doesn’t notice the similarity problem and accepted it, meaning that the academic record will still be harmed by it. The journal/editor has a responsibility to try and educate the author and/or report very serious breaches of publication ethics to their employer.
  2. If cases do need action then corresponding with the author will be required. Keep this communication very neutral and non-accusatory. It should be about the facts, at least initially, so using terms such as ‘similarity’ will be received better than ‘plagiarised’.
  3. COPE members have access to template emails, including ‘Overlap of figures or text with a manuscript submitted or published elsewhere (e.g. suspected plagiarism and redundant publication)’. 
  4. Correspondence with the author is normally conducted by the editor, not the publisher. 
  5. If an associate or section editor is the one who identifies potential plagiarism when evaluating a paper, they should notify the Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editor of their concerns. The lead editors should be aware of any breach in legal or ethical guidelines and should be CCed when contacting the editors and/or their institutions. 
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