Excluding content from the Similarity Report

Content exclusions can include removing any matches to the bibliography or any places within a document where the author has used quotes.

Changing your settings will only change the setting for future uploads. If required, previously uploaded documents will need to be individually adjusted.

1. Select Settings from the sidebar.

2. Using the checkboxes, select the content types you would like to exclude from all future documents:

   Small Matches - # Words: Turnitin will remove all matches that are less than or equal to the length of the number of words supplied.

   Abstract: Turnitin will exclude these by reading the document and excluding sections that have headers with the words 'abstract'.

   Quotes: Turnitin looks for all content between quotation marks and excludes this text from the report. A list of supported quotation mark types can be found here.

   Bibliography: For papers written in English, Turnitin's machine learning algorithm is able to understand what elements of the paper should be excluded and dynamically remove them from the Similarity Report without the need for the user to specify a specific bibliography section of their paper. For papers written in a non-English language Turnitin looks for a beginning and terminating phrase to work out where the bibliography is. Learn more.

   Methods and Materials: Turnitin will exclude these by reading the document and excluding sections that have headers with the words 'method and materials', 'methods', 'method', 'materials', and 'materials and methods'.

   Citations: Turnitin uses machine learning to check every line in a document. If we find something we can tell is an in-line citation, it won't be included in the Similarity Report. The quoted part of the citation can be removed using Exclude Quotes.

   Preprints: A preprint is a version of a document that precedes the formal peer review and publication stage in peer-reviewed journals. A preprint of a document may be available before, and remain available after, publication. As a result, preprints may contain content similar, or identical, to the documents they preceded, and could therefore influence the Similarity Report. We have identified a list of preprints and this option will exclude any found in the Similarity Report. Learn more.

   If your administrator has chosen to exclude preprints at the administrative level then you as a user will not be able to choose whether to exclude them or not. They will automatically be excluded from the Similarity Report and you will be unable to reinclude them.

3. Changes should automatically apply, but select the Done button to confirm and close the side-bar.