Sharing Groups in Originality

In this article:

• Introduction to sharing groups
• How sharing affects matches
• Managing your sharing group settings

Introduction to sharing groups

A sharing group is a collection of institutions that have agreed to compare submissions against each other's indexed documents through Originality. Sharing groups exist to improve match coverage – particularly for institutions in the same region or academic network – while still respecting each license's autonomy over its own data.

Joining a sharing group is optional. Each institution decides whether to share its indexed documents, and whether to receive matches from another institution's documents. Both directions can be configured independently.

How sharing affects matches

Sharing groups change what an assessor sees in the Matches tab of a report:

• Document match (full access): The source institution shares its content with you. The assessor can view the matching sentence and, depending on the configuration, open the full source document.
• Document match (sentence only): The source institution shares only the matched sentence. The full source document is not accessible.
• Private match: The source institution does not share content with your license. Only a document ID is shown – this is enough to acknowledge that a match exists, but without the source text.

Managing your sharing group settings

Sharing group membership is configured at a license level by UNIwise. To change your membership:

1. Decide which institutions you wish to share with, and whether sharing is one-way or two-way. We invite you to discuss this with the institutions in question. You can also share based on a region, for example: with a country/kingdom, EU, or Globally.
2. Confirm the decision with your institution's data protection officer if required by your local policies.
3. Use the following matrix to specify what institutions or regions you would like to share your Originality documents with and at what sharing level. Include the institution/region names in the cells or specify none/- if you do not wish to share.