Understanding Document Score

In this article:

• What the document score represents
• How the score is composed
• How exclusions affect the score
• How to read the document score in context

What the document score represents

The document score is the proportion of the submission that Originality has found to be similar to other sources. A higher score means more sentences in the submission match content from one or more sources.

The score is shown at the top of the Originality report and is broken down in the Summary tab.

How the score is composed

The total document score is the sum of three contributions:

• Matches against documents (from your own licence and sharing groups)
• Matches against private documents (another license that doesn’t share content with you. Only the reference ID is shown)
• Matches against web content

The Summary tab shows the percentage contribution of each category. For example, a submission might have a document score of 28%, made up of 18% document matches, 6% web matches, and 4% private matches.

How exclusions affect the score

When an assessor excludes a match (or all matches from a source), the document score is recalculated, and the saved score is updated for the assessor in question, during their browser session.

Automatic exclusions (titles, short sentences, references, bibliographies) are also reflected in the score — they do not contribute to it.

How to read the document score in context

The document score is a signal, not a verdict. Two submissions with the same score can tell very different stories:

• A 30% score made up largely of correctly cited quotations is materially different from a 30% score made up of unattributed paraphrasing of a single source.
• A low score is not a guarantee of original work – Originality cannot match against material outside its indexed sources.

Assessors should therefore read the Matches tab in conjunction with the score, and apply academic judgement about each match in the context of the assignment.