Understanding the Originality Report

In this article:

• Key terms
• Matches & categories
• Where to access the similarity report
• Similarity report layout
• Exporting the report

Key terms

The following are the key terms to help you navigate Originality reports:

• Indexing: Documents which are indexed are added to the database and can be searched against. Any documents which shouldn't be indexed are marked as confidential material.
• Matches: A match is a sentence that has been found to be semantically similar to a sentence from another source.
• Document score: The proportion of the document that has been found to be similar to other sources, where the higher score the more matches we have found.
• Annotations: These are the on-page highlights of matches, each of which correlates to a card in the Originality panel and has a unique reference.
• Excluded content: This is content that has been excluded from the Originality report, such as titles, tables, references, and bibliography.
• Source document ID: The Originality ID of the document that a match has been found to across the Originality database.

Matches & categories

In the similarity report, matches are categorised into the following types:

• Document: A document from either your own licence, or from a licence which has shared their documents with you through a sharing group. Depending on the sharing group settings, either:
  • The full document can be accessed
  • Only the actual sentence matches are shown
• Private: A document from another Originality licence, not sharing content with you and where the information that can be seen is minimal. Only a document reference is shown.
• Web: Content from a website, where the link to the website is provided.

Match categories

Match categories are used to define how well the text in the document matches to the source.

Where to access the similarity report

The Originality similarity report can be accessed via an integrating system or directly in Originality:

• From the integrating system. Assessors typically open the report from inside the platform where they review submissions – for example, WISEflow's marking tool, Canvas' SpeedGrader, Moodle's grading view, or Digital Eksamen.
• In Originality, the reports can be opened from the Documents page: https://wiseflow-originality.net/me/documents. This requires login access to the Originality platform which is configured by your institution.

Similarity report layout

The similarity report in Originality consists of:

• A header providing navigation and viewing controls – viewing panel options, zoom level, grabbing hand to pan over the document, and a selector tool to quickly navigate the content.
• Left-side panel highlighting information about the document – document score, document ID, exporting options, match summary, actual matches, and excluded content.

Document score

The document score identifies the total similarity score, made up of three types of matches, which are broken down in the Summary tab.

Summary, Matches, and Excluded tabs

• The Summary tab shows the total number of sentences with a match, an overview of the match types with the percentage contribution of document, private, and web matches to the overall score, as well as highlights the top sources – the documents and web pages that account for the most matched content.
• The Matches tab provides a detailed list of matches. Each match can be opened to compare the submission sentence with the source sentence side by side. The matches list can be searched and filtered by:
  • Match source (document, private, web)
  • Match strength
  • A specific source
  • Sentence length range
  
  From an open match, assessors can:
  • View source metadata (match type, source document ID, and identifiers from the originating integrating system where available).
  • Exclude a single match or all matches from the same source. Exclusions adjust the saved document score, but only in the assessor's own browser session. The adjusted score will not be visible to other assessors.
  • Download the source document, where available.
• The Excluded tab lists everything excluded from the score:
  • Automatic exclusions (titles, very short sentences, references, bibliographies).
  • Manual exclusions applied by an assessor.
  • A running count of total exclusions.

Exporting the report

Print or download a PDF of the saved version of the report, including any exclusions applied by an assessor.