479-575-HELP (4357) bbhelp@uark.edu

Understanding the Safe Assign originality report is important if you want to correct the citations that you missed in your paper.  Here are a few tips to help you understand how to read the originality report.

When you submit a SafeAssign report, you receive a percentage that reflects the amount of your paper that matches other sources.  This number is an estimate for you and your instructor.  However, keep in mind that this percentage may give you false positives in which your sentence matches another source coincidentally, i.e the statement “This argument is fallacious.” is general and may match other sources even though you are not plagiarizing.  So, it is important to read and understand the Originality Report.

  1.  When reviewing your submission, your paper will appear on the left side of the screen and the assignment details will appear on the right.  In this box you are also given the percentage of your paper that matched other sources, in this case “4% overall match.”  To view the Originality Report, click the down arrow next to SafeAssign in the Assignment Details box on the right side of the page.
    safe-assign-originality-report-arrow
  2. Click the View Originality Report button.
    safe-assign-originality-view-submission
  3. On the right, the title of the paper, the word count, and the percentage that matches other sources is displayed.
    safe-assign-originality-title-percent-and-word-count
  4. Scroll down to Citations.  Under Citations is a numbered list.  This is a list of sources that SafeAssign found that match your sentences.  Each item has a different color highlighter icon to the right of it and corresponds to a sentence in your paper.  In some instances, you can click on the blue source link (see #2 and #3 below),  and it will bring you to the source in a new screen.  You can then review the source.  If the source is another student’s paper (see #1), you will likely not be able to review the source.
    safe-assign-originality-citations
    Note:  Plagiarism is academically dishonest and has serious consequences at the University of Arkansas.  Do not use another student’s paper from a previous semester or even a different class, even if you think you will not be caught!  Professors often use SafeAssign as a store for papers from previous semesters and SafeAssign checks papers against all others in the database, even at different universities.  Even if a student claims that they did not submit the paper through SafeAssign, the instructor may have submitted the paper for the student.
  5. You can also scroll through your paper and find the highlighted sentences, each color and number refers to the list of sources that were on the right (see above).
    safe-assign-origniality-highlighted-sentences
  6. Click on the sentence to view the matching percentage of your sentence as well as the link to the source.
    Note:  Notice that this match is 100%.  Also notice that the sentence is “First day of class:”  This sentence is very general and is likely to match many sources.  However, this does not mean you must cite this source, especially if you did not use it.  But be careful, if you did get this sentence from another source, cite it!
    safe-assign-originality-click-on-highlighted-text
  7. You can also print your report by clicking on the printer icon in the top right of the screen.
    safeassign-orginality-report-print
print