iThenticate: Similarity Report

iThenticate is a web-based service that is available to full-time graduate faculty, all doctoral students, and advanced Master’s students (those who have completed 15+ graduate credits in their degree program). Developed by Turnitin, iThenticate allows you to scan your grant proposals, manuscript drafts, professional papers, theses, and dissertations for missed citations and other errors that could be considered plagiarism. This tool protects the integrity of your scholarship and professional reputation.

UNLV researchers use the same technology employed by federal agencies to help evaluate your work, including the Department of Energy (DOE), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the National Institute of Mental Health (iThenticate 2015). iThenticate scans against an extensive database of documents and files drawn from the Internet,  more than 92,000,000 published research articles, 80 global scientific, technical, and medical publishers, more than 1 million abstracts and citations from PubMed, and more than 20,000 scholarly research titles from EBSCOhost and the Gale InfoTrac OneFile.

To learn more, please visit the About iThenticate Plagiarism Detection Software page.

Who Can Use iThenticate through the Graduate College At UNLV

All full-time Graduate Faculty, postdoctoral scholars, and full-time enrolled doctoral and master's students who have completed 15 credits of graduate coursework successfully are provided complimentary accounts by the Graduate College. If you are in one of these groups and do not currently have access, please email grad.systems@unlv.edu to request an account or a password reset. Do not create an account directly on the iThenticate website, as you will be prompted for payment.

The iThenticate Requirement for Theses & Dissertations

All theses and dissertations defended after January 15, 2016, must be submitted to iThenticate for a similarity check prior to submission of the final document to the Graduate College. A copy of the similarity report must be submitted to the student’s advisory committee at the time of the final defense, and it will be taken into account when determining the outcome of the defense. If the student passes their defense, the first page of the summary report shall be attached to the Culminating Experience Results form before submission to the Graduate College in the Grad Rebel Gateway. This page must clearly display the overall similarity percentage in the upper left corner.

Generating a Similarity Report

How iThenticate Works

Step 1: Upload

From your dashboard, select "Submit a document" or "Upload a file.”Direct uploads can be done in standard documents and zip files. Documents can also be dragged and dropped into the application or cut and pasted into a text window. Accepted file formats include Word & Word XML (.doc, .docx), WordPerfect (.wpd), Rich Text Format (.rtf), HTML (.htm, .html), Text (.txt), PostScript (.ps, .eps), and portable document format (.pdf). The software can handle larger file sizes (up to 100MB or 800 pages). For theses and dissertations, we strongly recommend using the portable document format (.pdf) to preserve your document’s formatting and integrity. Note: Large documents may take up to 24 hours to process. You do not need to remain logged in while the system scans your work.

Step 2: Compare

Your document is compared against one of the world's largest comparison databases of research and scholarly content. Utilize the new Folder Management system to organize multiple drafts of your document(s).

  • 100+ billion current and archived web pages.
  • 55,000+ publications, including 92 million scholarly articles, books, and conference proceedings.
  • 70+ million other published works from scientific, technical, and medical (STM) journals, periodicals, magazines, encyclopedias, and abstracts.

Step 3: Report

Review the originality of your work in easy-to-use similarity reports. Once processing is complete, click the percentage box next to the document title to open the report viewer. Click the "text only report" link at the bottom right. In the top-left drop-down menu, select "Summary Report." This view is required for your final submission.

Step 4: Resubmit

Your account can check up to 1,000 documents per year and create files to check and recheck document drafts.

Please note that the Graduate College's version of iThenticate 2.0 does not include the AI writing detection tool. It focuses exclusively on text similarity and traditional plagiarism detection. Access the latest research, policy guidelines, and insights defining the role of AI at UNLV.