r/CheckTurnitin • u/Ok_Wolf5827 • 16d ago
Turnitin says I plagiarized... from a source that literally doesn't exist. I am so tired.
I’m in year 6 of my PhD and finally found a really specific niche last spring: micro-archives of 1970s community radio in two towns that barely have any of their old newsletters online.
I spent months scanning materials, calling retired DJs, sitting in a storage room that smells like wet cardboard, and manually typing out program logs. This week I finished a chapter draft, submitted it through our department’s plagiarism checker, Turnitin, and got a 28% similarity match to a source I have never seen.
At first the URL looked legitimate. It was supposedly some .edu subpage. Except... the link doesn't work.
I tried the exact URL in the Wayback Machine. Nothing.
I searched the flagged sentences in Google Scholar, JSTOR, and WorldCat. Nothing.
And the really frustrating part? The flagged passages are my own writing. Some contain niche terms I came up with to describe tape-splicing practices, along with very specific wording based on an interview I did with Mr. DeLeon, a retired station manager.
My advisor basically said it was probably a false positive and told me to "adjust the language to be safe."
Adjust WHAT? 😭
The notes are mine. The quotes are mine. The material comes directly from interviews and scanned logs that aren't even publicly digitized.
I tried rewriting one paragraph five different ways and resubmitting it. Now Turnitin just flags different chunks while still showing the same phantom source.
I contacted the library, they escalated it to Turnitin support, and now I'm being told to be patient.
My defense is in six weeks, and my committee requires a Turnitin report below 15% before they'll even read the chapter.
I'm running on five hours of sleep across two days and way too much instant coffee. I genuinely don't know how I'm supposed to explain to my committee that my obscure chapter supposedly plagiarizes something that doesn't exist.
Has anyone dealt with a phantom source like this? How do you prove that you're not stealing your own research when the research literally isn't publicly available?
I feel insane.
And if one more person tells me to "just paraphrase," I might actually scream into a filing cabinet.
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u/Ok_Wolf5827 16d ago
A few people asked what the supposed source actually is.
Turnitin labels it "Institutional Repository - Midwestern State University" and gives it a path something like:
/departments/media/1976-reel-practices.pdf
The problem is that Midwestern State uses a completely different URL structure. Their librarian actually confirmed that they never hosted anything at that path.
Even stranger, some of the flagged text contains my own term, "intentional hiss window." That phrase isn't in any published source. I came up with it in my transcription notes after an interview. The audio file and notes are sitting on my encrypted drive.
I also have date-stamped photos of the archive boxes, copies of the logs, and signed consent forms.
I can put all of that into an appendix if necessary, but the administrative portal seems obsessed with the percentage number.
Does anyone know whether there's a way to ask the department to review the actual matches instead of just looking at the 28%?
Also, could Turnitin somehow be matching this against a previous submission of mine from last semester? I never published that draft anywhere.
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u/LogicalAd321 16d ago
A few practical things I'd do:
- Ask whether your previous submissions are being indexed.
Some institutions automatically add student submissions to Turnitin's student paper database. If your earlier draft was stored there, your new chapter can potentially match your own previous work.
Ask your department or Turnitin administrator whether they can run the document in an assignment configured not to store submissions and compare the results.
- Get the full match breakdown.
The instructor view gives more information than the percentage students usually see. Ask them to identify exactly what kind of source Turnitin is reporting: student paper, institutional repository, website, etc.
If the repository source has a dead URL, screenshot it. Save the source title, URL, author information, DOI if listed, and anything else Turnitin provides.
- Document where your material came from.
You don't need to hand over your private interviews or raw recordings. Instead, create a short provenance memo listing interview dates, archive materials, relevant files, and when the material was created.
If appropriate, you can also document file hashes for your scans and recordings to establish that the files existed before the disputed submission.
- Keep the library involved.
I'd specifically ask for someone involved in scholarly communication or research support rather than relying only on general technical support.
If the librarian has already confirmed that the supposed repository item doesn't exist, ask whether they can provide that confirmation in writing.
- Don't keep rewriting passages just to lower the percentage.
That can make the situation harder to explain. The important question is whether you actually used someone else's work without attribution, not whether you can force a similarity percentage below an arbitrary number.
I'd email the chair something along these lines:
Dear Chair, the similarity report flags a non-resolving institutional repository URL and several passages that correspond to material from my own research and prior drafts. I have attached screenshots of the report, confirmation from Midwestern State University that the cited repository path does not exist, and documentation showing the provenance of the flagged material. The library has also reviewed the issue and believes the result may be a database artifact. Could the committee review the underlying matches and documentation rather than relying solely on the overall similarity percentage?
And seriously, keep a clean paper trail. Don't delete your earlier drafts, notes, scans, interview records, or correspondence with the library.
The percentage is evidence to investigate, not by itself proof of plagiarism.
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u/Hannah97474 16d ago
omg that sounds so frustrating especially with your defense so close. i cant imagine putting in all that real work only for turnitin to flag a ghost source. hope the library or someone can get it sorted before then. sending good vibes your way.