Direct answer
You check your work for plagiarism by running the finished draft through a similarity checker that compares your text against a large database of publications, web pages, and previously submitted student papers, then reading the resulting report match by match. Turnitin's similarity check works this way: it scans your document against its content database and returns a report that highlights every matched passage alongside the source it matched [1]. The number alone is not a verdict — the report is a review tool that tells you which passages need a quotation, a citation, or a rewrite before you submit [1].
How Do You Check Your Work for Plagiarism Before Submitting It?
Start with the draft you would actually hand in, in the format you would hand in — a .docx or .pdf rather than a working notes file, because formatting, headings, and reference lists all affect what a checker sees. Run the complete document, not selected paragraphs: a similarity check on half a paper tells you nothing about the half you left out, and reference lists and appendices are exactly where inflated matches tend to hide. Keep the report you receive; it is your record of what the text looked like at that moment, which matters if you later revise and want to compare.
The single most important habit is to read the similarity index as a starting point rather than a score to beat [2]. Turnitin's own guidance is explicit that a high similarity percentage does not automatically mean plagiarism, and a low one does not certify originality — a paper can sit at 30% because every source is properly quoted and cited, or at 8% because one unacknowledged paragraph was lifted from a source the database indexes thinly [2]. What you are looking for is not a target number but a set of individual matches you can justify or fix.
Work through the matches in order of size, because that is where risk concentrates. For each highlighted passage, ask one question: is this quoted and cited, paraphrased and cited, or neither? Quoted-and-cited matches are correct scholarship and need no change. Paraphrased-and-cited matches are usually fine but worth tightening if the paraphrase tracks the original sentence structure too closely. Neither-quoted-nor-cited matches are the ones to repair, and there are only three honest repairs — add quotation marks and a citation, rewrite the idea fully in your own words and cite it, or cut the passage [2].
Finally, check what the checker cannot see for you. A similarity report does not know your institution's policy on self-plagiarism from a previous assignment, does not detect collusion with a classmate, and does not judge whether your citation style is correct — only whether text matches [1]. Those are things you verify by reading your module handbook and your reference list, not by reading a percentage.
What Does a Plagiarism Report Actually Show You?
A similarity report is built from a match overview: a list of every source your text overlapped with, each with its own percentage contribution and a link into the submitted document at the exact point of overlap [3]. Opening a match shows your text and the source text side by side, so you can see immediately whether the overlap is a two-word phrase, a full sentence, or several paragraphs — a distinction the headline percentage completely flattens [3]. This is why two papers with identical scores can carry very different risk.
Reports also include filters that change the displayed number, most commonly excluding quotes and excluding the bibliography [3]. Understanding these matters because a score you saw on a checker that excluded quotations is not comparable to a score that included them, and a student who compares two reports without checking the filter settings can panic over a difference that is purely cosmetic [3]. If you are comparing reports, compare like with like.
The source list is the part most students under-read. Each entry tells you what kind of source matched — an internet page, a journal article, a publication, or a previously submitted student paper — and that category changes what you should do next [3]. A match to a widely quoted definition is often unavoidable and harmless; a match to another student's essay at your own institution is a serious conversation you want to have with yourself before your tutor has it with you. Treat the source type as the first thing you read, not the last.
What the report deliberately does not do is assign intent. It shows overlap; it does not distinguish between sloppy citation, a misunderstood paraphrase rule, and deliberate copying, because that judgment belongs to a human reader [3]. That is precisely why reading your own report before submission is so useful: you get to make that judgment on your own terms, in private, while there is still time to act on it.
Can You Get a Turnitin Similarity Report Before You Submit?
Not through your institution, in most cases. Turnitin's student-facing help explains that whether a student can self-check a paper depends entirely on how the institution has configured the assignment — many do not allow students to submit to an assignment inbox at all, and only some enable a draft or self-check option [4]. If your university has not switched that on, there is no institutional route to a pre-submission report, and asking your tutor to run one for you is rarely an option on a deadline.
What that means practically is that the first time many students see a similarity report is after the deadline, when it is attached to a graded submission and the number is no longer something they can change [4]. The gap between "I think this is fine" and "I have seen the report" is where most avoidable academic-integrity stress lives. Closing that gap is the whole point of checking your own work.
It is also worth being clear about what a pre-submission check should reproduce. The report a student sees in a self-check is the same report an instructor sees — the same matches, the same source list, the same similarity index — which is why the format and completeness of the document you check matters so much [4]. A check run on an incomplete draft, or one missing its reference list, will not reflect what gets graded.
Independent services exist to fill exactly this gap: a pre-submission check that returns the AI and similarity reports without adding your file to the student paper database, so checking your own draft does not itself create a future match for someone else. That is the difference between previewing a report and contributing to one.
If you want to see the actual report rather than guess at it, turnitin0 runs your draft through a pre-submission check and returns the Turnitin AI detection report and the similarity report together — the same documents your professor sees, typically back in well under fifteen minutes, with your file kept out of the student paper repository.
※ Turnitin0.com - Actual Turnitin AI Report Cover, Score, Flag And Similarity Summary
FAQ
Is a high similarity score automatically plagiarism?
No. Turnitin states directly that a high similarity percentage does not necessarily mean plagiarism, because correctly quoted and cited material still registers as a match [2]. The score is a pointer to passages you should review, not a finding.
What is the difference between similarity and plagiarism?
Similarity is a measurement of text overlap with indexed sources; plagiarism is a judgment about whether that overlap was properly attributed and whether it breaches academic-integrity rules [2]. The report supplies the first; a human — usually your tutor — supplies the second.
Should I exclude quotes and the bibliography when I read my report?
Use both views. The unfiltered score shows everything your text shares with the database, while the filtered view shows overlap that quotations and references do not explain [3]. The filtered view is usually the more useful signal for revision.
Can my university see that I checked my work beforehand?
Not through an institutional check, because most institutions do not let students self-submit to an assignment inbox at all [4]. An independent pre-submission check is a separate service and is not recorded in your course's submission history.
How long does a pre-submission check take?
With turnitin0, most checks finish in five to fifteen minutes, with delivery guaranteed inside thirty minutes even during queue spikes. You receive the AI detection report and the similarity report as two downloadable PDFs in a single order.