Applying to have a paper deleted from Turnitin

Turnitin Paper Deletions. 

It is possible, but normally undesirable, to delete papers which have been uploaded to Turnitin. 

Increasingly, students who know that the work they are submitting does not meet the expectations of academic integrity standards, or that they are engaging in some form of academic misconduct, will ask their tutors to arrange for papers to be deleted in order to try to avoid detection. Examples of this include students uploading material which is not theirs having previously agreed with a 3rd party to whom the work does belong that they will get the paper removed before the original author submits their copy, or students who passed a module asking for their uploaded paper to be removed so that they can then share it with a friend and when the friend uploads the paper a match will not be found. 

Generally, students who engage in this sort of activity understand that suspicions would be raised and so they ‘cover’ for this by saying that they accidentally uploaded the wrong paper, or that they got confused and uploaded it to the wrong Turnitin point. 

Occasionally there may be a very genuine need to delete a paper, for example where a student has included sensitive and identifiable research data in error and where the paper needs to be removed to prevent or stop a data protection or ethical issue arising. 

SHU has now aligned with the majority of UK HEI’s in disabling the “request paper deletion” function in Turnitin and will – again in line with the sector – now scrutinise all deletion requests individually via the Academic Integrity Steering Group. 

Accordingly, there is now a Paper Deletion Application Form to be filled in if there is a serious need to consider deleting a paper. This form comes directly to AISG once completed and submitted. 

Although the form is fairly simple and self-explanatory, the screencast below shows how to complete the form correctly for colleagues who are in any doubt.