Will Turnitin Detect My Own Work? Self-Plagiarism Explained

Yes. If an earlier version of your work was submitted to Turnitin and saved in its repository, a later submission will match it, even though you wrote both. Turnitin can't tell who the author of a stored paper was; it just sees matching text.

When your own work matches

• You resubmit to a different assignment after the first was stored.
• You reuse paragraphs from an earlier paper or thesis.
• A friend or a free "Turnitin" site submitted your draft and stored it.
• You published part of it online.

The match appears under Submitted works in the source list.

Is self-plagiarism a problem?

Many institutions and publishers say reusing your own work without permission or citation is self-plagiarism. Ask first, and cite your earlier work if allowed.

Checking without creating a match

Practice submissions to a storing repository can create the very match you're trying to avoid. Our Turnitin checks ($3.50) are never saved to any repository, so your final submission won't match itself.