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Frequently Asked Questions

Find answers to your most common questions

FAQs on the product

When a document is submitted to Ouriginal, it is compared to sources online, alongside our multiple academic databases, licensed content, and previously submitted documents. The most relevant sources are then singled out and presented in the analysis report, which shows a detailed view of all the matching texts alongside the sources. To learn more, please click here.

Ouriginal has an API that can be integrated into most of the well-known LMS/VLE platforms. Most of our integrations are seamless and can be activated in the ‘options’ section of each course or assignment. This is the responsibility of the teacher/administrator to configure when creating the assignment. 

Ouriginal Metrics currently works for submissions in English, Swedish, German, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Dutch, Italian and Norwegian.

While Ouriginal accepts a wide range of file formats, the ultimate decision on acceptable formats rests with the administrator/institutional user at the school or university. They decide which formats they would like to accept. 

Currently, the system can accept the following formats: .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .sxw, .ppt, .pptx, .pdf, .pdf 2.0, .txt, .rtf, .html, .htm, .wps, .odt, .odp, .ods, .tif, .tiff, .ps, .hwp, .pages (4), and .zip. Note: zip-files are only supported when submitting over email and certain integrations).  

Documents in any other format will be rejected by the system. Instead of a confirmation e-mail, the submitter will receive an error message. Please note that documents submitted to Ouriginal may not contain any protection or encryption. 

A common reason for a file being rejected is the incorrect format of the file. Please ensure your assignment settings are set for the accepted Ouriginal file types or the file types mandated by your administrator.

A file may also be rejected if it contains fewer than 430 characters and/or 20 words.

Additionally, an error message may be displayed if the file is shared directly from Google Drive, Onedrive, etc. Files need to be saved on the desktop prior to being submitted to Ouriginal.

Furthermore, Ouriginal does not recognize pictures, links (copied or shared), videos, scanned documents, or protected files.

Note: when sending in documents via email, please bear in mind that email signatures containing images will be included in the analysis and hence, might generate errors.

Our system accepts pdfs in general, however, some come from legitimate and illegitimate word to pdf converters, where the text extracted from them turn into strange symbols, which are not possible to analyze. These are often rejected by the system. We also cannot accept images converted to a pdf format. 

Our database of content comes from three different sources: The internet, published material and previously submitted student material.

The internet contains billions of pages of material published by universities, colleges, government agencies, reference works and much more. However, a big part of the material available is only accessible through password-protected systems; hence, it cannot be located with the aid of an ordinary search engine. There is also a plethora of search engines, each with its own coverage. Ouriginal can find sources from within these.

Published material can consist of books, reference works, scientific articles, and others. Some material is accessible electronically via specific databases, whilst other material can only be found in printed format. 

It is possible that some students may copy each other’s work. Since student material is generally not published, it cannot be searched online or in published material. Ouriginal is able to compare content from previously submitted student material as well. Worth noting is that we ensure that our customers control what is indexed and what is not. You can even have a database of your own or one that is shared with selected partner institutions.

FAQs on the analysis report

You can see a sample analysis report via this link. Please click here.

Please view the guide below to understand how to read and interpret the analysis report: Guide to the analysis report

You can also watch a video tutorial: Analysis report

It is important to understand that the percentage of text-matches shown at the top of the report is in no way an absolute indication of plagiarism. It is the responsibility of the educator/reviewer to decide whether a match constitutes plagiarism or not.  

Our results are based on matching texts that are the most relevant. This relevancy is calculated by a high degree of match against a primary source. If there isn’t a high degree of match against a primary source, then Ouriginal does not consider it relevant, resulting in a low similarity score. 

In your Ouriginal report window, select the “download arrow”. Two pop-up windows will open – one will give you the option to save as PDF while the other will enable you you save as an HTML file, by right-clicking on the page.
If you see an error, it might most likely be due to pop-up blockers enabled in your browser. Once you disable them, please try the report download again.
If using Safari, please follow this guide to disable pop-ups.

Possible reasons for this message could be: 

  1. The document is stored in the Ouriginal partner section and is listed as inaccessible. Some partner storage agreements only let us search the material but not display it to our users.
  2. The document has been exempted as a viewable source in the Ouriginal archive by the author.
  3. The administrator of the institution where the document resides are restricting access to the document. 
  4. The administrator of your institution has restricted access to the document. 

The most likely reason for this is because the file has probably been exempted.  Exempted documents cannot be downloaded even when they appear as a match within the same school if the setting “Own exempted sources visible” for that school is deactivated. The setting must be activated for exempted documents to show if it’s from the same school.

Ouriginal does not claim to find 100% of the matching sources because it is not possible to find every single match! There are several reasons for this, including – we may not have permission to index the source, the site hosting the article may not have been updated in our index, the server hosting the article may have been down at the time we were trying to access it, an error when downloading the source, and many more.

What we do instead is show the most relevant and significant sources that indicate that plagiarism may have occurred. This makes the tool more effective for the teacher as they can easily see the most relevant matches instead of having to scroll through dozens of unnecessary sources.

FAQs for teachers/administrators

An analysis address is required to start using our software. Each analysis address belongs to an individual teacher and is used to receive a document that has been submitted for analysis. For a teacher to register an analysis address, they will need to contact the Ouriginal administrator of their respective school.  Once the analysis address is set up, it is ready to receive documents to be analyzed.

A teacher can simply submit documents by attaching them to a regular email that is sent directly to the analysis address, or by using our web inbox that can be accessed through our site. 

When the report is finished an email will be sent out to the owner of the analysis address that contains a link to the analysis report of the document. There is also the possibility of setting up a web inbox for viewing all incoming documents. The teachers are invited to create web inboxes when they are first registered in our system. Should a teacher miss that opportunity and find themselves with an invalid link, they can contact our support team and we will resend the web inbox creation link.  

If a student submits multiple drafts of an assignment from the same email address – to the same analysis address – then it will not be used as a source in the analysis report created for the teacher. This function is in place to allow multiple draft submissions and not clog up the analysis report with invalid cases of ‘self-plagiarism’ 

However, if a document is submitted twice, using different email addresses then this will be included in the analysis report. Hence, it’s key to check the analysis report thoroughly. 

If a teacher submits a document from their connected email address to their own analysis address, then this will be analyzed against all other documents currently in our database. This is to ensure teachers can submit all student documents from a specific assignment and can check them against all the submissions. 

Admins with the URSA major role can delete documents in URSA.

Other users cannot delete a document from our system, regardless of their role as a teacher or a student. A document can only be deleted by our support team.

Please note that the support team will only delete documents at the request of the designated Ouriginal administrator. Should you wish to delete a document that has been submitted, we urge you to get in touch with your institution’s Ouriginal administrator and provide them with the document number you wish to delete. 

FAQs for students/users

You can either submit a document for review by sending it as an attachment in an email to the analysis address provided to you by your teacher or school; or you can register for a web inbox and submit the document through the web inbox portal. However, it is not necessary for you to register as a valid analysis address is the only requirement for submitting a document for analysis.

In most cases, the analysis reports are not shared with the students. The teacher can choose to do so, either through enabling student access through the LMS-portal or by simply sharing the analysis report URL with the students. We at Ouriginal cannot share any analysis reports with the you.  

If you submit multiple drafts of an assignment from the same email address – to the same analysis address – then it will not be used as a source in the analysis report created for the teacher. This function is in place to allow multiple draft submissions and not clog up the analysis report with invalid cases of ‘self-plagiarism’. If a document is submitted twice, using different email addresses then it will be included in the analysis report.  

A user cannot delete a document from our system, regardless of their role as a teacher or a student. A document can only be deleted by our support team. Please note that the support team will only delete documents at the request of the designated administrator for Ouriginal. Should you wish to delete a document that has been submitted, we urge you to get in touch with your institution’s Ouriginal administrator and provide them with the document number you wish to delete. 

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