iThenticate at Caltech

What is iThenticate?

iThenticate (https://www.ithenticate.com/) is a text similarity checking tool that compares documents (including journal article manuscripts, proposals, research reports, thesis, and dissertations, etc.) against millions of published works, subscription databases, and web pages.

Who can use iThenticate?

Caltech licenses iThenticate for use by Faculty, Post-Docs, and Graduate Students to use as a self-check on manuscript quality before submission. Users are granted access in order to upload and perform text analysis on one's OWN DOCUMENTS ONLY.

How do I access iThenticate?

Eligible users may access iThenticate from the access.caltech site - look for the link under Academic Services.
Important note: Caltech IMSS manages campus access to Ithenticate.

Where can I find more information?

• iThenticate User Guide

Customer Training Videos

• Getting Started
• Creating and Organizing Folders
• Setting Your Preferences
• Uploading Files
• Sharing Results

Understanding Reports

• Report FAQs
• Document Viewer
  • Differences Between Report Modes
  • Understanding Reports in Document Viewer (video)
• Text-Only
  • Differences Between Viewing Modes
  • Understanding Report Views (video)
  • Interpreting Results of Uploaded Documents (video)
• Related Reading
  • Understanding the Similarity Score (Article by Crossref)

Additional Information for Academic Customers

• Folders and Documents
  • Submitting a Document
  • Managing Folders
• Similarity Reports
  • Viewing a Similarity Report
  • Understanding Similarity Reports
  • Similarity Report Settings
  • Excluding Sources from an Similarity Report
  • Setting Preferences
  • Uploading Files
  • Sharing Results
• Crossref's Similarity Check Service

Accepted File Types

Please note that LaTeX is NOT currently accepted.

• Microsoft Word® (DOC and DOCX)
• Word XML
• Plain Text (TXT)
• Adobe PostScript®
• Portable Document Format (PDF)
• HTML
• Corel WordPerfect® (WPD)
• Rich Text Format (RTF)

Accepted File Sizes

• Files must be less than 100Mb
  • Files of larger size may be reduced in size by removal of non-text content.
• The maximum document length is 800 pages.
• Files must contain at least 20 words of text.
• Files must not exceed 2 Mb of raw text.
• Zip files may contain up to 100 Mb or 1000 files.
  • A zip file to be uploaded may not exceed either limit.
  • Zip files should be checked to ensure only usable file formats are included in the upload.
• Files that are password protected, encrypted, hidden, system files, or read only files cannot be uploaded or submitted to iThenticate

System Requirements and Security Settings

Please note that IE is no longer a supported browser as of Aug. 2020.

Services

• Similarity index provides overall percentage of similarity with known sources
• Similarity report provides view of individual sources with similar text
• Filtering features allow removal of sources by word count, percent of similarity, source URL
• Analysis filters limit similarity checking by section of document, word count, percent of similarity

Characteristics

• Allows for collaboration
• Does not store a copy in a database