SafeAssign is a valuable tool for encouraging original writing and proper citation practices within your course. SafeAssign compares your students’ work with previously submitted papers and published works from several databases, including:
- Internet - comprehensive index of billions of documents available publicly on the Internet.
- ProQuest ABI/Inform database with over 1,100 publication titles and about 2.6 million articles from the 1990s to present time, updated weekly.
- Institutional document archives with papers submitted by students at your institution. Each institutional database is stored in the central SafeAssign service, separate from other institution’s databases. Papers are automatically added to this database upon submission, and are only used when checking other assignments from the same institution.
- Global Reference Database with papers voluntarily submitted by students from Blackboard client institutions to help prevent cross-institutional plagiarism. This database is separate from the institutional databases.
Once a paper is submitted in SafeAssign, a report is generated that indicates the percentage of the paper that matches existing sources. This overall score can be an indicator that you need to review the paper more closely.
The SafeAssign report also shows the suspected source for each section of the paper that returns a match, allowing you to easily investigate whether the text was properly attributed.
There are two ways to use SafeAssign: in an assignment where the student makes the submission themself; or through Direct Submit where the instructor uploads the file.
Improving originality report search results
Instructors can increase the likelihood of detecting plagiarism by uploading their course materials to SafeAssign, for instance PowerPoint presentations for lectures; past student submissions; journals etc. Once these documents are uploaded, any future student submissions will be checked against them.
Please see our Direct Submit guidance for how to upload files. Ensure that the Skip Plagiarism checking option is selected so that the files are just added to our institutional database for future checking against.