SafeAssign Interpretation
What is SafeAssign?
SafeAssign is an automated text-matching tool integrated directly within Blackboard. When an assignment is submitted through SafeAssign, the software checks the submission against a vast database of academic documents and highlights matched text strings to verify originality.
SafeAssign compares student submissions against several comprehensive database indexes:
- Institutional Document Archives: Contains all assignments submitted to SafeAssign by students within the University.
- Global Reference Database: Contains documents donated voluntarily by students from institutions worldwide to prevent cross-institutional copying.
- ProQuest News & Journal Database: An extensive repository of millions of peer-reviewed articles, scholarly journals, magazines, and newspaper publications.
- Public Internet Index: Millions of active and archived web pages, online articles, and public web documents.
Understanding SafeAssign Similarity Scores
Upon processing, SafeAssign generates an overall percentage score indicating the proportion of the submitted paper that matches existing database sources. It is vital to understand that the score does not measure plagiarism; it measures text similarity.
Overall Score Risk Category Interpretation & Recommended Action
Each paper will have a score like the one in the example below.
With this particular paper there was no detailed analysis, as it was a short paper and the guidance by Safeassign indicated that
What do the scores mean:
Below 15% Low Risk Typical outcome: Paper contains minor common phrases, standard discipline terminology, or minimal direct quotes.
15% – 40% Medium Risk Needs Review: Paper contains extensive quoted material, close paraphrasing, common template wording, or extensive reference lists.
Over 40% High Risk High Concern: Significant probability of un-original text, excessive verbatim quoting, or heavy reliance on source wording.
Important: There is no official “magic percentage” or automatic pass/fail threshold. A paper with a 10% score can contain blatant uncredited copying, while a 35% score may consist entirely of properly formatted block quotes and standard bibliographic citations. Human academic judgement is always required.
Does 0% matching or close to 0% mean there is no plagiarism?
Not necessarily.
Sometimes SafeAssign does not flag sources. It may be because that source is not included in the databases SafeAssign is working with.
Academic judgment is therefore required.