Frequently Asked Questions on the MPG iThenticate service

These FAQs focus on aspects regarding the usage of iThenticate by users of the Max Planck Society. Further information about the iThenticate service can be found in the FAQs of the service provider.

Questions

Answers

Q: Who is allowed to register for an iThenticate account via this website?

A: Access to the iThenticate service has been licensed for staff members, guest scientists, Ph. D. students and postdocs affiliated to a Max-Planck institution. The registration requires the user to be located in a MPG IP range and to provide a valid MPG eMail address.

Q: Which documents am I allowed to submit to iThenticate and what license do I grant to the service provider?

A: As stated in the usage terms, you are required to obtain the consent of all authors of the document prior to using iThenticate. For your convenience, the data protection officer of the Max Planck Society provided a template for requesting the permission to submit a paper to iThenticate from the author. This is available in German (docx|txt) and English (docx|txt).

In addition, please consider that iThenticate is hosted by a third party und uploading documents to any external online service (like iThenticate, Google, Skype and many more) requires you to grant a license to the service provider.

In case of iThenticate, you will grant Turnitin a "non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, world-wide, irrevocable license to archive and otherwise use in connection with its Services any paper You submit to the Site". However you retain full ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in the uploaded content and the provider pledges to "protect any personal information you provide", see iThenticate’s Privacy Center.

In case of any further question, please feel free to write to the provider at legal@turnitin.com.

Q: Can I compare uploaded documents with each other?

A: Yes, this is possible since March 2020. The newly introduced feature "Doc-to-doc comparison" allows you to upload one primary document to compare against a maximum of five comparison documents. Any documents that you upload to doc-to-doc comparison will not be indexed and will not be searchable against any future submissions.

You can access the feature through the folders page. Select the "Doc-to-Doc Comparison" link from the "Submit a document" menu. Further details are available on ithenticate’s help pages.

Q: How to resubmit a document?

A: Currently, users from the MPG can resubmit revised documents only once. To upload a new version of your document, please select the blue "Arrow Up" button from the "Actions" column. If further checks are required, simply upload the revised manuscript as a new document.

Q: How to save/print a copy of the report generated by the software?

A: All reports are saved automatically by iThenticate. You can download or print them at any time. On an opened report, you will find the option to display the "Text-Only Report" (see button on the right side). There you will find a download and a print button.

Q: Whom to contact in case of further questions?

A: If you face any difficulties using the iThenticate web interface, we recommend to log in to the system and click on the Help button near the top of any page to contact the service provider.

To get in touch with the MPDL iThenticate team, please fill out the contact form.