Turnitin, DrillBit and Ouriginal

How Indian universities ended up with three names

Many scholars are asking us why their rules name one tool when the library is using another. To understand the mix-up you need a little bit of the history.

ShodhShuddhi is INFLIBNET’s national scheme for plagiarism checking. From 1 September 2019 it gave universities Urkund, and Urkund was later renamed Ouriginal. That contract ended on 30 September 2023. In October 2023 DrillBit-Extreme was run on trial, and from 1 November 2023 it took over fully.

Many university rule books are older than 2023 and nobody has updated them, which is why you still see “Urkund” or “Ouriginal” in the text. Anna University’s Centre for Research policy is one such case. It still talks about Urkund logins for supervisors. If your rules name an old tool, ask the library which tool they run now. Also send the library a mail and ask for reply in writing, or for a notice you can print.

Turnitin was never a part of ShodhShuddhi. Scholars in India get it only when their institute pays for a separate licence. At IIT Madras, for example, every thesis goes through Turnitin, and the guide has to sign that they read the full Turnitin report.

DrillBit through ShodhShuddhi

In most of the South Indian state university rules we have read, DrillBit is the tool named. The certificate form of Bharathiar University names DrillBit, with an “Acceptable Maximum Limit” of 10%. Kerala University Library lists DrillBit along with iThenticate for theses. VTU has its own licensed tool, run from Belagavi.

ShodhShuddhi accounts are given to research scholars of universities (PhD, post-doc, JRF, SRF) and to faculty. Colleges are not eligible. UG and PG students also cannot get a ShodhShuddhi account. That is why a Master’s project is mostly checked on the college’s own software.

INFLIBNET’s FAQ gives some details about the account.

• You get five files at the start. If you need more, you can request them.
• Every 20 pages is taken as one upload. A 100-page file will use up five of your uploads.
• A single file can be up to 800 pages or 100 MB.
• It reads 15 Indian languages, for example Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.
• With every upload you also get a separate AI report.
• Your uploads are not added to the database it checks against, so a new draft will not match with the old upload.

One caution here. The INFLIBNET notice dated 31 March 2026 extended the DrillBit service for six more months, and it did not give an end date. Our team opened the ShodhShuddhi notices page again in October 2026. No new extension notice was there. Before you plan your submission around a ShodhShuddhi account, check with the library. Ask whether the account is still working, or whether the university has moved to DrillBit on its own licence.

Turnitin

Most scholars know the Turnitin name from foreign universities, and many think their own university also uses it. In the rules we have read, most state universities in our five cities are not using Turnitin, at least for the official certificate. Where it is used, logins are many times restricted. In some libraries only faculty members get a login, and the scholar has to give the file to the guide for checking.

The Turnitin report open with one overall figure and a list of sources, and each source has its own percentage. Look carefully at the filters. Turnitin allows the person running the report to exclude quotes, the bibliography and matches below a set number of words. When these options are not selected, the figure comes higher than what the UGC 2018 rules intend.

iThenticate is the Turnitin product meant for journals. Many journals check submitted papers on it, so a paper from your thesis can come back from the editor with a similarity note. A few libraries, Kerala University’s for example, give iThenticate for theses also.

Ouriginal (Urkund)

If you registered before late 2023, you will remember Urkund, and seniors in the department still call it by that name. The Urkund report gave the file name, a percentage and the list of sources. Each match was shown side by side with the original text.

Turnitin bought Ouriginal and announced that the service will be discontinued in summer 2026. Stockholm University published this notice when it changed tools. Its own Ouriginal access stopped even before that, in October 2025. An Ouriginal figure in an old report is only history now. If your rules still mention Ouriginal, most probably a different tool is in use today, and you have to find out which one.

Why the same thesis gets three different numbers

Many times a scholar checks a chapter on one tool and gets 7%. Then the library report comes with 16% and the scholar panics. Neither tool is wrong. A few things change the number.

The sources each tool can see. Every tool keeps its own collection of web pages, journals and student papers. A thesis on Shodhganga, or a paper behind a paywall, can be in one tool’s collection and missing in another.

The settings. If the person running it leaves out quotes, the bibliography and small matches, the score can come down a lot, more so in a thesis with a long reference list. Two people using the same tool with different filters will get two different figures.

The file you upload. Uploading the whole thesis, front pages and reference list and appendix included, gives a bigger score than uploading only the chapters. That is why Bharathiar University asks for an e-thesis with chapters only.

What counts as a match. Each tool decides differently how short a run of words it will flag. Suppose you changed only two words in a sentence. One tool may still flag it and another may let it go.

So a 7% from one tool and a 16% from another tool cannot be put side by side. Compare the same tool with the same tool, the one your rules name, and keep the settings your rules allow.

Reading a report, whichever tool made it

Each tool lays out its report differently. Still, every report has the settings used, a list of sources, the location of the matches and one overall figure. Read them in that order.

Start with the settings. There should be a line saying what was excluded. If it is missing, ask. Next see the source list. Note down the five biggest sources and what each source is. Then go chapter wise and see in which chapter the matches are coming. Look at the overall figure only at the end, because without the other three it doesn’t tell you much.

For a DrillBit report, open the AI report also. Some theses pass the similarity check and still get questions on AI content, and a few universities have fixed a figure for that. Osmania’s 2026-27 rules cap AI-generated content at 20%.

When you know what the matches are, read our guide on how to bring a score down honestly for the fixes. If you want someone to go through the report with you, our similarity check service does this remotely, using the PDF your library sends.

Should you run your own pre-check?

A pre-check on your draft is useful when the official check has limits. VTU allows only three submissions in total. Bharathiar’s certificate is valid for 15 days only. If you have some idea of the figure before the official check, you may not have to pay for a second check later.

Be careful about where you upload. Your thesis is not published yet. Use tool given by your university or your guide. Free websites that don’t tell what they do with your file are risky. Some of them keep the uploads, and later your own text can match against itself.

Also, the official figure will mostly be different from your pre-check figure. Use the pre-check to get a list of passages you should look at again, and don’t report that number anywhere.