How to Submit a Paper to iThenticate — Upload Rules, File Types, and the Index Setting

To submit, sign in at iThenticate, go to My Files, select Upload, choose your file (or ZIP), and fill in the title — the only mandatory field. Limits: 200MB total upload, 100MB per file, at least 20 words of text, max 800 pages; ZIPs up to 1GB or 1,000 files. A similarity report usually generates within a few minutes. One extra choice sits on the upload screen: whether to index the file into your institution's repository — that decision determines whether your manuscript can match future submissions.

The official guide states the file requirements up front:

"Your total upload size must not exceed 200MB. Each file must be 100MB or less and must contain at least 20 words of text. The maximum paper length permitted is 800 pages. ZIP files must not exceed 1GB or contain more than 1,000 files."

Three numbers matter for practical planning: the 200MB total (a batch of files counts together), the 100MB single-file ceiling, and the 800-page paper limit — a bound that includes PowerPoint files, because every slide counts as a page.

The official supported list:

"Microsoft Word (DOC and DOCX), Excel (XLS and XLSX), PowerPoint (PPT and PPTX); each slide is counted as a page, PostScript, PDF, HTML, HWP, Rich Text Format (RTF), OpenOffice (ODT), WordPerfect, Plain text (TXT)."

Notably, ZIP uploads are processed selectively:

"When uploading ZIP files, only supported file types will be processed. Files such as images and other unsupported formats will not generate a Similarity Report."

A ZIP full of PDFs and Word files works; a ZIP containing image scans will silently skip the images. And if you upload through the Turnitin Core API (TCA) instead of the website, ZIPs are not accepted at all.

The official steps are short:

"Sign in to iThenticate and select the Launch button. If you have already launched iThenticate, navigate to My Files. Select the Upload button. Alternatively, select the down arrow on the Upload button and select Repository comparison."

After choosing the file:

"If required, amend the file title and enter the author's first name and last name. Only the title field is mandatory."

So the only required metadata is the title — the author fields are optional. If you leave the title empty (in setups that allow it), the filename becomes the document title in your archive. The flow ends with Upload and Submit, and the report shows up in the Report column of your folder — normally within a few minutes.

The upload screen can include one decision with long-term consequences:

"Depending on your account settings, you can choose to add your submitted files to the repositories your account is subscribed to by checking the Index to your account's repository checkbox."

Checking it adds your manuscript to the repository your institution subscribes to — meaning future submissions to that repository can match your paper. Leaving it unchecked generates the report without adding your paper to the comparison pool.

The same official page warns that this choice may not even be yours:

"If you don't see this option at upload, that's because the account administrator has either selected to Index all submissions or Don't index any submissions. Speak to your account administrator for clarification."

Institutions often lock the setting in one direction. That is a policy decision on their side, and the compliant move is to ask your administrator what the institution's setting is — not to hunt for a workaround. Our guide on report retention covers what repository membership means for whether a paper can be found later.

The official timing is short:

"Your Similarity Report may take a few minutes to process after your upload is complete."

Institution guides add their own observation: Caltech's documentation notes documents normally take 5-10 minutes to generate an Originality Report, with very large files taking longer. Either way, the wait is minutes, not the hour-scale that course submissions can sometimes hit.

iThenticate is not where coursework goes: it is the self-check tool for researchers, authors, and scholarly manuscripts, against a database of journals and academic content rather than student papers. The submission is fully self-service — you choose the folder, you enter the title, you decide (where allowed) about indexing. That is why its upload rules look different from a course assignment: the 200MB/100MB caps and the ZIP support exist because the workflow is manuscript-scale, not essay-scale. Our guide comparing Originality, Feedback Studio, and iThenticate covers how the three products relate.

iThenticate submission is a self-service flow with concrete limits: 200MB per upload, 100MB per file, min 20 words, max 800 pages, ZIPs up to 1GB or 1,000 files; supported types cover Word, Excel, PowerPoint (slides count as pages), PDF, and more; the title is mandatory, author names optional; reports generate in minutes. The index checkbox — or your administrator's locked version of it — decides whether your manuscript joins the repository pool. For researchers checking their own work, that setting is the one decision with consequences beyond the report itself.