Osmania University to now use Turnitin software to curb PhD plagiarism

HYDERABAD: Days after HRD minister Prakash Javadekar stressed on plagiarism check in research works, Osmania University on Thursday made it mandatory for all PhD theses submitted for evaluation to undergo a plagiarism check.

In a bid to strengthen doctoral research, the University has purchased the licence for the Turnitin software at a cost of Rs 7.61 lakh per year and has appointed Dr AS Chakravarthy, assistant professor, as the coordinator. He will be the admin, while as many as 250 faculty members, including heads of departments, chairpersons of Boards of Studies, deans, etc will be given access to the software, said the university in its statement.

Each time a research scholar submits a soft copy to the supervisor concerned, he is expected to run the software and issue a system-generated report to be forwarded to the Coordinator. If the similarity index is below 25 per cent, the Coordinator will issue a clearance for submission. If the similarity index exceeds 25 per cent, the scholar will be given the option to edit or rewrite portions of the thesis. This modification would be allowed only before final certification by the coordinator. Scholars, however, said they are required to pay user charges of `500 per thesis.

“Given that around 1,000 theses are submitted annually in Osmania, this amount will go a considerable way towards meeting the operational costs of the Software,” read the statement.  

An awareness programme for faculty members and research scholars on the use of the software and on the process of plagiarism would also be conducted, said the varsity.