HYDERABAD: Plagiarism of over 10 per cent in PhD thesis, dissertations, academic and research publications at Osmania University (OU) will invite trouble for students and faculty members as the varsity has adopted University Grants Commission’s new anti-plagiarism regulations.
In July 2018, OU became the first state university in Telangana to introduce anti-plagiarism software. Annually, the university receives 900 thesis for verification. Till date, the university’s permissible similarity percentage stood at 25 per cent. Now, with the university approving the University Grants Commission’s promotion of academic integrity and prevention of plagiarism in higher education institutions regulations, 2018 in the standing committee meeting, similarities of up to only 10 per cent will be permitted.
“Until now, we used to verify each and every document of the submitted research document. But now, we will be randomly verifying parts of the document in order to check the similarity percentage,” said AS Chakravarthy, assistant professor and coordinator of anti-plagiarism activities at OU. Reportedly, almost 200 of 900 PhDs submitted at OU every year have plagiarised content of up to 50 per cent. In some cases, similarity index is as high as 75-90 per cent. With the new regulations having been enforced from November 1, similarity percentage above 60 per cent will cost research scholars their registration as well.
“Many students end up have more plagiarised content in review of literature. The regulation enforced by the university will certainly put an end to these plagiarism activities,” said Prof D Ravinder, principal of OU Arts College, adding that software should also be updated as per the new regulations and exclude those bibliography, generic terms, quoted word as mentioned in UGC norms.
Even faculty members will not be spared from the plagiarism regulations as they too fall under the ambit of academic and research publications. Faculty members having similarity of above 40 per cent will be asked to withdraw manuscript, denied right to annual increments and wont be allowed to supervise new masters, MPhil, PhD students/scholars for two to three years.