Plagiarism Check For Ph.D. Thesis Submission A Must at Osmania University
If you’re at the Osmania University, this is an important information for you. We just heard that students must run their thesis through a plagiarism program called the Turnitin software. Meaning, plagiarism check before submitting your thesis is a must now.
Why did this happen in a first place and how will it proceed?
The Osmania university placed the system to make sure there’s no copying.
They wanted to check the originality of Doctoral research thesis due to the increased number of copied work. So, if the program shows over 25% plagiarism, the students will have to rewrite their submission.
The institution bought the system at Rs 7.61 lakh annual fee and has tagged Assistant Professor AS Chakravarthy as Coordinator of the Anti-Plagiarism system. All faculty members will gain access to the system, as the statement by the university said, including Heads of Departments, Deans, and Directors of various Boards of Studies.
How the plagiarism checker works exactly?
Turnitin system can proceed 400 pages or files of 40 Mb at once. Is extremely meticulous when checking for plagiarism and it will be a great asset to the university.
The
process of using the system goes like this. First, research students submit a copy to the supervisor in charge. After, he or she will scan the copy with the system and ask for an automatically generated report that ends in the hands of the coordinator.If the report presents bellow 25% plagiarism, the coordinator will approve the submission. But if it shows over 25% plagiarism, you’ll have to edit/rewrite the thesis. The student can transform the piece before the last approval by the coordinator.
There’s is information concerning the students associated with using the plagiarism checker. Apparently, they have to pay Rs 500 in order to check their thesis through the system.
Considering the fact that approximately 1,000 theses are submitted per year in the university, the fee will cover the operational costs of the system.
Besides getting the system to work, Osmania will also organize awareness programs and training for students and members of the facility on how to use the system and why it is important that plagiarism is reduced to the lowest level possible.
This statement by the university came only days after Prakash Javadekar, the Union HRD Minister claimed the Centre is taking extreme measures to terminate the rising of plagiarism and reduce it to the lowest level possible in the doctoral research thesis.
How did the students react to this recent statement?
When asked students how they feel about getting their thesis checked for plagiarism, they said that not only students but the work of university members should be checked for plagiarism. Apparently, the students demanded this on Friday while disapproving of the recent action by the faculty administration.
Some say that this action will boost the standard of research, but the benefit should apply to all staff members. Also, they want all the thesis submitted over the years at the university to be scanned for plagiarism in order to avoid inequality.
A student leader who wanted to stay anonymous claimed that some professors help in cracking the plagiarism checker. Allegedly, certain professors agree to write a thesis and charge between 2,5 to 4 lakh for each.
Another way to fool the plagiarism checker is by changing the language. For example, they change English scripts to a different language and use a translation tool to convert it back to English before giving in a thesis.
The student leader also accuses supervisors because of the poor quality of research. Allegedly, supervisors would give students older topics that were already processed.
After receiving multiple complaints from the students, VC Prof Ramachandran claimed that the usage of the plagiarism checker will apply to both students and professors.
Other universities are also expected to adopt these methods soon. Confirmed list of universities are still awaited.
