To check plagiarism, AICTE tells education institutions to adopt tech tool

BY Preeti Biswas| TNN | Dec 2, 2017

HYDERABAD: Soon, students and academicians may face penal action if found guilty of plagiarism as the All India Council of Technical Education(AICTE) has instructed all technical institutions to install credible anti-plagiarism software for all academic and research and development(R&D) related activities.
As part of its effort to inculcate a zero tolerance approach towards plagiarism, the

 policy and academic planning bureau issued a circular to all the AICTE-approved institutions on Friday urging them to undertake strong measures to curb plagiarism. "To develop a robust innovation ecosystem in technical institutions and to prevent the menace of plagiarism, it is advised that all AICTE approved institutions should create awareness about academic integrity and use credible anti-plagiarism software for all their academic and R&D related activities such as MTech/BTech project reports, PhD thesis and research publications etc in this regard," reads the circular.

Students submitting thesis, dissertation, term papers, reports or any other such documents often submit an undertaking indicating that the document has been prepared by him or her and that the document is his/her original work and free of plagiarism.

Teachers, however, argue that despite signing an undertaking, many students resort to plagiarism due to lack of guidance as well as an attempt to take the easier path. "A majority of students simply copy statements from journals and try to reproduce them. Since there was no notice issued by the AICTE so far insisting on institutions having certain software, plagiarism often went unnoticed, especially at undergraduate level," said Ramakrishna Reddy, president of Telangana Affiliated Engineering Colleges Teachers Association, adding how most colleges don't even have an anti-plagiarism software.

With lack of advanced plagiarism detection options available, college managements claim they have to use open source tools from the web. "Since the AICTE has not asked us to buy any proprietary software, we end up using open source tools which are not very advanced. With the circular coming into effect, we are hopeful that advanced softwarewill be available," said Srini Bupalam, vice-president of All India Federation of Self Financing Technical Institutions.

AICTE has also instructed institutions to conduct workshops for promoting integrity and prevent plagiarism. "Institutes should warn the stakeholders about penal action in case of detection of plagiarism," reads the circular.

Even University Grants Commission has drafted a new policy to curb the menace. As per the draft policy, three types of penalties would be imposed on those found guilty of lifting someone else's work. While in case of 'Level 1and 2' offences, the researchers would get a chance to revise their work, 'Level 3' offence, which is '60% similarities' would result in cancellation of the researcher's registration. Whereas for plagiarism in core areas, there will be 'zero tolerance'.

Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/to-check-plagiarism-aicte-tells-education-institutions-to-adopt-tech-tool/articleshow/61888034.cms