It was Presented in the 1st Refresher Course in E-Learning & E-Governance (Interdisciplinary) on July 30, 2018 at UGC-Human Resource Development Centre (HRDC), Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. I was invited as a Resource Person for the training course.

1. Plagiarism and Research Integrity
Dr Anup Kumar Das
Centre for Studies in Science Policy
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9490-7938
E: anup_csp[@]mail.jnu.ac.in
Presented in the 1st Refresher Course in E-Learning & E-
Governance (Interdisciplinary)
on July 30, 2018 at
UGC-Human Resource Development Centre (HRDC),
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

2. UGC’s Code of Professional Ethics, 2018
17.0 Code of Professional Ethics | UGC Regulations, 2018
I. Teachers and their Responsibilities | Teacher (including College Principal, Librarian, & Director
(PE)) should:
• (i) Adhere to a responsible pattern of conduct and demeanor expected of them by the
community;
• (iii) Seek to make professional growth continuous through study and research;
• (iv) Express free and frank opinion by participation at professional meetings, seminars,
conferences etc., towards the contribution of knowledge;
• (vi) Perform their duties in the form of teaching, tutorials, practicals, seminars and research
work, conscientiously and with dedication;
• (vii) Discourage and Not Indulge in Plagiarism and Other Non Ethical Behaviour in Teaching
and Research;
• (ix) Co-operate and assist in carrying out the functions relating to the educational
responsibilities of the college and the university, such as: assisting in appraising applications
for admission, advising and counselling students as well as assisting the conduct of university
and college examinations, including supervision, invigilation and evaluation; and
• (x) Participate in extension, co-curricular and extra-curricular activities, including the
community service.
Source: UGC Regulations on Minimum Qualifications for Appointment of Teachers and Other Academic Staff
in Universities and Colleges and Measures for the Maintenance of Standards in Higher Education, 2018.

3. Three Types of Research Misconduct:
Plagiarism Fabrication, and Falsification
Plagiarism
•Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person's ideas, processes, results, or words without giving
appropriate credit. One form is the appropriation of the ideas and results of others, and publishing
as to make it appear the author had performed all the work under which the data was obtained.
•A subset is citation plagiarism – willful or negligent failure to appropriately credit other or prior
discoverers, so as to give an improper impression of priority.
Fabrication
•Fabrication is making up results and recording or reporting them. This is sometimes referred to as
"drylabbing". A more minor form of fabrication is where references are included to give arguments
the appearance of widespread acceptance, but are actually fake, and/or do not support the
argument.
Falsification
•Falsification is manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes or changing or omitting
data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record.
As defined by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)
Source: Wikipedia

4. Common Forms of Plagiarism

5. Common Forms of Plagiarism
• Submitting someone's work as their own.
• Taking passages from their own previous work without adding
citations.
• Re-writing someone's work without properly citing sources.
• Using quotations, but not citing the source.
• Interweaving various sources together in the work without citing.
• Citing some, but not all passages that should be cited.
• Melding together cited and uncited sections of the piece.
• Providing proper citations, but fails to change the structure and
wording of the borrowed ideas enough.
• Inaccurately citing the source.
• Relying too heavily on other people's work. Fails to bring original
thought into the text.
Source: Wikipedia

6. Self-Plagiarism

8. Where do I start?

10. Highlights of UGC's Draft Legislation on
Plagiarism for Students and Teachers
• Researchers will lose their registration and teachers their jobs, if their works are
found to be plagiarised.
• Graded punishment has been prescribed based on the severity of offences.
For Students
If the plagiarisation is found to be 10-40 per cent, then the researcher has to re-
submit his revised thesis. If 40-60 per cent of the content is plagiarised, the student
will be deprived of submitting the revised thesis for one year. And if the plagiarisation
goes above 60 per cent, the registration of the student will be cancelled permanently.
For Teachers
In case of 10-40 per cent plagiarism, the teacher will have to withdraw the
manuscript. The teacher will be debarred to supervise Masters/PhD or MPhil students
for 2 years, and will be denied to a single annual increment in case of 40-60 per cent
plagiarism. If it's above 60 per cent, the teacher will be suspended or dismissed.
Source: https://www.business-standard.com/article/education/mhrd-allows-universities-to-use-
turnitin-software-to-curb-phd-plagiarism-118062700113_1.html

11. Plagiarism in India
• According to Hindustan Times, in 2016 vice-chancellor
Chandra Krishnamurthy of The Pondicherry University had
to quit her job after a prolonged stand-off with the HRD
ministry, following allegations that she plagiarised large
parts of one of her books. Seven Stanford University
professors wrote to then President APJ Abdul Kalam about
Kumaon University Vice-Chancellor BS Rajput on the issue.
University of Hyderabad Vice-Chancellor Appa Rao Podile
was accused of plagiarizing his thesis from not one, but
three scientific papers.
• There are many other examples cited by Society for
Scientific Values (SSV), New Delhi in its Newsletters.
Source: https://www.business-standard.com/article/education/mhrd-allows-universities-to-use-
turnitin-software-to-curb-phd-plagiarism-118062700113_1.html

12. July 28, 2018 | www.thehindu.com/news/national/turnitin-software-for-all-varsities-
to-check-plagiarism-in-research/article24536291.ece

13. What Is Turnitin
• Turnitin is software that is meant to prevent
the menace of plagiarism and ensure
originality in the content. The official website
of Turnitin says its software is a tool that helps
"educators (and their students) make
informed evaluations.” Turnitin software
checks papers against over 20 billion web
pages, over 220 million student papers and
over 90,000 publications.
Source: https://www.business-standard.com/article/education/mhrd-allows-universities-to-use-
turnitin-software-to-curb-phd-plagiarism-118062700113_1.html

14. How Reliable Is Turnitin?
• US-based Turnitin says that this software does not detect
plagiarism. Instead, it provides you with the 'amount of
similarity' in a work with the original work, and leaves it to
the evaluator to determine plagiarism. Hence, the
“Similarity Index” is not exactly a “plagiarism index”, and
also there will be an automated score that can be “good” or
“bad”. To be precise, the percentage of the “Similarity
Index” of the work detected by Turnitin doesn’t mean it is
certainly plagiarised.
• The company says that even “0% does not necessarily
mean that everything is OK with the student’s paper and
75% does not necessarily mean that the student should
flunk. You have to look at the report and decide: what is
going on here?”
Source: https://www.business-standard.com/article/education/mhrd-allows-universities-to-use-
turnitin-software-to-curb-phd-plagiarism-118062700113_1.html

15. Global Examples of Turnitin Usage
• In September 2017, the Jakarta State University was hit by
a doctoral degree scam. The rector of the university
promoted more candidates than the stipulated limit over a
period of five years (2012-2016). It was later found that
74% of dissertations had similarities with other writings,
and that was detected by Turnitin software.
• US President Donald Trump's wife, Melania Trump, found
herself in an online plagiarism row when her speech at the
Republican National Convention 2016 sounded similar to a
speech by Michelle Obama in 2008. Trump's speech
contained both examples of "cloning" (copying passages
word for word) and "find-and-replace" plagiarism (copying
a passage but changing a few keywords), Turnitin found.
Source: https://www.business-standard.com/article/education/mhrd-allows-universities-to-use-
turnitin-software-to-curb-phd-plagiarism-118062700113_1.html

16. Other Software for Similarity Check
• Grammarly.com
• Urkund.com

17. Grammarly.com

18. How does Grammarly work?
• Grammarly automatically detects grammar, spelling,
punctuation, word choice, and style mistakes in your
writing. It’s easy to use:
• Copy and paste any English text into Grammarly’s Editor, or
install Grammarly’s free browser extension for Chrome,
Safari, Firefox, and Edge. Grammarly will help you write
correctly on nearly every site on the web.
• Grammarly’s algorithms flag potential issues in the text and
suggest context-specific corrections for grammar, spelling,
wordiness, style, punctuation, and even plagiarism.
Grammarly explains the reasoning behind each correction,
so you can make an informed decision about whether, and
how, to correct an issue.
Source: https://www.grammarly.com/faq#toc1

19. Urkund.com
Source: https://www.grammarly.com/faq#toc1

20. Avail Urkund from INFLIBNET Centre
Source: http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/newmoredetails/faq-urkund.html

21. Preventing Idea-Plagiarism
• A Policy Statement on "Dissemination and Evaluation of Research Output
in India" by the Indian National Science Academy (New Delhi). Proc Indian
Natn Sci Acad, June 2018, 84(2), 319-329.
– “Preprint archiving enables immediate self-dissemination and helps
establishing priority and counters idea-plagiarism.”
– “Establishing priority is essential for countering idea-plagiarism. This is an
unethical practice in which established and other researchers, who can
assess the value of out-of-the-box ideas, especially from emerging bylines,
paraphrase and publish them as their own and get regular citations.”
– Disseminating New Ideas through Conference Proceedings: “Not only the
new knowledge fails to be properly disseminated but remains susceptible
to possible plagiarism. Such journals and conferences need to be
positively discouraged.”
– “Dissemination must also ensure ownership of the output, and prevent its
being plagiarized before this ownership is accepted and registered.”
Source: http://insajournal.in/insaojs/index.php/proceedings/article/view/544

22. Institutions Involved in Promoting Research Integrity
• Society for Scientific Values (SSV), New Delhi (est. 1986)
– Website: www.scientificvalues.org
– Motto: Ethics in Scientific Research Development and
Management
– Main objectives:
1. To promote objectivity, integrity and ethical values in pursuit
of scientific research, education and management, and,
2. To discourage the unethical acts in these area.
– SSV Newsletter highlights recent cases of scientific misconducts,
research integrity policies across the country, etc.
• Inter Academy Panel on Ethics in Science
– This panel is constituted jointly by three science academies, namely,
Indian National Science Academy (INSA), Indian Academy of Sciences
(IASc), and National Academy of Sciences India (NASI).

23. Journal Editor Speaks About Research Misconduct
• Vidyanand Nanjundiah, former professor at the IISc & editorial board member of different
scientific journals, speaks about the rise in Research Misconduct and what we should be
doing about it. Excerpt:
• HS: You speak of three forms of misconduct in science-fabrication, falsification and
plagiarism. Do you think all three forms are on the rise?
• VN: “Certainly the perceived extent of misconduct is on the rise. One hears a lot more of
plagiarism than fabrication or falsification, but the latter two are also harder to detect.
There are other sorts of misconduct too, for example those involving conflicts of interest.
They seem to be more common than before, in science as in other areas. A blatant
instance would be to submit a grant application and also serve on the committee that
evaluates it.”
• HS: Could the perception that plagiarism is rising be, at least partially, due to our being
able to detect it better?
• VN: “Yes, it could. The Internet plays two roles here. The huge number of scientific papers
being published and easy online access to others’ work must make it easier for people to
be tempted to copy from others. The enormous amount of material available affords a
reasonable expectation of escaping detection. On the other hand there are increasingly
sophisticated tools available for spotting plagiarism and more cases get found out than
before.”
Source: On Research Misconduct: Hari Sridhar talks to Vidyanand Nanjundiah. Resonance,
April 2018, 499-504. www.ias.ac.in/article/fulltext/reso/023/04/0499-0504.

24. Source: Research Misconduct in Low- and Middle-Income Countries. By Joseph
Ana, Tracey Koehlmoos, Richard Smith, & Lijing L. Yan; PLOS Medicine, 2013, 10(3).

25. Source: Research Misconduct in Low- and Middle-Income Countries. By Joseph
Ana, Tracey Koehlmoos, Richard Smith, & Lijing L. Yan; PLOS Medicine, 2013, 10(3).

26. Source: Research Misconduct in Low- and Middle-Income Countries. By Joseph
Ana, Tracey Koehlmoos, Richard Smith, & Lijing L. Yan; PLOS Medicine, 2013, 10(3).
Thank you for your kind attention.
http://anupkumardas.blogspot.in