Plagiarism by teachers & students will invite punishment: UGC

As per new University Grants Commission (UGC) guidelines, research scholars can lose registration and teachers dismissed for plagiarism. In order to crack down on students and faculty found plagiarizing, UGC has released the Draft UGC (Promotion of Academic Integrity and Prevention of Plagiarism in Higher Education Institutions) Regulations, 2017.

The new policy creates four tiers for addressing plagiarism, which is defined by UGC India as “the practice of taking someone else’s work or idea and passing them as one’s own.” The first tier, for what it calls “similarities up to 10%,” would carry no penalty. There will be a zero tolerance policy in core areas of one’s thesis such as the abstract, observation, conclusions and others, whereas similarities in quoted work and bibliography will be exempted. The second tier, in which 10% to 40% of a document is plagiarized, would require students to submit a revised manuscript and force faculty members to withdraw the plagiarized paper. In cases where 40% to 60% of the document is plagiarized, a student would be suspended for a year and the faculty member would forfeit an annual pay raise and be prohibited from supervising students for 2 years. Students who plagiarize more than 60% of their thesis would be kicked out of the program, while the penalties for faculty members would be extended to a loss of 2 years of pay increases and a 3-year ban on supervising students.

The draft also points out that all institutes should instruct students and staff about proper attribution, seeking permission from authors wherever necessary and acknowledgement of sources compatible with the needs and specificities of disciplines. Institutes will also be required to conduct sensitization seminars and awareness programmes on responsible research, assignments, project work, dissertations to promote academic integrity and ethics in education.