Editorial Note: Plagiarism and Academic Honesty

Abstract

Humans have a long history of civilization since the first step was taken by the ancient human in the direction of conceptualizing a civilized society, the quest for knowledge has been a never-ending phenomenon which has become more visible in the present era. However, this quest for knowledge and the urge & need to create new knowledge also involve some malpractices one of which is termed as “plagiarism” (also known as “Academic Integrity” in the scholarly world). Plagiarism occurs when the works of an individual are used by someone else without acknowledging or giving credit to the original content creator or author. It’s like claiming the work of “B” by “A” without citing A. This amounts to academic theft and involves stealing of ideas/thought and piece of work. Whether intentional or unintentional, the implications of plagiarism are the same and therefore, awareness regarding its concept and avoidance are essential. With the proliferation of the Internet and the online resources (also known as e-resources), the gravity of the problem has increased manifold. Off-late plagiarism has become or legal issue than an ethical issue with regulatory bodies governing HEIs have enforced various Rules & Regulations having options for the punitive measure. In India, the UGC has implemented the “Promotion of Academic Integrity and Prevention of Plagiarism in Higher Educational Institutions Regulations, Published on 07-08-2018 for monitoring & controlling the epidemic of plagiarism in HEIs of India. INFLIBNET (a body of UGC) is also providing cloud-based web-application known as “URKUND” free of cost to all the faculty members of Indian Universities. Many universities are also subscribing to the paid s/w like iThenticate or Turnitin for detecting similarity in the theses & dissertations submitted by the scholars. However, the measures and methods taken so far are neither adequate nor comprehensive to curb the menace of plagiarism. The presentation will attempt to highlight the myths, misplaced priorities and corrective measures to be incorporated in the existing framework to eradicate the academic evil that is overshadowing the merit of original & creative works. The presentation has been designed keeping in view the emerging role of practising library professionals to address the issue of plagiarism suitably. One more very important fact remains to be understood is that checking plagiarism is beyond the scope of the wrongly known as plagiarism detection software. Their job is limited up to matching the submitted content to the pre-defined sources including scholarly content comprising of journals and e-books and the sources available on the world wide web. The task of deciding the extent of plagiarism out of the “matched” or “similar” content is completely intellectual and it has to be accomplished by those who have the understanding and knowledge of the subject domain of the document in question. So, it is misleading to say that software detects plagiarism while it’s true that they detect only the extent of similarity or significance in percentages.

Keywords: N.A.

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