HYDERABAD: Not just students, work of faculty members should also be run through the plagiarism checker, students at Osmania University demanded on Friday, while criticising the recent move by the university administration. The OU administration has made plagiarism check for doctoral research mandatory.
“A plagiarism check for all doctoral research work is a welcome move and will improve the standard of research. However, the benefit should be extended to all staff members. In fact, all theses that have been submitted over the years in OU should be checked for plagiarism,” said Krishank Manne, a PhD scholar from OU.
A student leader on the condition of anonymity alleged that some professors help in bypassing the plagiarism checker. “Professors are willing to write thesis for `2.5 to `4 lakh per thesis. They also fool the plagiarism checker by changing the English script to another language and then translating it to back to English before submission,” said the student.
The student leader also alleged that the quality of research was poor in OU because supervisors select topics which have already been written about. VC Prof Ramachandram mentioned that he has received a few complaints regarding malpractices by faculty members and said that Turnitin software will be used to screen the work of both students and professors.
Degraded value system to blame: OU VC
Prof S Ramchandram, vice-chancellor of OU, feels that such plagiarism checks are required now because “value system has degraded.” The V-C said, “A software to detect cheating has now become essential because increasingly large number of students are resorting to copying despite supervision by their supervisor. We need to ensure that any content they submit is original.” Last year, the AICTE also made it mandatory for all universities to run plagiarism checks on their papers.