Promotion of academic integrity and prevention of plagiarism in hei ugc regulations 2018 – Implications for researchers

Abstract

UGC released a Notification dated 23rd July, 2018 adopting a set of regulations for promotion of academic integrity and prevention of plagiarism in Higher Educational Institutions. The regulations have been framed with three objectives-to create awareness about responsible conduct of research, thesis, dissertation, promotion of academicintegrity and prevention of misconduct including plagiarism in academic writing among student, faculty, researcher and staff, to establish institutional mechanism through education and training to facilitate responsible conduct of research, thesis, dissertation, promotion of academic integrity and deterrence from plagiarism and to develop systems to detect plagiarism and to set up mechanisms to prevent plagiarism and punish a student, faculty, researcher or staff of HEI committing the act of plagiarism. Thus, the focus is on preventing plagiarism. At the same time, regulation 7 of the said notification mention three exclusions from similarity checks, namely, all quoted work reproduced with all necessary permission and/or attribution, all references, bibliography, table of content, preface and acknowledgements and all generic terms, laws, standard symbols and standards equations. This article highlights the need for the researchers to meticulously take care of these three exclusions so that their work is within a reasonable limit of say 10% of similarity index. The article examines these three exclusions in details so as to create a better understanding about the exclusions. A pilot survey was also carried out to test the awareness amongst the academicians about these exclusions and this article presents the results of the survey.