"If you steal from one author, it's plagiarism. If you steal from two, it's research". If you think this statement by John Burke is extremely cynical, you're in for a rude shock. It is not too far from the truth in an era when so much information is available on any topic just a click away.
Recently, when an anti-plagiarism software was tested on student dissertations at the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (Cept) the results were not encouraging. When the dissertations of 120 students were subjected to the test, it was found that 5% to 50% of the material had been 'copy-pasted' from different online sources.
The scene was no different at Mudra Institute of Communication, Ahmedabad (MICA) where some of the cases showed
that 60% of the material was plagiarised.
Authorities at the educational institutes are waking up to the problem and devising ways to tackle it. The Cept authorities are in the process of forming a set of rules to deal with plagiarism at the institute. MICA and the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) do not have rules in place but take the help of anti-plagiarism software.
Cept authorities say the rules will not only streamline punishment for the students found plagiarising but also explain to students how to write a dissertation. Director of the institute, Rasu Vakil, told DNA that there is need to come up with the rules as the number of number of thesisdissertations are increasing every year.
"Sometimes, plagiarism is the outcome of lack of understanding in students about how and how much to quote from a source and whether to mention it in there references," he said.
Officiating director at MICA, Prof Arvind Sinha, said that the institute has a norm by which the basic draft of the dissertation is tested using anti-plagiarism software.
"If15% of 'copy-paste' is found, we do not take any action. However, if more than 15% plagiarism is found, students have to work on the dissertations once again and rewrite them," he said.
When the head of department at Gujarat University was asked about checking of dissertation work with software, he said the dissertations go to a panel of experts in India and abroad to check quality. "The experts might be making use of such software but they do not inform us," he added.
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