Plagiarism and Deterrence Tools: A Fight against Academic Dishonesty

Abstract

In the twenty first century, the education system is in transaction phase. The contents are taking shape into  digital form even reading, study material/s and class rooms are marching towards digitization. Thereby,  academic institutions and study contents are easy to access and copying also. Consequently, the plagiarism  incidents occur more in the digital world. The same incidents were happened in non-digital era also but these  were not traceable usually, unless/ until any one may file the complaint against concerned. Therefore, with the  availability of digital contents, the scholars/students are being trapped under plagiarism act easily and  frequently. Presently, among Indian academic activities, the plagiarism is a well known and overwhelming issue  and stood like a giant in front of the stakeholders as most of the institutions/universities are not having the  proper guidelines and policy for the same so far. Even, our education system is bearing the consequences of  academic misconduct. Thereon, students and research scholars are in a dilemma that how to tackle with the same  as plagiarism is not limited up to undergraduates and undergraduate courses. To overcome from this dilemma  and to save the students/ scholars from accusations of plagiarism, the University Grants Commission (UGC)  has taken the initiative to frame the policy on plagiarism and after framing the same, it is available on the  website of the University Grants Commission (UGC). Any academic institution can adopt the same or with  little-bit changes according to the requirement of their academic pursuit. Though, in policy the commission has  not been recommended the name of any deterrence tool; however, as a deterrence tool as depicted by many  studies (Melvin, 2002), Turnitin is a very prominent and effective detection tool. But its services are available  on payment basis. It compares the data of uploaded documents with the data which are available online even paid  vendors’ data also and flagging the suspected material, if any. Turnitin or any other plagiarism detection tools  detect only the similarity of text in the uploaded document/s instead of plagiarism. However, similarity does not  lead the substantial form of plagiarism. After analyzing the contents, the originality report may be uploaded. The  present paper will try to explain the concept of plagiarism, deterrence tools and working of Turnitin and its role to combat with plagiarism.