Teachers and Student Researchers under scrutiny scanner, may lose job and registrations if found guilty of plagiarism
New Delhi, April 3: The University Grants Commission (UGC) is all poised to introduce a new rule on plagiarism. Reportedly, teachers and student researchers found guilty of plagiarised content may lose their jobs and licenses cancelled respectively.
The UGC has approved the UGC (Promotion of Academic Integrity and Prevention of Plagiarism in Higher Education Institutions) regulations 2018 in its meeting held on March 20. The new law prescribes graded punishment for plagiarism.
According to proposed draft, a 10% of plagiarised content may not attract any penalty, however, a new research paper will have to be presented within 6 months for plagiarised content between 10% - 40%.
In case the similarities are between 40% and 60%, students will be debarred from submitting a revised paper for one year. A student’s registration for a programme will be cancelled if the similarities are above 60%.
UGC said all higher educational institutions will have to develop a policy on plagiarism and get it approved by relevant statutory bodies and display it on their websites. In September last year, UGC formed a committee and sought public feedback on a proposed plagiarism policy.
In January 2018, a lecturer in Mumbai wrote to the Maharashtra Governor against Prof Neeraj Hatekar, professor at the Mumbai School of Economics and Public Policy (MSEPP) alleging that Hatekar had plagiarised his PhD thesis by copying content from his wife- Rajani Mathur's MPhil dissertation. The professor also alleged that Hatekar self plagiarised his work by using the same concepts in his paper and his PhD thesis which he submitted in 1993.
UGC Research Plagiarism Draft-
Download Document