UGC Draft regulations for promoting quality research

New Delhi, Sept 5: Draft guidelines were released recently. University Grants Commissions (UGC) has asked all the stake holders to respond on the draft of "Promotion of Academic Integrity and Prevention of Plagiarism in Higher Education Institutions Regulations —2017".

The UGC has said that these guidelines would improve the quality of research in the country and these guidelines would also affect the eligibility for getting a PHD admission.

The main highlights of the draft are

* Every Faculty member, researcher and MPhil/Ph.D. students must have tools to detect the plagiarism content of their scripts.

* Every higher education institution (HEI) should establish the mechanism as prescribed in the regulation to enhance awareness about responsible conduct of research and academic activities, promotion of integrity and deterrence from plagiarism.

* Every student submitting a thesis, dissertation, term papers, reports or any other such documents to the HEI should submit an undertaking indicating that the document has been prepared by him or her and that the document is his/her original work and free of any plagiarism.

* For all other (non-core) cases, plagiarism would be quantified into three levels similarities above 10-40 percent, similarities 40-60 percent and similarities above 60 percent.

* Penalties include the maximum level of cancellation of registration for the course for students, to the maximum of not allowing being a supervisor for a period of three years in the case of faculty.

* Each supervisor should submit a certificate indicating that the work done by the researcher under him/her is plagiarism free, the draft regulation added.

* HEI's shall submit to INFLIBNET soft copies of all MPhil, PhD dissertations and theses carried out in its various departments after the award of degrees for hosting in the digital repository under the 'Shodh Ganga e-repository' programme.