Software to catch copycats among PhD hopefuls

CHENNAI: Copycats beware. Madras University is set to make use of an innovative software to identify plagiarised Ph.D theses and blacklist the candidates.The university is planning to procure anti-plagiarism software ‘Turnitin’ worth Rs 15 lakh, G Thiruvasagam, Vice Chancellor of the university, said here on Friday.  Instead of fostering innovation, of late, theses submissions were making plagiarisers out of PhD students,  the Vice Chancellor said, adding that the university receives at least 12 complaints of fake theses every year.The university receives at least 2,000 theses papers every year from students pursuing Ph.Ds, of which usually only 600 are awarded the doctorates, he said. Sometimes, it is observed that students submit plagiarised theses after changing just the title. Though the incidence of plagiarism in the university was not high, examiners have remarked that similar submissions were made in the previous years, the Vice Chancellor explained. Students can refer to other publications only for understanding purposes and cannot merely reproduce them as their ingenious work, VC Thiruvasagam cautioned. The research works undertaken by many Ph.D students have been found wanting in quality, he said.The new software, once installed, would be used to scan and maintain a database of all research submissions henceforth, and would issue an alert if any student replicates any research work existing in the database. The proposal to introduce this software would be taken up for approval during the next syndicate meeting,  that is slated to be held on February 21.If approved, the plagiarism tracker would be in use from March 2012. The software will be used for submissions by Ph.D and D.Sc (Doctor of Science) students, Thiruvasagam said.Speaking at the inauguration of the first international conference on innovation in Contemporary IT at Quaid-e-Millath Government College on Friday, the Vice Chancellor urged research students to utilize scholarship options available across the country, and to patent their published research works.