The Union government has notified the UGC (Promotion of Academic Integrity and Prevention of Plagiarism in Higher Education Institutions) Regulations, 2018 to restrain the practice of plagiarism in PhD theses, In order to improve the quality of education and research in Indian universities. HRMD minister Prakash Javdekar said that doctorate degree will not be awarded to candidates whose dissertations have been found to be ‘Plagiarised’.
As per the UGC Regulations 2018, 'every faculty, researcher and M.Phil/ PhD students should be provided with an account in plagiarism detection tools for checking the content of their scripts. Similarities up to 10% are non-punishable. For similarities within 10%-40%, the students shall have to submit a revised script within 6 months. For similarities above 60%, 'student shall not be given any mark and/or credit for the plagiarized script and his/ her registration for that course to be cancelled. Each guide or supervisor approving the thesis would have to sign an undertaking that the work assessed by them was free from plagiarism otherwise, they will not be allowed to supervise new masters, MPhil, PhD students for two years and will also be denied the right to one annual increment. In case of repeat plagiarism of over 60 percent similarity, the faculty members will be suspended, even dismissed.
Institutes are also required to develop a policy on plagiarism and get it approved by the relevant statutory body of the University.
"All higher education institutes shall submit soft copies of all MPhil, PhD dissertations to Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET) and these are carried out in its various departments after the award of degrees for hosting in the digital repository under the Shodh Ganga e-repository programme," the draft rules say.
The INFLIBNET Centre is an autonomous inter-university centre of the UGC under the ministry of human resource development (MHRD).