Plagiarism in the institutions of higher studies in Pakistan has increased multifold and become one of the biggest challenges for universities and the Higher Education Commission (HEC), requiring strict response. These views were expressed in a workshop on plagiarism at the University of Health Sciences (UHS) on Tuesday.
The workshop was organized by UHS Quality Enhancement Cell (QEC) and it was facilitated by QEC Deputy Director Dr Allah Rakha.
Dr Allah Rakha said that a large number of cases of plagiarism by the teaching community, especially the PhD scholars, have come to light and been reported in media. He added that HEC had taken several important initiatives to combat plagiarism including the formation of Quality Assurance Division, which in 2007 announced HEC’s ‘Plagiarism Policy’ to discourage copiers and encourage researchers, students and teachers to produce original work.
The objectives of this policy were to apprise students, teachers, researchers and staff about plagiarism, how it could be avoided and introduce ways to discourage plagiarism by regulating and authorizing punitive actions against those found guilty, Dr. Allah Rakha maintained.
He explained that HEC Plagiarism Policy stated that plagiarism is “taking and using the thoughts, writings, and inventions of another person as one’s own. It is the context where one misrepresents ideas, words, computer codes or other creative expression as one’s own and manifests it in a variety of forms. These include verbatim copying, near-verbatim copying and paraphrasing sentences with or without citing the source properly. Ways for detecting plagiarism include the mixed citation styles, lack of references or quotations, unusual formatting, anomalies of diction and anomalies of style”.
Dr Allah Rakha said that last year HEC allowed the plagiarism detection service, Turnitin, to access all public and private sector universities for greater efficiency in implementing the plagiarism policy. He added that UHS would conduct workshops for the faculty and postgraduate medical students to apprise them about plagiarism and how it could be avoided.
