Combating the menace of Plagiarism

A rising issue of concern in the publishing industry is plagiarism which means a piece of writing that has been copied from other source and is presented as their own work. iGroup Infotech recently organized a seminar on its prevention. Excerpts. Plagiarism – what is it? We all know about it but might not accept it. Plagiarism refers to use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one’s own original work. “A survey of students was conducted in which they were asked if they did plagiarism. Almost 40 percent of the surveyed students accepted plagiarism while 60 percent totally denied it,” told Kailash Balani, managing director, iGroup Infotech India Pvt Ltd at the seminar on plagiarism prevention. He said that it has become very easy for people to copy and paste text from other sources and claim it as their own.

Kailash Balani, MD, iGroup Infotech India and Kelvin, GM, iGroup Infotech, SC Sethi, president, FPBAI Singapore adressing the audience.

iGroup Infotech offers softwares that can check on plagiarism. “We have been offering such product for over a decade. A lot of universities and publishers wanted to check the research papers/manuscripts they receive. For universities, we offer ‘Turniton’ software while the ‘iThenticate’ is targeted more at publishers,” added Balani.

Speaking at the occasion, SC Sethi, president of the Federation of Publishers’ & Booksellers’ Association of India (FPBAI) said, “We have been fighting the issue of plagiarism for the last 20 years. Even the copyright manual of the publishers’ federation says that it is a criminal offence. Since I am also a publisher, I receive manuscripts on all subjects; the authors are sometimes leading professors as well.

It is really difficult to check whether it is a genuine manuscript or not. When we used iThenticate, we were surprised to find that almost 70 percent of the matter was pirated.” He wished Balani a great success for this amazing venture.

The audience was also given a brief product demonstration of this amazing software – iThenticate, which is a tool for originality checking and IP protection and doc-to-doc comparison. Urvashi of iGroup Combating the menace of Plagiarism A rising issue of concern in the publishing industry is plagiarism which means a piece of writing that has been copied from other source and is presented as their own work. iGroup Infotech recently organized a seminar on its prevention. Excerpts.

The Aviva Great Wall of Education, a book donation drive, presented by Hindustan Times, for the underprivileged children, received an overwhelming response this year too. The hon’ble minister of state for communications and IT, Govt of India, Sachin Pilot, along with Gaurav Rajput, associate director marketing, Aviva India, Sudeep Mukhiya, resident editor, Hindustan Times and Arindam Kunar, vice-president, DLF Place, Saket presented 1,36,370 books to the representatives of Save the Children India, Khushii and Handpaper, the recycling partner.

Speaking on the occasion, Gaurav Rajput, associate director-marketing, Aviva India, said, ‘‘We have collected more than 1,36,370 books here compared to 1,23,000 books collected last year. It is indeed a great encouragement for us to work towards building a brighter future for the underprivileged children by helping them into education.’’

Infotech said that there are four forms of plagiarism – copying from single/multiple source, paraphrasing, self-plagiarism, and improper use of quotations. “We have a large base of customers in India for our ‘Turniton’ software. Our ‘iThenticate’ software was launched in India in January 2010. This software is used by publishers, corporate and law firms. We have 25 million+ articles, besides we have proprietary content from global publishers using iThenticate as well as have access to aggregators and syndication,” she said.

iThenticate uses the following document types – Word, Word Perfect, Rich text format, HTML, Text, Postscript and PDF. You simply need to login to your account on iThenticate, upload the document, which is split into separate folders of 5,000 words each and within five minutes, you get a report back with the highlighted plagiarized text and the source from which it is taken.

While, KK Saxena, president, Delhi State Booksellers’ & Publishers’ Association (DSBPA) said that all publishers are suffering from the issue of plagiarism and there is a great need to check it. “Generally, it takes substantial time to create a book and if an author is coming up with 3-4 books in a year, the total content may not be original.” He then congratulated Balani for organizing such an interesting conference.

Kelvin, GM, iGroup Infotech, Singapore said that database is equally important. “Digital fingerprinting or digital signatures should go with each article.” He further informed that iThenticate is now being offered in three more languages – Chinese, Thai and Japanese. “Author can give citations but he cannot claim the plagiarized text as his own. In the end, the skill of the editor is very important. It is up to him to decide what can go in the manuscript. iThenticate is a perfect tool to help the editor do an originality check on the document,” he concluded.