Page 37 - Academic and Research Book_WEB

The UGC Notification does prescribe specific penalties for plagiarism in paragraph 12. These penalties
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refer to text-plagiarism or cut-and-paste-plagiarism, because it quantifies the level of plagiarism. This
document (it is free to read and in public domain) specifies separately the penalties to be imposed on
students, and on faculty and staff. In each case, it categorizes (text) similarities at levels up to 10 per
cent, up to 40 per cent, up to 60 per cent, and above 60per cent. The penalties become increasingly
stiff for higher levels.

The penalties are stiff, and should serve as exemplary deterrents. We can hope that there will be no
text-plagiarism in research output from Indian HEIs. Eradication of idea-plagiarism needs a more
complicated process because: (i) it cannot be quantified, and for this very reason, (ii) complaints
against it cannot emanate from non-experts, and cannot be decided by non-experts or on social
media.

2. Correction mechanisms for idea-plagiarism

How can idea plagiarism be prevented? How do journals ensure that every published paper gives
credit to ideas that have appeared in earlier papers? This is done by ensuring that relevant earlier
papers are cited appropriately. A very frequently quoted editorial that was published in various
journals of the American Physical Society stated, “The quality of referencing must be a responsibility
primarily of authors, but also of referees, as all should be aware of pertinent previous work. Citations
should be as complete and up to date as possible….” It further stated, “Failure to reference can cross
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the line to plagiarism when a deliberate omission creates the impression that authors of the later
paper conducted the research reported in the omitted reference.” This highlights the importance of
appropriate references (or citations) in ethical publishing. The emphasis on referencing of earlier work
was clearly an effort on ensuring proper credit to potential victims of idea-plagiarism. ‘Registration’,
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or recording date-stamped priority, is one of the five functions of research journals. It is expected
that journals register priority not just by publishing the date on which the manuscript was received,
but also by ensuring that papers published in their journal are referring properly to earlier works,
published in their own journals or elsewhere, in the spirit of ‘giving credit where it is due’. 4

3. Penalties for the perpetrators

In case the failure to cite and give appropriate credit is pointed out (usually by the victim authors)
after publication, and the need to give credit to the complaining victim authors is upheld by expert
referees, the editors need to ensure a suitably worded erratum. These errata basically set the records
straight, and give some satisfaction to the victim whose credit has been appropriated by the authors
of this errant paper. Is that satisfaction justified? Will subsequent papers refer to the original paper
restoring credit of an idea to the actual originators of the idea, or will they refer to the later errant
paper that wrongly appropriated credit by plagiarizing the idea with clever paraphrasing?

This practice of publishing errata does not help enough because the erratum is “less likely to be found
and cited” (Chaddah, 2011). This could be because errata papers that correspond to adding missing
references and are supposed to give credit where it is due are not even separately categorized. The
ineffectiveness of such errata for correcting idea-plagiarism is exemplified by data showing that
publishers do not ensure that the erratum is subsequently cited along with the errant paper even in
the same journal A few journals have recently been following the suggestion, “Such an Erratum has
to serve any purpose towards …commitment to Ethics, then it must become a part of the pdf file of
the original paper”(ibid.). Some journals actually post (all) errata as the first page of the pdf file of

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