Keywords
Plagiarism
QAA
Similarity
Software
TEQSA
UGC regulations
Categories
How to Cite
Abstract
The University Grants Commission (Promotion of Academic Integrity and Prevention of Plagiarism in Higher educational institutions) Regulations was notified in 2018 with the intended goal of promoting academic integrity and preventing plagiarism across higher educational institutions in India. As a decade approaches since its enforcement, the study critically analyses the provisions of the regulations in achieving its objectives. The regulations mostly concentrate on putting in place measures to prevent plagiarism rather than addressing the problem of academic misconduct in a comprehensive manner. It advocates for the use of software that generates a similarity index or score to determine the occurrence of plagiarism, disregarding the various limitations associated with such technologies. The regulations are silent on the application of human judgment despite it being crucial to identifying instances of plagiarism. Moreover, the regulations take a punitive approach by recommending various penalties for different levels of similarity. Drawing on the approaches of quality agencies in other countries, namely the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) of Australia and the UK's Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA), the study highlights that increasingly the preferred approach to address plagiarism and other misconduct is through the promotion of academic integrity among students. It concludes that deterring academic misconduct requires mature and comprehensive strategies. Students, faculty, and institutions must work together to promote a culture of academic integrity.
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