Copying crosses the limits in varsity research as software have their limits

Thiruvananthapuram: The row over the PhD dissertation of Kerala State Youth Commission Chairperson Chintha Jerome has once gain cast light on the ungainly trends in university research projects. Experts say there is no effective mechanism in any of the universities in Kerala to detect errors and plagiarism in research theses and copying and plagiarism is widespread in local language theses.

Scrutiny using computer software is employed in the universities but it has its limits. Such examination will detect only exact copying from other sources. The examination using software cannot detect it if the style and use of language of the plagiarized matter are changed or if ideas are copied. There is no suitable software to detect plagiarism in theses involving local languages such as Malayalam and Sanskrit.

According to University Grants Commission (UGC) guidelines, only 10% of the research thesis can be quoted from other sources. But in the universities in Kerala, this limit is generally breached.

Dr Ravi Sankar S, Chief Editor of the Oxford Press Malayalam-English dictionary, and former Professor at the Kasaragod Central University, says that 95% of the sentences in a thesis submitted in a university recently and based on which PhD was awarded on the subject of Malayalam short stories, was copied from other sources. “Under each of those sentences, reference numbers were given to the source of the original from where the copying was done. Still, it was accepted without any objection. This is widespread”, he said.

The process for software checks
The software scrutiny is to be conducted by giving a softcopy of the thesis to the computer section before it is submitted for evaluation. The thesis is to be submitted for evaluation along with a certificate stating that in the scrutiny, the quoted material has been found to be within the permitted limits.

In the case of local languages, the guides themselves certify that the “copying” has not crossed the permissible limits. There is a pre-submission viva voice before the thesis is finalised. In many places, the viva voce that is conducted by experts from outside and teachers of the institution that is doing the research, is just a formality.

Farcical open defence too
The public discussion called “open defence” of the thesis that follows the evaluation is also farcical; hence “grave blunders” remain uncorrected in the theses, based on which PhDs are awarded.

If the guide condones the scrutiny is a mere formality, the thesis will be accepted even if there are plagiarized matter and errors in it. Such expedient researches and theses are a source of humiliation to even those who create “new knowledge” by seeking out relevant subjects and conducting research earnestly. The universities and the UGC are spending lakhs of rupees for each research project.

Among the major errors found in the thesis submitted by Chintha was attributing Changampuzha Krishna Pillai's poem titled ‘Vazhakkula’ to another poet Vyloppilli Sreedhara Menon.