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Plagiarism policy

Plagiarism Policy of CMH LMC & IOD

Adopted from ‘National University of Medical Sciences Plagiarism Policy’

Introduction

 

National University of Medical Sciences (NUMS) was established on 28 Oct, 2015. It truly believes in originality, integrity, actual recognition of research work and that the career development and financial gains should not be through replication of other researchers work. NUMS plagiarism policy is to ensure that ethical research and academic standards are met in the university and rights of copyrighted holders are empowered. It also gives the university the power to act in cases where contraventions of ethical standards occur. NUMS aimed to guide its faculty and students through this policy about the menace of plagiarism and related punitive.

Plagiarism Policy of HEC will be strictly applied in all the academic concerns of the NUMS. A summary of which is given as under:

Understanding Plagiarism

 

  1. Plagiarism is writing someone else past work with your own name in present dates without proper citation.
  2. Paraphrasing a source and material exactly from library books and write your own name.
  3. Making a mash up of sources of already published work and published with your own name.
  4. Verbatim copying portions of another author's paper or from reports by citing but not clearly differentiating what text has been copied (e.g. not applying quotation marks correctly) and /or not citing the source correctly

Plagiarism manifests itself in many ways which include but are not limited to the mentioned above.

Self-plagiarism

"The re-use of significant, identical, or nearly identical portions of one's own work without acknowledging that one is doing so or without citing the original work’’.

Aim

To apprise students, teachers, researchers and staff about Plagiarism and how it can be avoided. It is also aimed at discouraging Plagiarism by regulating and authorizing punitive actions against those found guilty of the act of Plagiarism.

Applicability

The policy is applicable to enrolled and passed out students, teachers/faculty members, researchers and staff of NUMS who are involved in writing or publishing their work under the NUMS name. Any person listing his CV on the website or any current publication or applying for any benefit on the basis of published or presented work that is plagiarized will be liable to be punished as per prescribed rules.

Responsibility of the Institutions & colleges of NUMS

All institutions and colleges affiliated with NUMS are responsible to inform and ensure that their students, teachers, researchers and staff are aware of the definition, implications, research ethics and resulting punishments in case, after due investigation, they are found guilty of plagiarism. Hence, it is the responsibility of each author, including the coauthors, to ensure that papers submitted for publication should attain the highest ethical standards with respect to plagiarism. In case any complaint is launched in their institute/college they will properly respond to it and submit the allegation report to quality assurance division cell of NUMS which will process as per the rules mentioned in this policy.

Launching Complaint/Reporting

 

A complaint of plagiarism can be launched by email, post, fax, and call to L-QEC if it is noticed by any authority or institute/organization /university with the following details:

  1. Complete Citation of the idea /original paper which was plagiarized to ensure authenticity of the claim.
  2. Citation of the alleged plagiarized paper.
  3. Copies of both papers if possible.
  4. Any other related information which can help resolving the claim.
  5. Name, designation, organization, addresses, email and contact numbers of complainant.

Investigation

For Plagiarism cases within CMH LMC, the existing Ethical Review Committee of CMH LMC & IOD headed by Prof. Dr. Muhammad Ashraf Chaudhry will investigate the allegation. Dr. Gul Shaikh will be a co-opted member for checking plagiarism through Turnitin software.

The committee will determine the extent and authenticity of allegation, will review all the legal aspect of allegation, consult witnesses, provide a chance to authors under allegation to clearly justify their position and equally to the author whose paper is deemed to have been plagiarized to justify the complaint. During the investigation process the members, through any mean will not disclose any author name and paper title until the committee reaches its final decision.

The report will be submitted to the office of Chief Executive who will take punitive actions against the offenders as per the HEC policy.

Penalties for Plagiarism

For professors and researchers, who are required to act as role models for their students, plagiarism is a very serious offence, and is punishable by sanctions ranging from suspension to termination, along with the loss of credibility and integrity.

Students are also expected to do their own, original work on each assignment in each class and their own research work. A student who recycles his or her course/research work from one class/project to another may face an allegation of academic/research dishonesty. An instructor who believes a student has committed an act of plagiarism should take appropriate action, which includes the issuing of a “penalty grade” for academic dishonesty.

When the plagiarism allegation has been launched the ERC will advise the CE to take necessary action depending on the proven offence against the faculty/staff/student. Therefore, the punishments for Plagiarism have been divided into two separate categories, i.e those for 'Teachers, Researchers and Staff' and those for the ‘Students'.

  1. For Teachers, Researchers and Staff

Following disciplinary action(s) against the teacher, researcher and / or staff found guilty of the offence

S#

Category

Characteristic

Action

1

Major Penalty

Where most of the paper (or key results) have been exactly copied from any published work of other people without giving the reference to the original work

a)Dismissal from service

b)Ineligible for employment in Academic/Research organization

c) Notification of 'Black Listing' of the author(s) may be published in the print media

2

Moderate Penalty

where some paragraphs including some key results have been copied without citation,

a)Demotion to next lower grade b)Notification may be published in print media

3

Minor Penalty

When few paragraphs have been copied from an external source without giving reference of that work, then for a period as deemed appropriate by ERC

a)Warning

b) Freezing of all research grants

 c)Promotion/Annual increments of the offender may be stopped

d) Supervision of PhD students/grant award disqualify

 

 

  1. Students:

 Following disciplinary action(s) against the student(s) found guilty of the offence:

S#

Category

Characteristic

Action

1

Thesis

Complete or partial plagiarism in any case

a)Supervisor will not be responsible

b)Offender may be expelled /rusticated

c)Relegated to lower class

d)Failure in subject

e) Degree may be withdrawn

f)Fined as deemed appropriate

g) Written warning

h) debar from scholarship

2

Research project/ synopsis

3

 

Class assignments

4

Publications

 

CMH LMC will apply the same penalties as prescribed by HEC which are available at:

http://www.hec.gov.pk/InsideHEC/Divisions/QALI/QADivision/Pages/Plagiarism.aspx

Additional Actions Required

In addition to the above punishments, the following additional common actions must be taken if the offence of Plagiarism is established:

a)If the plagiarized paper is accessible on the web page its access will be removed. The paper itself will be kept in the database for future research or legal purposes.

b) The author(s) will be asked to write a formal letter of apology to the authors of the Original paper that was plagiarized, including an admission of plagiarism. Should the author(s) refuse to comply then additional punishments as deemed fit may be recommended by the 'Plagiarism Standing Committee'.

c) If the paper is submitted but not published yet, the paper will be rejected by the Editor-in-Chief or the Program Chair without further revisions and without any further plagiarism investigation conducted.

However, Warning may be issued to the author/ co-author.

Co-Authors/Declarations

a. Provided that a co-author has listed a paper in his/her resume and applied for a benefit forthwith, any co-author is deemed to be equally responsible for any plagiarism committed in a published paper presented to or published in a journal or presented at a conference.

b. All Journals in Pakistan must require ALL authors to sign a declaration that the material presented in the creative work is not plagiarized.

Appeal

As the penalties are severe, the affected person(s) will have the right to appeal to for a review of the findings or may submit a mercy petition within 30 days from the date of notification. Such appeals will be processed according to HEC guidelines.

Anti-Plagiarism Measures

 

  1. IT Readiness/ Use of Turnitin before submitting material for publication
  2. Research Ethics awareness
  3. Plagiarism Policy should be clear at the beginning of any research work or academics
  4.  Meetings, Workshops, Conference about citation, proper writing methods and references
  5.  Student Assessment Design and raising awareness strategies

Detection

  1. Search Engines: The purpose of search engines is to locate information for the keyword provided by the user.
  2.  Turnitin (http://www.turnitin.com/): It is product of Iparadigms and is designed as an academic anti-plagiarism service.
  3.  ithenticate (http://www.ithenticate.com): This is another product of Iparadigms It is licensed service, user needs to upload files in Rich Text Format (rtf), Microsoft Word(.doc), Portable Document Format (.pdf), Zip format (.zip) and in plain text format.
  4.  EVE (http://www.canexus.com/eve/): It searches WWW, Directories and Databases for the similar text and generates reports with indicating % of the similarity. Documents in plain text, Microsoft Word and Word perfect format are supported. Reports provide similar text in red color with the source URLs
  5. Copyscape (http://www.copyscape.com): This is free service to check the given webpage for matches on the internet.
  6.  Article Checker (http://www.articlechecker.com): It is a web based free service which provides facility to upload a text file or we have to cut-paste the content into the text box.
  7.  Mydropbox (http://www.mydropbox.com): Toronto (Canada) based company Sciworth Inc has developed this tool and claims that their product is used in more than 30 countries.

CMH LMC & IOD Turnitin Policy

NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF MEDICAL SCIENCES (NUMS) is a strong proponent of academic integrity and intellectual honesty. Plagiarism Policy of HEC is strictly applied in all the academic concerns of the university.  NUMS is availing TURNITIN Services from HEC. The University’s primary focus in using Turnitin is to provide a means whereby students may enhance their knowledge and understanding of plagiarism. The aim is to allow them to develop good academic practice in order to reference material correctly, thereby minimizing the risk of submitting plagiarized work in summative assessments. Turnitin may also be used to assist with plagiarism detection where there is concern that an assignment contains plagiarized material. Staff and students should be aware that Turnitin is not the only method of checking for plagiarism and other means are readily available.

Guidelines

  1. Student /faculty have to submit soft copy for plagiarism check to Dr. Gul Shaikh at the following email address: gul_shaikh@cmhlahore.edu.pk
  2. The originality report will be issued within 5 working days from the day of submission.
  3. Soft copy of originality report will be emailed automatically to the applicant’s email ID within 5 working days.
  4. In case of a higher Similarity Index (more than 19%), the researcher should work towards improving his/her work, in consultation with Subject instructor/ Supervisor.

Format Required for Document.

All Thesis/Dissertation/Research Paper submitted to ORIC must

 

  1. Be in a single MS Word (doc) file (a work separated in multiple files will not be accepted)
  2. Use a citation style (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.) consistently
  3. Not have Footnotes in the soft copy submitted for Turnitin Originality Report (as these usually render higher percentage in Turnitin Similarity index). This can be excluded just from the soft copy, not from the accompanying Hard copy.