THE GRADUATE School has acquired an online program to detect plagiarism.
TurnItIn, one of the leading anti-plagiarism softwares in the world, scans theses and dissertations for any trace of plagiarism before they are approved for defense.
The program, which costs P260,000 annually, is one of the key steps being taken by the University in strengthening its research profile.
Professors can also check if a term paper or a simple homework is not original.
“We secured this software not to police the students but to prevent plagiarism,” said Grecebio Jonathan Alejandro, director of the Office of the Graduate Research.
The software detects plagiarism by matching a paper’s contents with 24 million current and archived web pages, more than 300 million archived student papers, and almost 120 million papers from 110,000 periodicals, journals, and books.
This is also one of the Graduate School’s first steps in forming the Ethical Review Committee (ERC) that will ensure that researches adhere to ethical standards.
The ERC will approve, monitor and review researches that involve human subjects, including surveys and interviews.
“[In] programs like Psychology, [researchers] interview people and in medical programs, they extract samples from humans, so they need to secure a permit from the ERB,” Alejandro said.
Alejandro said there were plagiarism cases in the past, but there were no incidents recorded since the software was introduced last September.
“When we acquired the software, the students suddenly became conscious of their actions,” Alejandro said.
Plagiarism has varying penalties in the Graduate School. Substantial plagiarism could result in cancellation of enrollment, re-submission of a new topic, or even a “no grade” mark, depending on the gravity of the act. Complete or total plagiarism would result in outright expulsion.
Before a research is given a permit, it must pass the requirements of the software. The paper should only be 10 percent or less similar to other papers.
The Graduate School is utilizing its subscription by using another feature, like the software PeerMark wherein a class can use the program to review and mark each other’s work.
Other schools that have subscribed to TurnItIn are Ateneo de Manila University, University of the Philippines-Diliman (College of Engineering Library), De La Salle University, De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, Mapua Institute of Technology, Asian Institute of Management, Technological Institute of the Philippines, and nine other high schools.
The anti-plagiarism software is used by around 10,000 educational institutions in 126 countries around the globe. Celton F. Ramirez
Care to share accounts to the students? Sa ibang bansa kasi, teachers and students have their own TurnItIn account. It would be better if the students can actually submit their papers directly to TurnItIn aside from the professors. Its a win-win situation kasi hindi na kailangang ipasa lahat sa professsor yung paper, mas maganda kung ang estudyante mag-submit mismo para malaman kaagad yung originality ng gawa nila.
Kasi kapag deretso sa professor and nakita na, sa ibang bahagi ng papel, ay may mga plagiarized items, madaling mabigyan ng sanction ang estudyante right then and there. Bilang undergrads, di naman maiiwasan na maging careless or maging lax sa citations and attributions. Mas magandang malaman muna ng students kung may plagiarism ba silang nagawa para ma-correct na nila bago pa nila maipasa sa prof yung paper nila