Good Publication Practice to Stop Plagiarism :

Plagiarism in simplest meaning is duplication, fabrication or falsification or manipulation of data. The menace of plagiarism has been a concern amongst the research communities across the globe. In recent times, tendency of rapid publication of the data in the form of article, thesis or book due to technological advancement to access the research database sometimes leads to its unethical usage.

Consequences of Plagiarism:

Plagiarism is a shameful unethical act. This brings about disrespect not only to the person involved in the plagiarism but also to the affiliated institution and the country. Once plagiarism is proved, following may be the consequences-

1. Removal/ recall of the published article/thesis/ book by the editorial board/concerned university/ publisher.

2. There are many instances where persons involved in the act of plagiarism have been demoted /removed from the employed post of the institution.

3. Diminishing / tarnishing the reputation of the institution/ country. The journals may bar the involved authors to publish any future articles.

4. Departmental legal actions, as per law, against the offender.

Be the partner to stop plagiarism by adopting the following code of conduct

LSM Government Postgraduate College recommends following code of conduct to the researchers/ academicians to minimize chances of invariable mistakes and stop plagiarism at the very beginning. To ensure stoppage of unethical practice of plagiarism, following minimum steps may be considered-

1. Research question or academic idea should be novel, not copied from anywhere.

2. To ensure originality of your idea, extensively search the research databases using keywords. Some of the common databases of different subject areas are following- Sciencedirect, Pubmed, Nature.com, Chemical Abstract, Cinahal, Agricola, Geosciences World, GeoRef, SciFinder, Google Scholar, Scopus, Jstor, Ingentaconnect, Duke’s Phytomedicine, Shodhganga, Shodhsindhu, Highwire, Research Gate, MathSciNet, ProQuest, etc.

3. Do not copy any material without proper citation for research. For books, obtain written permission from the copyright holder.

4. Cited articles should also be read by the research guides instead of solely relying on the research scholars.

5. The researchers should, even after taking utmost precautions, use modern day technologies like paid software and freely available software to ensure no plagiarism in their original research or book. There are many free online software to check plagiarism. Some of the examples are-

a. Duplichecker [www.duplichecker.com]

b. Copyleaks [https://copyleaks.com]

c. Plagscan [www.plagscan.com/en]

d. Plagtracker [http://www.plagtracker.com]

6. If you find that your articles/books have been unethically copied by someone, lodge a written complaint to the editorial board or concerned publisher immediately.