KATHMANDU, June 13: Tribhuvan University (TU), the oldest and biggest university of Nepal, is planning to buy plagiarism detection tools by spending more than US$ 20,000 when such software is available free of cost.
According to TU sources, the university has recently endorsed the policy to regulate plagiarism in Master's Degree, MPhil and PhD dissertations. There have been frequent reports that students are massively involved in plagiarizing the contents in their research papers.
Interestingly, the incumbent TU Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Tirtha Raj Khaniya was also accused of plagiarism while publishing a book on teaching methodology about half a decade ago.
TU plans to buy plagiarism checking tools at exorbitant price
Prof Khaniya said that the university has approved the policy to discourage plagiarism in the academic sector.
“This is an attempt to check irregularities,” he said. “There is a serious trend of copying others' contents and language without giving credit to the authors,” he added.
VC Khaniya further said that if the supervisors were serious, the university would not need any software. “But we need the tools now to stop illegal attempts with the use of modern technology,” he said.
TU, which has estimated the cost for anti-plagiarism technology between US$ 20,000 to US$ 60,000, has been preparing to call a procurement process to purchase the tools soon.
“After consultations with the technicians, we will go for the procurement process,” said VC Khaniya. “However, the price would not be as high as rumored,” he said. "TU should have authentic full version software rather than free version."
The university also formed a panel headed by Prof Bhim Subedi to study on the theft of intellectual property rights and plagiarism. “We will go in line with the recommendations to implement the concept of the policy to work against plagiarism,” said Khaniya.
The software which TU is planning to procure at exorbitant price can be freely downloaded from the Internet.
