Awareness and adoption of anti-plagiarism software in India: A case study of ShodhShuddhi

Abstract

Academic writing is essential for researchers to present the research output in a legitimate manner with a precise and clear representation of research data, but few have mastered the art of writing well. Research and researchers are responsible for upholding academic honesty, integrity, and ethics. Needless to say, plagiarism has been around since antiquity, but it has never been as pervasive as it is now. Plagiarism is gradually ingraining itself into our educational system. Pupils are increasingly using the Internet and ICT-based tools to find quick “shortcuts” to the worthwhile but time-consuming task of preparing research papers. Being the third-largest publishing nation, it is the duty of the stakeholders to uphold and work for publication excellence with research ethics and honesty. Since there are so many research articles being published, it is important to understand publishing ethics and anti-plagiarism software in the research domain. If authors are taking ideas from previously published documents or other authors’ works, it is important to ensure acknowledgment and credit in terms of citations, bibliographical references, providing in-text citations, footnotes, and quoting them in any standard citation style. Plagiarism can also be defined as the paraphrasing and text recycling of documents. The challenges in research, which compromise ethics, are also from different stages of research, which include fabrication and falsification of data, AI-based text-generating tools, test recycling, ghostwriting, image plagiarism, audio-to-text-converting tools, etc. A one-stop solution to address all these issues on a single platform is not feasible as it involves multi-level checks and proper policy blended to be implemented at many levels. In this paper, analysis and study examine the national awareness of anti-plagiarism software. The primary objectives of the study are to raise awareness and investigate the current state and status of the use of anti-plagiarism software in Bharat (PDS). The data was collected through the portals and websites of ShodhShuddhi, Shodhganga, and the INFLIBNET Centre. Initiated with 200 universities in the year 2015, about 1086 higher education institutions (HEIs) are provided with PDS under ShodhShuddhi, out of which 894 institutions are active in using software for checking similarities. Three years of usage by active institutions are taken for analysis and study by 1.3 lakh faculty members and research scholars. The increase in usage, even during COVID time, shows that awareness is created in the nation, and the percentage of similarity in first document submission is also coming down gradually in the nation. Character building in academic matters and innovations are key outcomes that can be achieved by addressing plagiarism to strive for a knowledge-based nation.