Islamabad, With academic plagiarism increasing in Pakistan, a professor who was accused of copying a research paper and subsequently sacked, has launched a website to expose forgeries in the elite Punjab University.
Mian Aftab, a professor of psychology and head of the department at the University in Lahore who was forcibly retired, has launched www.forgeriesinpu.150m.com to expose plagiarists.
Though the varsity allegedly blocked the website, which is still under construction, Aftab has invited people to keep him updated on plagiarism issues.
Not long ago, the University had dismissed five academics for plagiarising a nuclear research paper from the findings of a prestigious Geneva-based scientific institute. The dismissal of the lecturers from the university’s Centre for High Energy Physics shocked academia across Pakistan.
“The purpose of this website is to expose forgeries like plagiarism and tampering of documents made by some of the senior officials of the University,” said a note posted by Aftab on the website.
The website lists the names of senior academics accused of plagiarism. “For the time being we will be giving information regarding malpractices, forgeries (and) corruptions of above mentioned culprits. Later on we will add forgeries and corruptions of other members and associates of this mafia.”
The website, which lists more women than men, attaches newspaper articles on plagiarism by the academics as “proof” of their wrongdoing. It also lists names of publications from where the works were “lifted”.
A professor who passed off her student’s work as her own figures high on the list. “Her entire work is based on students’ research/dissertations, undertaken during their academic years as practical assignments and which are being published by her without acknowledging the students’ efforts and without the permission of the department to bag high research claims,” the note alleged.
But this isn’t the only website that is tracking plagiarism issues in Pakistan. Another website, plagiarisminpakistan.tripod.com whose creator is anonymous, is researching current trends of plagiarism in Pakistan.
“The aims and objectives of this ambitious project are to map out the current trends in intellectual theft and copyright infringement in Pakistan. It is a fact that horizons of these fields and instances of plagiarism permeating them are growing exponentially… The study aspires to gain insight into the nature and extent of this phenomenon, insight that could serve as platform for a more extensive study of the subject undertaken in the future,” a note on the website reads.
Pakistan’s Higher Education Commission is taking measures to stop plagiarism by students and teachers. It has installed plagiarism detectors — an application called “iThenticate” — which can compare sentences and paragraphs. But there are limits to the software. If the text has not been lifted from the internet, it is difficult to “catch the thief”.
Earlier this year, the head of the Centre for High Energy Physics, Fazl-e-Azeem, was sacked along with his colleagues.
The lecturers were accused of plagiarising their PhD theses from six different publications of the institute in Geneva.
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