To check plagiarism in Ph.D theses, Osmania University has made it mandatory for all theses to be scrutinised by Turnitin software.
The university has purchased the software at a cost of ₹7.61 lakh per year and has appointed assistant professor A.S. Chakravarthy as coordinator, anti-plagiarism software.
From now on, research scholars would have to submit a soft copy of their thesis to the concerned supervisor, who would run the software and issue a system-generated report to be forwarded to the coordinator. About 250 faculty members, including heads of departments, chairpersons of boards of studies and deans, would be given access to Turnitin.
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If the similarity index is below 25%, the coordinator will issue a clearance for submission. If it exceeds that limit, the scholar would be given the option of rewriting certain portions of his/her thesis. This modification would be allowed only before the final certification by the coordinator.
The scholars would have to pay user charges of ₹500 per thesis and it would be used to meet the operational costs of the software. The Turnitin software, which has been found to be extremely rigorous in checking plagiarism, accepts 400 pages or 40 Mb file at a time.