This article is written by Diya Nandi, a student of LL.M, Jogesh Chandra Chaudhuri Law College, Calcutta University.
Table of Contents
Introduction
The first step to any kind of research including legal is the collection of materials relevant to the topic of research chosen or allotted to the researcher. However, in legal research, the kind of data used mostly is doctrinal; empirical data is used sparingly compared to its use in scientific, social or other types of research. For purely legal researches, case studies and their analysis generally assume the importance that numerical or empirical data has, in non-legal or socio-legal researches.
In legal research the majority of the work being doctrinal, the sources are mostly theoretical (for eg., academic papers, journals, books, treatises etc.), due to which, the chances of plagiarism, whether conscious or unconscious, increases rapidly. Plagiarism is said to be committed when verbatim or paraphrased copy, of the work of another, is made by an author, without citing the work of the original author.
Plagiarism, therefore, is the first obstacle at the first stage of legal research encountered by a student, who, while collecting and utilizing the theoretical data must be wary of not committing the wrong.
Plagiarism is by nature a civil wrong where the intellectual property of an author is being infringed. India holds an arguably lax view regarding plagiarism, by not recognizing this as a crime like theft and fraud, both of which are words that can be used to describe plagiarism. India’s position is strangely dichotomous regarding the act of plagiarism, given the fact that for copyright violation, which is just a form of plagiarism itself, it provides civil as well as criminal remedies for all cases, while for plagiarism, it merely makes scope for punishment in academic cases strictly and that too, with conventional disciplinary steps.
Indian Laws and Regulations punishing Plagiarism
Indian Copyright Act, 1957 has provided for the protection of ‘literary works’ and the courts have over the course of time clarified that research theses and dissertations by the students, research reports, laboratory notebooks in research, questionnaire collecting statistical information, etc. The punishments apart from the restrictive measure of injunction laid out under the Act for copyright infringement are- damages, fine, imprisonment.
Therefore, a legal researcher must be extremely cautious so that he does not incur liability for copyright infringement under the Act; even though express provision for plagiarism has not been made out in it.
The fair dealing clause as under Section 52 of the Indian Copyright Act, excludes a fair dealing with any work, excepting computer programme, for the purpose of private or personal use, including research :
- criticism or review, of any work;
- reporting of current events and affairs, including reporting a lecture delivered in public.
For the researcher, Fair dealing means the freedom to access and use works of other writers, researchers, etc. as foundation stones for their own individual work but, within prescribed limits of conduct.
While the Act puts the duty of care upon the students or scholars for fair use, the UGC Notification makes the reporting, handling and curbing of plagiarism, the duty[vi] of IAIP, DAIP and the HEI (ie. Institutional Academic Integrity Panel, Departmental Academic Integrity Panel, Higher Educational Institutions, respectively).
The UGC Notification has defined, in its Section 2(l), ‘Plagiarism’ as the practice of taking someone else’s work or idea to pass them as one’s own and made elaborate provisions for curbing the same under subsequent sections. Interestingly, this shows a marked difference from the position under the Indian Copyright Act, which, only provides protection for expression of ideas and not ideas itself. Moreover, copyright issues do not arise unless copyright or exclusive rights of the author lies regarding a certain piece of work and the plagiarism is done by verbatim lifting of the copyrighted material. As a result, the UGC Regulations form a stricter and more apt framework for the protecting academic integrity against practices of plagiarism than the Act. However, it has excluded certain things from being considered plagiarised.
Under Sec. 7 of the said Regulations, the similarity checks for plagiarism excludes
- quoted work reproduced with all necessary permission; attribution.
- references, bibliography, table of content, preface and acknowledgements.
- generic terms, laws, standard symbols and standards equations.
The student, faculty, researcher and staff have also been given the responsibility of bringing original ideas in their research works, devoid of common knowledge or coincidental terms, up to fourteen consecutive words.
Sec. 12. makes the following individuals liable to be penalised in the cases of plagiarism
- students pursuing Masters and Research studies
- researcher, faculty & staff of the HEI only after–
- academic misconduct of individual established without doubt
- avenues of appeal exhausted
- individual provided sufficient opportunity to defend self, in a fair, transparent manner.
Penalties for plagiarism has even been graded upon the severity of the level of plagiarism
|
CONTEXT Plagiarism in submission of thesis and dissertations 
|
Level 0 [Similarit-ies upto 10%]
no penalty. |
Level 1 [Similarities above 10%to 40%] The student shall be asked to submit a revised script within time stipulated(not exceeding 6months). |
Level 2 [Similarities above 40% to 60%] The student shall be barred from submitting a revised script for a whole year. |
Level 3 [Similarities above 60%] Registration of the student for the programme shall be cancelled. |
|
Plagiarism in academics and research
publication |
no penalty. |
The person shall be asked to withdraw manuscript. |
|
|
|
CONTEXT |
PUNISHMENTS |
|
Repeated plagiarisms
|
|
|
CONTEXT Plagiarism proved after degree or credit has been awarded
|
PUNISHMENT
|
Notable Instances of plagiarism in India
Plenty of cases serve as instances of plagiarism, where the wrong has been committed by the most unexpected parties –
- After a prolonged stand-off with the HRD ministry regarding allegations of her plagiarising large parts of a book mentioned in her resume, the Pondicherry University VC, Chandra Krishnamurthy ultimately resigned.
- Several Stanford University professors wrote to the then President APJ Abdul Kalam, about B.S Rajput, the VC, Kumaon University, who committed serial plagiarism.
- Instances Of Plagiarism In articles Of ‘India Foundation –
“Quadrilateral Partnership for Free and Open Indo-Pacific”; “Xi Jinping: President for Life”; ‘Security outlook of Indian Ocean and India’s Geostrategic interest in the IOR’; ‘India & BRICS: Working together to usher in the second “Golden Decade” of BRICS cooperation’.
- The Delhi High Court was accused of plagiarism of thirty-three paragraphs of its judgment in Roche V. Cipla case from a law review article written by Swetashree Majumdar and Eashan Ghosh in the Queen Mary Journal of Intellectual Property. The Delhi High Court acknowledged the truth of the same via an order and apologised to the authors.
It can be safely concluded that no matter the rank or power of the plagiarizer, once caught, plagiarism has its consequences.
Conclusiom
Therefore, for a student researcher, the concrete guidelines with respect to plagiarism, are–
- Check whether the quoted/used work is copyrighted material;
- Before using extensive portions of copyrighted work, obtain specific permission of copyright-holder (eg. licence for using any copyrighted sound-recording in the research work);
- Avoid stealing the central idea of your paper from the core of another’s work;
- Avoid copy-pasting beyond 10% ;
- Avoid using 15 consecutive words;
- Cite, refer, mention the sources, attribution, ie. give credit where credit is due;
- Self-plagiarism is legal, but bringing new ideas to the table will help you earn a seat at the table sooner than recycling old ideas.
Plagiarism checker apps such as ‘Turnitin’, work by keyword-analysis content-matches, probability of phrases, document ‘fingerprint’ analysis. However, that is not full-proof; as the website of Turnitin itself clarifies that no software can identify plagiarism or the intent of the same. However, that does not mean that it is safe to commit paraphrasal-plagiarisms in a paper. Every prestigious article competition; journal submission and the like, has other ways to weed out plagiarized content, such as peer reviews, literature reviews, etc. done by qualified professionals and experts in the field who already have a working knowledge of all or most of the authoritative texts that one might plagiarize from.
The UGC Notification restricts the liability for plagiarism to a handful of people, namely, the students, faculty, researchers; even when the act of plagiarism is not restricted to only academicians.
Various international covenants have recognized the rights of authors regarding their works from the perspective of Human Rights and the national laws and regulations. So, notwithstanding the lax local laws and bye-laws, international law considers the act of plagiarism as an actual violation of human rights.
Moreover, plagiarized works can ruin the credibility of a researcher and even destroy his entire career when caught; as can be seen from the aforementioned examples.
In addition to the moral and ethical reasons, these are, therefore, the practical reasons why the budding legal researchers must steer clear of committing plagiarism. Understanding the practicalities, parameters and penalties regarding plagiarism, immensely helps the researcher, in consciously side-stepping this easily-avoidable yet most common pitfall and submit papers of publishable quality.
References
Plagiarism Tutorial: 1. What is Plagiarism?
Available at: https://columbiacollege-ca.libguides.com/plagiarism (last visited on July 21,2020).
T.C James, “ Copyright Law in India and the academic Community” 9 Journal of Intellectual Property Rights 213 (2004)
Fateh Singh Mehta v. O.P Singhal AIR 1990 Raj. 8
Interfirm Comparison (Australia) PtyLtd v. Law Society of New South Wales (1977) RPC 149
Sections 55, 57, 63, 63A,63B, 64etc.of the Indian Copyright Act, 1957
Sections 4,5,6,9,10,11 etc. of the University Grants Commission Notification University Grants Commission (Promotion Of Academic Integrity And Prevention Of Plagiarism In Higher Educational Institutions) Regulations, 2018
Sec. 14, Indian Copyright Act, 1957 (Act No. 14 Of 1957)
Neelam Pandey, “In a first, law to check academic plagiarism soon” Hindustan Times, Jun 26, 2016 12:38 IST, Available at: https://www.hindustantimes.com/delhi-newspaper/in-a-first-law-to-check-academic-plagiarism-soon/story-u0CHAT2pZT8rWU5KY66ymK.html (last visited on 23 July, 2020)
[xi] India Today Web Desk, New Delhi, “Plagiarism in research papers will be punished: AICTE Chairman reminds us about recent UGC rules”, India Today, May 3, 2018 13:38 IST , Available at: https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/news/story/plagiarim-in-research-papers-will-be-punished-ugc-rules-html-1225507-2018-05-03#:~:text=Previous%20plagiarism%20charges%20which%20got%20the%20limelight%20in%20India&text=The%20most%20popular%20case%20of,Kalam%2C%20as%20reported%20by%20HT. ( last visited on 23 July,2020)
Shocking Instances Of Plagiarism In The Publications Of Right-Wing Think Tank, India Foundation, Available at: https://thelogicalindian.com/story-feed/awareness/plagiarism-india-foundation/?infinitescroll=1. ( last visited on 23 July,2020)
The Detection is in the Details, Available at : https://www.turnitin.com/blog/the-detection-is-in-the-details (last visited on 22July,2020)
Article 13, TRIPS Agreement:- Members shall confine limitations or exceptions to exclusive rights to certain special cases which do not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and do not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the right holder.
Article 27(2), Universal Declaration Human Rights :- Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material human interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.
Art. 15(1)(c), International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights :- The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone:
To benefit from the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.
LawSikho has created a telegram group for exchanging legal knowledge, referrals and various opportunities. You can click on this link and join:
