“Integrity is the pillar of excellence in academia and research,” echoed eminent leaders from higher education and research institutions at the Bengaluru edition of ‘Academic and Research Integrity Conclave 2018’ hosted on May 4.
Deliberating on preventive steps to stop plagiarism and leverage integrity for excellence in higher education, Dr Anil Joseph Pinto, registrar, Christ University, said, “The responsibility of mitigating plagiarism lies with the institution itself. It’s the system where the problem resides. At kindergarten level and in schools, we tell children to reproduce what they learn, while when they enter premier higher education institutions, they are told to think originally. So it’s a cultural problem of transition which creates the problem.” He further added, “The larger problem is with the trust of students in the system. The institution should be caring and welcoming enough to address what the students lack in and understand his expression so that he starts to cite originally and not hide.”
Oakland, California (US) headquartered Turnitin, a global leader in providing academic integrity solutions for over 20 years, organised the conclave with the aim to focus and deliberate on role of integrity in higher education and research to achieve excellence.
The conclave witnessed participation of over 30 prominent academicians and researchers from leading institutions including IISc, IIM Lucknow, Christ University, Sathyabama Institute of Science and Technology, Jain University, SRM IST, APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University, Damodaram Sanjivayya National Law University and Tamil Nadu Agricultural University.
While delivering his opening remarks and emphasising on the need for the conclave, Marc Daubach, CRO & SVP-Customer Success, Turnitin LLC, said, “The need of the hour in Indian education system is to create the awareness around academic integrity, policy to support for higher returns from genuine higher education and research work. The starting points require education across all levels to understand true benefit of building a culture promoting academic integrity.
Technology tools can assist in promoting academic integrity but in and of themselves are not complete solutions. The best scenario is when technology assists bigger cultural commitment at an institution. Technology might assist in discovering academic misconduct through plagiarism and authorship. But, when technology tools are weaved into holistic academic integrity solution, they have the power to help promote cultural change.”
The conclave addressed meaningful conversations about academic and research integrity in India, and its wider implications for academic and research excellence. The two panel discussions deliberated on two themes – ‘Leveraging integrity for excellence in Higher Education’ and ‘Building a culture of research excellence through critical thinking and original writing’.
The topics of discussion during the conclave included challenges and opportunities of the Indian academic and research ecosystem, integrity as a pillar of excellence in academia and research, issues around academic integrity and excellence including the challenges of promoting original thinking, key pedagogical interventions required for excellence in the higher education system, best practices and technology tools to check content submissions, facilitating environments to encourage research authorship and increase India’s research output, implications and directions for administrators and policy makers.
In India, more than 400 institutions subscribe to Turnitin’s services, including leading institutions like IISc, IITs and IIMs. Even research institutions such as CSIR and ISRO are subscribing to its services to promote academic and research integrity. It has indexed over 65 billion web pages and 170 million journal articles, so far, in the country.