Code of ethics for publication and incentive scheme

Code of Ethics: Plagiarism

Preamble

Ethics and honesty are the two most important components of the academic activities (be it teaching or research). Teaching & research is a novel profession based on extremely high moral values. There cannot be any room for claiming the credit for the work he/she has not undertaken. Many times it is observed that some of the “academicians” knowingly or unknowingly publish or present other’s work as their own. Such acts will affect healthy academic atmosphere in the institute which will also harm the reputation of the institute as well as the individual. It is therefore important for an academic institute like A.V.C College of Engineering to have in place a policy on plagiarism to avoid such type of acts.

1. Definition of Plagiarism

Plagiarism is defined as presenting another person’s work as one’s own work. Presentation includes copying or reproducing it without the acknowledgement of the source. Plagiarism involves copying of phrases, clauses, sentences, paragraphs or longer extracts from published or unpublished work (including from the Internet) that exceeds the boundaries of the legitimate cooperation without acknowledgement of the source. Plagiarism could be intentional (dishonest plagiarism) or non-intentional (negligent plagiarism).

2.Objective

1.To create academic awareness about responsible conduct of research, study, project, assignment, thesis, dissertation, promotion of academic integrity- and prevention of misconduct including plagiarism in academic writing among students, researchers, faculty and other members of academic staff as well as any employee of the institute.
2.To establish institutional mechanism through education and training to facilitate responsible conduct of research, study, project work, assignment, thesis, dissertation, promotion of academic integrity and deterrence from plagiarism.
3.To develop systems to detect plagiarism and to set up mechanisms to prevent plagiarism and punish a student, faculty or staff committing the act of plagiarism.

3. Detection of Plagiarism

It is the prime responsibility of an institute or individual to distinguish original content from plagiarized work. The detection of plagiarism is a judgment to be made by a person who understands the subject and who is also aware of the definition of plagiarism. Such person should also be aware of the tools available to detect the plagiarism. Our Institute will use the best tools / software to detect plagiarism. It is of an at -most important for an academic institute to educate its student and teaching community about what constitutes plagiarism, how it is detected and of course the action that is going to follow if plagiarism is proved.

4. Procedure for handling alleged Plagiarism

a. Procedural Fairness : The Institution is committed to deal with alleged plagiarism in accordance with the principles of procedural fairness, including the right to:
• Be informed of the allegations against them in sufficient detail to enable them to understand the precise nature of the allegations and to properly consider and respond.c • Have a reasonable period of time within which to respond to the allegations against them.
• Have the matter resolved in a timely manner.
• Impartiality in any investigation process.
• An absence of bias in any decision making.

b. Identification and Assessment of Alleged Plagiarism :

Where an faculty or staff is alleged plagiarism by any person or any external agency, the same is forwarded to an empowered body which confirms first if there is a plagiarism or not; if it is, then whether it is negligent or dishonest type and what is the degree of plagiarism. This empowered body will then submit its report along with its recommendation to top management which are empowered to take disciplinary actions.
The severity of plagiarism can be of categorised as Plagiarism would be quantified into following levels in ascending order of severity for the purpose of its definition:

Similarities up to 10% – excluded
Level 1: Similarities above 10 to 40%
Level 2: Similarities above 40 to 60 %
Level 3: Similarities above 60%

c. Counseling:

As the detection of plagiarism and steps to prevent it are important, equally important is to educate students about the dangers of plagiarism. Institution needs to take steps to strengthen the moral of students so that they do not take support of the unfair-means.

5. Guidelines for Action

The Institution will form a committee of about 5 experts who will establish whether there is a plagiarism or not, if it is then what is the level. This committee will have a Head of the Department or the Principal as an ex-officio member. This committee will submit its report to the Academic Council for a final decision in this regard. The committee of experts will use the best possible software’s provided by UGC or National Knowledge Commission or Anna University for detecting the plagiarism.

Depending on the severity of crime the punishment could be:

• Fine or warning.
• Rustication for limited period or permanent

Code of Ethics: Plagiarism

Plagiarism is a Cognizable Offence. The core work carried out by the student, faculty, staff and researcher shall be based on original ideas and shall be covered by Zero Tolerance Policy on Plagiarism. The core work shall include abstract, summary, hypothesis, observations, results, conclusions and recommendations. Every submission related with research will be accompanied by an undertaking by the researcher indicating that the document is his/ her original work and free of any plagiarism and contain a bibliographic reference of the copied par

Follow Good Research Practices.

Incentive scheme

The Board of Management of A.V.C. College of Engineering has adapted a publication incentive system and offer incentive amount of Rs.4,000/- and Rs.2,000/- for the Annexure-I and Annexure –II Journals approved by Anna University respectively. To improve the faculty members’ publications, for promoting research culture, publication ethics among faculty members and for utilizing the publication incentive system offered by the management in an effective manner, the members of the meeting have arrived certain consensus decisions and recommendations which are detailed below

>Publications which emerge as candidature for incentive should fulfill the following minimal standards:

o The journal should be a “peer–reviewed one”. The term it-self indicates the importance of publication quality. As a proof of “Peer-Review” process, authors while submitting their claim for incentive, it is their responsibility to provide credentials such as reviewer comments, authors’ response to the reviewer comments, revisions carried out in the final version of the paper for validating their efforts for incentive.
o At any circumstances, a journal listed in Annexure – I / Annexure – II of Anna university which does not adhere the process of peer – review, won’t be considered for publication incentive system.
o It is author’s responsibility to check out the readability of format, equations, grammatical mistakes of the paper published. A paper which contains poor quality formats, un-balanced equations, vague alignment cum justifications, improper reference sections should never be considered / forwarded for incentive.
o Journals which adopts ‘no-review policy’, ‘pre-declared assurance for acceptance’ and ‘immediate publication after receipt of the paper’ will definitely dilutes the publication ethics in higher-education system. Hence, publications in these journals will be eliminated from incentive scheme even though they are listed in the bench-marked publication databases.
o ( Since most of the faculty members are pursuing collaborative research publications with others (inside/outside the Institutions). The incentives will be on the basis of the ‘Academic Performance Indicators’ (API) scoring system for sanctioning the incentive amount.

Accordingly,

i. If it is a joint publication of two authors, 60%of the incentive can be availed by the first author and the remaining 40% will be received by the second author.
ii. If the Publication is authored by more than two, 60% of the incentive can be availed by the first author and remaining 40 % can be shared by the rest of the authors.
iii. If the co-authors are from other institutions, the incentive will be provided for our faculty based on their role by adhering the above two criteria.