[LIS-Forum] Sharing my experience with anti--plagiarism web tools

[T. Shahab .TANWIR]

Dear All,
I would like to  share my experience with the LIS-Forum users regarding
working with the anti-plagiarism web tools provided by Inflibnet.
By a letter dated the 13th March 2014 issued under the signature of Dr.
Jagdish Arora, Director Inflibnet various Universities who have been the
signatory to MoU on Shodhganga were provided web access to the two popular
anti-plagiarism tools- iThenticate and Turnitin.
After certain initial hesitations regarding the implication of the
anti-plagiarism verification for the doctoral scholars as well as the
supervisors, the anti-plagiarism check was approved as mandatory for
submission of a Ph.D thesis at Jamia Hamdard.
The Central Library as the coordinator for anti-plagiarism started with the
more famous Turnitin. But sooner we opted for iThenticate as it appears
more users friendly. Incidentally, the all India survey carried at the
behest of Inflibnet has found iThenticate to be the more favoured by the
majority of users.
Unfortunately, because of steep cost escalation by the service providers
for the next year, Inflibnet had to cancel the renewal of these software.
On 31st May 2015  the access to these tools was stopped.
As the anti-plagiarism check has been made mandatory by the UGC, it was
agreed in principle that the University shall purchase either
iThenticate/Turnitin.  A comparative statement of the features of these
software revealed that whereas both of them shared the same database for
cross check, iThenticate was costlier (25000 pages @$5860/- a year) than
Turnit (@$5000/- for 100 user license plus 10 faculty and one
administrative license where each user can upload up to 20MB, or, up to 400
pages).
Meanwhile since July 31, Inflibnet has offered yet another anti-plagiarism
web tool called 'URKUND'. Our initial working experience with this tool
reveals that whereas it is similar to Turnitin in the matter of creation of
courses and assignments, it lacks the analytical quality of iThenticate. I
have doubt about the nature of academic/research database that Urkund uses
for cross check. A communication to the Shodhganga seeking clarification
about urkund has been also sent from our side.
Still, we at Jamia Hamdard University are a new user. We request more
responses from the users having on-hand experiences with Urkund.
Thanks & regards,
Dr. T. Shahab
HMS Central Library, Jamia Hamdard
New Delhi

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