To enhance the quantity and quality of scientific publications from the UGM academic community, the UGM Directorate of Research offers a plagiarism check service for manuscripts in international journals and proceedings.
Head of the Sub-directorate for Scientific Publications and Intellectual Property, Dr. Ratih Fitria Putri, stated that in recent years, faculty members and students have utilized this service on the directorate’s website.
“Faculties or units within UGM can also access it. So, each faculty has this service, primarily at the library, for text similarity checks,” she said on Wednesday (August 21).
However, Dr. Putri explained a slight difference between the services provided by faculties or units and the UGM Directorate of Research, in which the directorate focuses on evaluating manuscripts that will be submitted to reputable international journals.
On the other hand, faculties or units use text similarity checks for faculty members or student works, such as theses and dissertations. With this service, the level of similarity between the submitted work and existing texts can be identified.
“In our case, it’s more about manuscripts that will be submitted to publishers. We help check the level of similarity; if the plagiarism level is high, we provide suggestions to the submitter to improve the phrasing or correct the sentences in the manuscript,” she explained.
Dr. Putri further explained that in implementing this service, the Subdirectorate for Scientific Publications and Intellectual Property collaborates with a software service provider for text similarity checks under a contractual arrangement.
The directorate annually facilitates around 500-600 articles. However, by the end of the year, about 200 slots are usually available and are sometimes allocated for faculty members, students, and study centers.
“It’s important to note that we at the directorate don’t have the authority to decide whether a manuscript or writing passes for publication, as each publisher has its standards,” she said.
Different publishers have different thresholds for acceptable levels of plagiarism. Some publishers may allow up to 17% similarity in sentences, while others may set the limit at 15%. Nevertheless, UGM does not have the authority to interfere with these percentages set by publishers.
Despite being geared toward reputable international journals, the UGM Directorate of Research’s service is open to all types of manuscripts.
The remaining quota at the end of the year is open to all academic community members, including faculty members and students from undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral programs.
“At the faculties, the waiting list is quite long. Hundreds of faculty members and students from the three degrees are waiting for their plagiarism checks. We facilitate the service, especially when faculties can’t accommodate the demand. Sometimes the workload is high, and we try to assist,” she explained.
Dr. Putri shared an incident where she found a manuscript that had a 25% similarity with a previous scholarly work. This indicated that a quarter of the manuscript’s originality was adopted from another source outside the author’s writing.
The appropriate action in such cases is to advise the author to revise the sentences detected as copied from another source. These recommendations encourage authors to improve their writing and avoid plagiarism.
“We strive to facilitate this service maximally, with 100% accessibility, in hopes that all the slots will be used. So, don’t hesitate to contact us and increase the number of reputable international journals,” Dr. Putri added.
Regarding the plagiarism check service conditions, the recipients must be faculty members, researchers or non-teaching staff (civil servants or staff with Rector’s decrees), and graduate students.
The manuscript must be intended for publication in reputable international journals or proceedings (Scopus/WoS). The submitted manuscript should be authored by the proposer, listing UGM as the affiliation.
The proposer must be the first author or the sole corresponding author. The UGM lecturer’s name must be included in the list of authors for student proposers.
Each manuscript title can be submitted for a maximum of two plagiarism checks. Faculty members must have a verified and updated SINTA and SISTER account.
A new proposal from the same proposer will be placed in the queue until the previously submitted manuscript has been processed.
Author: Agung Nugroho