G

orontalo State University'€™s (UNG) Center for Technology, Information and Communications (Pustikom) has launched the use of anti-plagiarism software following the revelation of a plagiarism case involving a university lecturer.

The plagiarism detection software has been applied at the university'€™s school of elementary teacher education at the education department (FIP).

'€œAs an initial step, the software will be applied to check student theses. Later on it will be used to check lecturers'€™ works,'€ Pustikom UNG director Sukarman Kamuli told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

The software, called Viper, can be easily downloaded from the Internet to prevent plagiarism. The students'€™ theses will be uploaded using the software that will automatically scan every word.

'€œWhen a similarity is found, the device will tell us the similarity percentage and inform us of which site or source the data was copied from,'€ Sukarman said.

Sukarman, however, said the university had yet to discuss the sanctions that would imposed on students if they committed plagiarism.

FIP dean Abdul Haris Panai said that in the past, students who committed plagiarism were usually told to rewrite their works.

Plagiarism has marred UNG over the last four years, and thus far all incidences had been committed by lecturers.

In 2010, the university'€™s Community service institute (LPM) rejected the proposals of two lecturers from the economy and business department due to plagiarism.

In 2011, an FIP lecturer was banned from producing writings for having plagiarized articles published in a local newspaper.

Mass plagiarism was also reportedly committed by 45 UNG lecturers participating in a certification program in the same year. The university'€™s rectorate, however, denied the allegations.

This year, the latest case involved a lecturer from the Social Science Department who allegedly copied data from a book written by another lecturer from the same university.