INFLIBNET Centre Research Articles

Awareness and adoption of anti-plagiarism software in India: A case study of ShodhShuddhi

Background Academic writing is essential for researchers to present the research output in a legitimate manner with a precise and clear representation of research data, but few have mastered the art of writing well. Research and researchers are responsible for upholding academic honesty, integrity, and ethics. Needless to say, plagiarism has been around since antiquity, but it has never been as pervasive as it is now. Plagiarism is gradually ingraining itself into our educational system. Pupils are increasingly using the Internet and ICT-based tools to find quick “shortcuts” to the worthwhile but time-consuming task of preparing research papers. Being the third-largest publishing nation, it is the duty of the stakeholders to uphold and work for publication excellence with research ethics and honesty. Since there are so many research articles being published, it is important to understand publishing ethics and anti-plagiarism software in the research domain. If authors are taking ideas from previously published documents or other authors’ works, it is important to ensure acknowledgment and credit in terms of citations, bibliographical references, providing in-text citations, footnotes, and quoting them in any standard citation style. Plagiarism can also be defined as the paraphrasing and text recycling of documents. The challenges in research, which compromise ethics, are also from different stages of research, which include fabrication and falsification of data, AI-based text-generating tools, test recycling, ghostwriting, image plagiarism, audio-to-text-converting tools, etc. A one-stop solution to address all these issues on a single platform is not feasible as it involves multi-level checks and proper policy blended to be implemented at many levels. Objectivity In this paper, analysis and study examine the national awareness of anti-plagiarism software. The primary objectives of the study are to raise awareness and investigate the current state and status of the use of anti-plagiarism software in Bharat (PDS). Methodology The data was collected through the portals and websites of ShodhShuddhi, Shodhganga, and the INFLIBNET Centre. Initiated with 200 universities in the year 2015, about 1086 higher education institutions (HEIs) are provided with PDS under ShodhShuddhi, out of which 894 institutions are active in using software for checking similarities. Three years of usage by active institutions are taken for analysis and study by 1.3 lakh faculty members and research scholars. The increase in usage, even during COVID time, shows that awareness is created in the nation, and the percentage of similarity in first document submission is also coming down gradually in the nation. Character building in academic matters and innovations are key outcomes that can be achieved by addressing plagiarism to strive for a knowledge-based nation.

Envisioning Digital Transformation in Libraries for NextGen Academic Landscape

The INFLIBNET Centre organizes the CALIBER in different parts of India in collaboration with universities/institutions. The International CALIBER 2022 which is 13th in the series of the conventions is being organized in collaboration with Sayaji Rao Gaekwad Library, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh during November 17-19, 2022 at Varanasi. The theme of the Convention was conceptualized in view of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and the role of the library professionals and institution in successful implementation of the NEP 2020 and achieve the goals of NEP which aims to increase the GER in Higher Education through implementation of modern technology. With the NEP 2020 in mind, the convention invited papers on broad sub themes: Inceptive Approach of Libraries for National Education Policy (NEP 2020); Emerging Technologies and Trends in Libraries; Open Science and Open Library. The CALIBER 2022 invited full-text papers on various themes and 52 full-text papers were presented during the convention from which 45 submissions were published as book chapters and seven papers are being published in this issue of the journal.

Mapping the contribution of LIS theses and dissertation to shodhganga by Indian Universities: An assessment

Shodhganga: a reservoir of Indian electronic theses is a digital repository of theses and dissertations submitted to Indian universities. It is maintained by INFLIBNET Centre which is an autonomous Inter-University Centre of the University Grants Commission (UGC) of India. The INFLIBNET Centre has moved to its new institutional building at infocity, Gandhinagar, capital of Gujarat, from Ahmedabad in 2013. The study found that 69 Library and Information Science departments from various universities across India are involved in deposition of thesis in Shodhganga, and a total of 1151 Thesis are deposited so far. It is also found that Karnatak University and Manonmaniam Sundaranar University have the highest depositions with 100 theses each. It is also advised that all involving universities should follow one standard entry while entering their department.

Use of electronic resources among teachers and scholars in Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh (Bharat): A survey

The advancement of the information technology and web technology have brought changes to existing information storage and retrieval system such as Digital library, online database, digital repository, virtual library, etc. Libraries have witnessed tremendous changes in recent years in terms of their collection and services. Information explosion and user's demand of the users required the development of a more comprehensive library collection. Publishers have now started publishing on-line version/electronic versions of their printed journals. Owing to the cost of journals, many colleges and universities are unable to procure these journals. Ministry of HRD and UGC has started procuring the e-resources from the 25 world-class publishers under consortia mode at a much reduced price for all university libraries. BHU library is one of the beneficiaries of this UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium. The present study is the part of Ph.D. research work of one of the authors. To ascertain the usage of the e-resources available to the BHU library by the teachers and scholars, this survey was conducted. The present investigation discusses the use of electronic resources (e-journals, e-books, online/ offline databases, web resources) which are made available by the INFLIBNET Centre in e-resource consortium like UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium by the teachers and scholars of BHU. The present study was conducted as a part of doctoral research work from January 2015 to July 2015.

E-Resources under E-Shodhsindhu-eSS 2018: A Case Study of Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar Library, Guru Jambheshwar University of Science & Technology Hisar-125 001, Haryana

Purpose-For quality syllabi contents and quantitative & qualitative research activities, e-Resources have been playing significant and substantial role since inception and helping in save the physical efforts to access the required information. Countless opportunities have been offered to research scholars in order to get the relevant study and research material/s by e-resources. The prime advantage with e-resources is that huge amount of databases are available on single platform on subsidized price. These are accessible 24x7 throughout the year. The present study aims to show the impact of INFLIBNET Centre decision regarding to stop the free access of e-resources to Guru Jambheshwar University of Science & Technology, Hisar after attaining the h-index 74 (which is the highest one among the technical universities of all over India) as per Scopus.

E-ShodhSindhu Consortia: A Boon to User of Indian Academic Libraries

E-ShodhSindhu Consortium is an innovative project conceived and launched by MHRD Government of India and executed by INFLIBNET Centre to provide access to full text resources and database to the research and academic community in India. One of the objectives, inter alia, is to create awareness among the research scholars regarding the aims, membership databases, E-resources of Shodhsindhu consortia. E-ShodhSindhu is the best way of a common infrastructure and it has become very important. The budget problem is solved as the e-resources are accessed at lower subscription rates with easy terms of subscription under the single window.

Use of electronic resources among research scholars and faculty members of university of Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, India: A survey

ICT has brought the revolutionary changes in the functioning of libraries and information centres. The impact of ICT including WWW and Internet is visible in every walk of life. The libraries are not the exception. Due to electronic publishing, many e-resources in the form of e-journals, e-books and online/off-line databases are being published. The academic libraries especially colleges and universities libraries have been procuring these resources for their libraries. Due to escalation in the cost of learning resources both printed and e-resources and financial problems the academic libraries are facing, the consortia models are being adopted and experimented for the procurement and access to e-resources by the colleges and universities. The first part of paper introduces the eresources, and its procurement under consortia models successfully implemented by INFLIBNET Centre since 2003. Under the UGC-INFONET Programme about 179 university libraries have been given access to e-resources which comprises of e-journals and online databases. The second part of the paper describes the use of e-resources by the research scholars and teachers of Allahabad University. In order to ascertain the usage of the journals by the research scholars and teachers of Allahabad University, the present study has been conceived to find out the use of e-resources which have been given access to the research scholars and teachers in the university campus mainly at Central Library and Departmental Libraries. To what extent the available e-resources are being utilized by the library users and what are their awareness level, usage pattern, preference of the publishers/journals etc. For this study survey method has been used using questionnaire as a data collection tool. This study has been carried out during January, 2015 to June, 2015. This is a preliminary pilot study conducted on smaller sample to ascertain the validity of the questionnaire. The simple random sampling technique has been adopted for the study. The findings of the study reveals that the library users belonging to younger generation have adopted the Internet, online/offline electronic resources or web resources very quickly and at the same time the elderly library users are not comfortable using Internet, social media and e-resources. They rely more on the traditional printed resources. In order to make the optimum use of the e-resources available for the university library users through consortia, extensive and frequent user's awareness programmes needs to be organised by the library in collaboration with INFLIBNET and other agencies.

Role of e-Shodh Sindhu: Consortium for higher education electronic resources in the study of social sciences

This article presents the role of e-ShodhSindhu: Consortium for Higher Education Electronic Resources in the Study of Social Sciences. It deals with INFLIBNET Centre, e-ShodhSindhu: Consortium for Higher Education Electronic Resources, Aims and objectives of e-ShodhSindhu: Consortium for Higher Education Electronic Resources and the number of journals in discipline of Social Sciences of various publishers/aggregator made available through e-ShodhSindhu: Consortium for Higher Education Electronic Resources.

Relationship between electronic journal downloads and citations in library consortia

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between electronic journal downloads and citations and whether online electronic resource usage can be adopted as an alternative to citation for evaluation of scholarly discourse. Design/methodology/approach A consolidated 16 publishers’ COUNTER usage data of UGC-Infonet members was collected from INFLIBNET Centre. The usage was meticulously filtered from UGC-subscribed journals and institutional subscriptions. The quantitative data were analysed to establish the relationship between download, impact factor (IF) and price. Multiple regression analysis was used to assess the influence of price and IF on usage and to predict the usage when they are known and the threshold for significance was set at p < 0.05. Findings There exists a relationship between IF and downloads of journals in UGC-Infonet. Journal IF and price significantly influence usage, where journal IF plays an important role in the intensity of the use. Also, the top 25 hottest downloaded papers were journals with IF; hence, no journal without IF featured in the top 25 most downloaded journals in the consortia. The relationship between the top 25 IF journals in the consortia and download is strong (r = 0.368537). Originality/value The only account that reports on the relationship between journal IFs and downloads for UGC-Infonet consortia. Also, the influence of usage behaviour with respect to citation and price of a journal.

License Agreements:Use, Excessive Use and Misuse of E-Resources in Universities

The paper discusses about the issues of License agreements of e-resources, authentication and access. It mentions about fair use terms and copyright issues. The UGC digital library consortium and usage statistics for the year 2014 of University of Hyderabad is cited as an example for the high usage and also some instances of heavy downloading leading to suspension of access is described. The problem of 10% TDS cut on database payments by the Universities which are not accepted by the publishers is also mentioned. Guidelines for fair use as specified by the UGC INFLIBNET centre are explained. Finally the precautions to be taken for fair use and complying with the terms and conditions of license agreement are highlighted so that violation of license agreement and denial of access can be prevented.

Plagiarism: The Academic Dishonesty The Significance of Anti-plagiarism Software (Tools) in Plagiarism Detection

Plagiarism is an unethical way of using others ’creative works, words, text, ideas or data in their writings without acknowledging the source or giving credit to the creator of the work. Though this is not a recent phenomenon, it is gaining prominence with the increasing ‘copy and paste ’culture in this electronic and digital era. With the easy availability of scholarly literature online, the plagiarised activities have become the prime concern to all the stakeholders in scholarly communication especially the academic administrators, funding agencies, research organisations and publishers, and thus employing several measures including the application of plagiarism detection tools. The paper describes features of various anti-plagiarism tools-emphasising the plagiarism detection process of popular tools-Turnitin and iThenticate. The use of anti-plagiarism tools among the academic circles is discussed, highlighting their usage in University of Hyderabad in the context of contributing theses to Shodhganga and the plagiarism-free repository of Indian university theses created by the UGC INFLIBNET Centre, Ahmedabad.

Implication of 80/20 Rule in Electronic Journal Usage of UGC-Infonet Consortia

This study aims to understand the implication of the 80/20 rule in large academic library consortia. INFLIBNET initiative-UGC-Infonet is the largest academic consortia initiative in Indian higher education that provides services to 414 institutional members across the country. A total of eighteen publishers and aggregators (N=6854 journals) from COUNTER usage data for the year 2011 was collected from the INFLIBNET Centre. Cumulative download and cumulative percentage of the journals were calculated from the downloaded counts to generate a Pareto chart using Microsoft Excel 2007. The result of the study suggests that the 80/20 rule in large consortia is truly, if not precisely in conformity, when consolidated usage of journals across eighteen (18) publishers are put together at 85%/15%. Contrastingly, differences in the result are observed when titles are analyzed individually according to the publishers demonstrating a reverse of the 80/20 principle.

Use of UGC-Infonet E-resources by Social Science Academics in Indian Universities: An Evaluation Study

UGC is providing access to scholarly electronic resources (e-resources) to Indian universities through the UGC-Infonet Digital Library Consortium. Access to subscribed e-resources is being provided free of cost to member universities. The whole program is funded by the UGC and executed by the INFLIBNET Centre. Now, the UGC-Infonet Digital Library Consortium is in its 11th year and it has been expected that privileged academicians are utilizing available e-resources extensively and optimally. In this paper an effort is being made to assess, how social science faculty working in Indian universities have been using e-resources, what are the problems they are facing in accessing them, and what are the efforts made by INFLIBNET to spread awareness about such an ambitious initiative of UGC among social science faculty members. This paper also highlights some important issues with respect to use, acceptance and planning of this consortium.

Study of the application of information technology for effective access to resources in Indian university libraries

Information Technology (IT) has revolutionized the information handling activities in research and academic libraries in India. The university libraries, as Centres of information services, have largely benefited by the rapid changes in the IT. Indian universities constitute one of the largest higher education systems in the world. It comprises more than 310 universities/institutions, 15,500 affiliated colleges, 10 million students with 5 lakh [1 lakh=100,000] teachers. The university libraries in India are at various stages of development in the application of information technology tools in their day-to-day activities. INFLIBNET—An Inter University Centre of University Grants Commission (UGC) has undertaken the task of providing assistance to university libraries across the country through its number of initiatives. This paper is an attempt to give an overview of Information Technology implementation in different university libraries in India that provides effective access to resources available within universities and elsewhere. Also discussed is the role of the INFLIBNET Centre in the overall development of university libraries across the country with special emphasis on efforts through UGC-Infonet E-Journals Consortium.

Automation of University Libraries in Kerala Status, Problems and Prospects

This paper discusses the present scenario of automation activities of university libraries in Kerala. The survey findings mainly cover various aspects of library automation such as information technology infrastructure, in-house activities, information services and their usage, manpower development, and budget. The paper briefly describes the role of INFLIBNET Centre in accelerating the automation activities of university libraries, especially in the context of the recently introduced UGC-Infonet programme. The problems encountered in this process are identified and possible suggestions are stated.

KVS – INFLIBNET In‐Service Training Programme for School Librarians on Library Automation, Networking and E‐Resources Management Organised by INFLIBNET Centre

Reports on a training programme – KVS ‐ INFLIBNET ‐ an in‐service training programme for school librarians on library automation, networking and e‐resources management. The course was of three weeks duration designed for kendriya vidyalaya school library professionals and held in mid 2004.

Enhancing access to information through document delivery systems – INFLIBNET’s approach

Owing to diminishing library budgets, coupled with the information explosion, academic librarians in India are finding it difficult to meet the insatiable demands of their clientele. For a country as geographically vast as India, having many universities located in remote places, this problem is compounded. Efforts were made in the past to provide document delivery services through a few documentation centres, set up by the Government in different disciplines. This paper focuses on the initiatives launched by the University Grants Commission of India in the last few years, through the INFLIBNET Centre, to provide this service through electronic means by computerizing university libraries, establishing a network and setting up document delivery centres.

Resource Sharing in the Digital Environment in India: Role of INFLIBNET

Libraries and Information Centres are increasingly being called upon to provide more relevant, up-to-date and timely information to a wide range of users. To satisfy the varied needs they require connectivity and sophisticated networking to access a variety of information resources and formats, including digital full-text, sound, graphics, images, multimedia and hypertext. The University Grants Commission (UGC), the funding agency for universities in India, has been funding the universities through INFLIBNET Centre, to automate library functions and network the resources available in these libraries.