Punjabi University signs pact to develop software to detect plagiarism

Patiala, August 5

Punjabi University has signed a collaborative research agreement with a private firm, Blue Aves E-Health Private Limited, to prepare a plagiarism detection tool for all Indian and foreign languages. The university is currently using ‘Ouriginal’, a tool provided by the UGC and made by a foreign company.

Officials associated with the project said the focus was to produce a Make-in-India product, which would cater to the needs of researchers.

The MoU was signed by Vice-Chancellor Prof Arvind and Harinder Pal, CEO, Blue Aves E-Health Private Limited. They said they had already received requisite permissions from the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology for the project.

The plagiarism detection tool for Indian language documents with special focus on Hindi and Punjabi known as ‘Shodh Mapak’ was earlier produced in 2019 by Prof Vishal Goyal of the university and Rajeev Puri of DAV College, Jalandhar, with a grant of Rs 20 lakh received from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. The software uses texts of previously written thesis, books and manuscripts to detect plagiarism.

Prof Goyal, who is from the Department of Computer Science, said, “We analysed the other software available in the market and found that these failed in identifying plagiarism.”

University officials said the private enterprise would handle marketing, commercialisation and sales at both national and international levels. The university would only provide space and technical support to the company as and when needed, the officials added.

The university said the intellectual property rights and product brand of the project would be owned jointly by the university and the company.