30     GUIDELINES ON ETHICS OF USING SIMILARITY DETECTION SOFTWARE (FOR INSTRUCTORS)

30.1

COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) guidelines shall be followed for publication and theses.
30.2

Instructors are required to create classes and enroll students in them.
30.3

Students/scholars should be informed that their work will be checked through anti-plagiarism services; therefore, they must follow proper documentation style in writing reports/papers/theses.
30.4

References/bibliographies and tables of contents must be removed from the submitted documents. If these are included, the similarity index of the document will increase.

30.5

Instructors may allow students to view reports. The instructor shall maintain privacy and will not disclose any report to anyone except the concerned person and to the concerned authorities, if required.
30.6

If a scholar/student is involved in checking papers and theses of any other person, the instructor shall report to university authorities about that with valid proof.
30.7

Originality/similarity reports generated by Turnitin provide clues in the form of text matches as well as proverbs, universal truths, phrases, etc. Scholars/students must ensure that the documents they are submitting are in proper documentation style (i.e., IEEE, Chicago, MLA, APA, etc.) and are free of plagiarism.
30.8

If the report has a similarity index of ≤19%, then the benefit of doubt may be given to the author; however, if any single source has a similarity index ≥5% without citations then it needs to be revised.
30.9

If the similarities of a report are from the author's own (previous) work, then they may be ignored only if the material has been cited by the author.
30.10
Documents that are checked through this service have not yet been published and no benefit is acquired; therefore, no punishment or penalty is recommended. It is advised that similarities at a greater level should be taken care of in the light of the HEC plagiarism policy.