9th April, 2022

A session on the theme ‘Introduction to Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and UGC Regulations vis-à-vis Plagiarism’ was organized by the Research Cell-Pratiti for the F.Y. and S.Y. B.Ed. students of St. Teresa’s Institute of Education on 9th April 2022 from 9:00 am to 10:00 am. The resource person was Advocate Damini Thaker, an alumnus of St.Teresa’s Convent High School, Santacruz. Prof. Dr. Giselle D’souza introduced the distinguished speaker to the audience after which an intellectually engaging talk was delivered on the meaning of IPR and the need to protect Intellectual Property.

At the very outset Adv.Thaker oriented the students to the 4 types of Intellectual Property which cover works of authorship, such as books, logos and software, patents, which protect inventions and other types of IP such as trademarks, designs and trade secrets. Each category was introduced in a very interesting and simplified manner by providing analogies and examples to relate to. She also touched on concepts such as plagiarism and the laws pertaining to the same stressing on the fact that this too is a grievous offence.

Adv. Damini then went on to elaborate on how the concept of plagiarism has gained importance in the field of academics and research in the recent years and elaborated on the UGC regulations pertaining to publication of research articles and manuscripts by academicians and researchers. She systematically explained about the penalty that can be imposed on those who do not comply with these norms in accordance with the severity/extent of plagiarism resorted to by the offenders. It was interesting to learn about how ‘Self-plagiarism’ is also a form of academic dishonesty stating that it is unethical to recycle one’s own previous work.

The end of the session was marked by the Q/A round where students came up with important questions on paraphrasing and whether it was to be considered under the purview of plagiarism, the extent of plagiarism that could be permitted/accepted in a publication, the recommended freely available plagiarism software to evaluate originality of one’s work etc. The vote of thanks was delivered by Ms. Simran Mendes a student of the S.Y.B.Ed batch.

The session was very informative and enlightening and proved beneficial to the S.Y.B.Ed students in writing up their Action Research Projects which would involve a Review of Related Literature providing them with a hands-on experience of how best plagiarism could be avoided by attributing due credit to the owners/authors of studies cited in their work. The endeavor reinforced the words of Francois Rene, “An original writer is not one who imitates nobody but one whom nobody can imitate”