VroniPlag and all related platforms are ethical or not?

Introduction to Plagiarism
Plagiarism defines as when you use someone’s ideas, data, assertions and figures and do not
acknowledge or give credit.
"… Passing off someone else’s work, either intentionally or unintentionally, as your own,
for your own benefit." (Carroll, 2002)
Plagiarism is seen as a disruption in ethics and honesty in academics. It may result in expelling
students, fines, penalties or even may be incarceration (Laxmi, 2018).
Origin of the Word

PLAGIARUS (1st
PLAGIARY (English, PLAGIARISM (English
century means
1601) 1620)
"Kidnapper")
(Behera, 2013)
Forgery
Forgery is similar to plagiarism in which one copies an existing content (text, layout, color, style,
etc.) with a view of passing it off as one’s own as the original and authentic work. This
constitutes a punishable offence, in that forgery may harm copyrighted work, and infringe
property rights in particular (citing, copying, adapting, translating rights).
VroniPlag
VroniPlag is basically a wiki (website) that started in March, 2011 for checking similarities in
documents and theses, especially in German doctoral theses.
How do VroniPlag work?
Production of a proposal comprises of a review that contains a "standardized tag" envisioning the
measure of counterfeiting, the accurate bibliographic data of the postulations (and in the event
that on the web, a connection) and after that a page diagram that connects to the pieces of literary
theft found on the page. Each piece is named to the sort of unoriginality and must be checked by
a second individual before it is worthy. Fascinating parts are connected to independently and
there is a last report distributed when the gathering feels the work is finished.

Fig 1: Barcode produced by VroniPlag showing Plagiarism on different pages of thesis

Is VroniPlag ethical or not?
VroniPlag is a plagiarism detecting platform that is trending in German writings. Plagiarism and
uniqueness in writing is a big matter now days especially in journalistic and academic writings.
Softwares like VroniPlag have revolutionized the field of research in terms of copying and
pasting especially for those writings that were already published. VroniPlag was the first crowd
sourcing phenomenon of its kind in Germany that has been referred to as an authoritative source
in all major media channels in Germany. The plagiarism investigation project has triggered an
extensive nationwide discussion about plagiarism and what represents appropriate consequences
for plagiarists and universities.
For instance many cases are quoted below in which the Doctoral theses were rescinded because
of heavy percentages of plagiarism.
Current cases:
152 dissertations, 8 habilitations, 1 master's thesis, and 1 book on scientific writing have been
examined in detail on the site by February 2016 (VroniPlag overview, 2016).
People in Response to VroniPlag
A large portion of the plagiarism charges made by VroniPlag prompted examinations by the
respective colleges, and some have brought about the denial of the degree. Most of these
disavowals have held up in court. Be that as it may, a few colleges couldn't help contradicting
VroniPlag finding, even in instances of unmitigated copyright infringement (somewhere in the
range of 40 and 70% of pages influenced with written falsification).
But dealing with plagiarism and choosing appropriate platform for detecting plagiarism is an
ongoing topic of discussion in all over the world especially Germany. A book was found with
heavy plagiarism in Germany written by lawyers at University of Munster. Interestingly, the
chapter written on plagiarism was also plagiarized. In the book, author forbid about the use of
Wikipedia, but the chapter included fragments from German Wikipedia itself. Authors of the
book from Munster University were set to show extreme Parallel.
VroniPlag wiki is ethical…
As far as Vroniplag wiki is concerned, I believe it is not that much strict in its functioning and
uploading plagiarism for certain research. Total 173 cases of plagiarism have been publically
documented, set open for everyone to access through homepage. But this is not the VroniPlag
works. Most probably, many of the cases are not uploaded publically. Newly coming cases are
not opened for public; they are hidden and shielded by research engines to access. These are
totally not linked to the main pages. Even, the name of the author is also hidden, only few letters
can be seen. Title of the research and details are also hidden, but enclosed in link which is
provided in library catalogue from where it can be downloaded upon request.
Researches theses have to pass through many thresh holds for acceptance, both qualitatively and
quantitatively. Even universities have revoked many theses because of plagiarism in four pages
of text. VroniPlag is working so positively, that it will not go public unless over 10% of the
pages got affected, typically till 20%. VroniPlag concerns documents having 40- 50% of
plagiarism, or half of the text is plagiarized or cases like who copied from whom, such cases
have not gone public at all.
A lot of universities are customers of VroniPlag, including University of Munster and Charite in
Berlin. There are many medical college instances with bulk of plagiarisms detected by Vroniplag
and revoked PhD degree. Another instance is there, in International journal of Clinical and
Experimental Pathology, published five articles twice. In Australia, a journal published an article
twice in same issue and no one appears to have noticed that big blunder, not by authors, readers,
and peer reviewers. Nobody took an action, until VroniPlag Wiki contributor contacted.
Academic Journals use to charge authors for publication of articles, and also suggesting their
own reviewers, it is serious cause of destructing reputation of Journal. Plagiarism is a serious
ethical and legal matter. It needs to be resolved. It is alternative to Betraying people who are
publishing novel work.
Currently, many plagiarism detecting software’s are introduced in academic institutions and
writing agencies as plagiarism is ethical matter in field of research. For instance, Dupli checker,
copy leaks, paper rater, Plagarisma, Plagiarism Checker, and turnitin are used world widely.
Journal’s and publishers have certain criteria of similarity index that can be tolerated i.e., 15% or
19%. Software’s are designed such way, that they give color signals for acceptable limit of
similarity index. Also they cite all the sources to which data concurs. Hence it is suggested that
author should consider the guidelines of journal carefully and must nullify the plagiarism before
submission.
References
1. Carroll, J. (2002). A handbook for deterring plagiarism in higher education. Oxford
Centre for Staff and Learning Development.
2. Laxmi, M. M. (2018). Research Plagiarism and its Effects.
3. Behera, A. K. (2013). Etymological Analysis of English Words. Journal AJHSS, 1(1).
4. "VroniPlag overview". Retrieved 2016-02-15.