Dr. Uday K. Khankhoje's instructions to students: 1. Please run your thesis through turnitin using these details: a. Go to www.turnitin.com, and click on "create account", choosing "student" as account type. b. Use "Account ID" as 12715780 and "Join Password" as mtp16 and sign up for the account. Your overlap should not be more than 15%. The turnitin class is hosted by Dr. Sumeet (cc-ed) [any queries should be directed to him]. 2. Those of you presenting in the first phase to upload your password-protected thesis in the standard IITD format to the web, and to send the access details over email to Dr. Sumantra, and CC to the other coordinator concerned. The title of the e-mail should be "MTP Thesis". No hardcopy is necessary. Dr. Sumeet Agarwal's clarifications: Since I have received several queries regarding not being able to see the Turnitin similarity score, I am sending out this clarification to all: The point of using Turnitin is not to have you massage your thesis to get it below some similarity score. There is no need for you to see the percentage; you just need to be clear that you have not plagiarised. The definition of plagiarism is very simple: no part of your thesis should present somebody else's work as your own. Any text/figures/tables/etc. taken from any other source must be very clearly acknowledged. As long as you have been careful about these things, there is nothing to worry about. We will examine the Turnitin submissions, and get back to anyone whose thesis contains instances of plagiarism. Anyway the Turnitin percentage by itself cannot be trusted, the full report needs to be looked at manually. So it would not be appropriate to make the scores visible to all, because that will just lead to people trying to chop and change and tweak and twist to somehow beat the similarity threshold, without genuinely trying to understand what plagiarism is and why it's wrong. Dr. Uday Kahnkhoje adds: Step 1: Please read through the following article very carefully to understand what plagiarism is, and why you are not off the hook just because you gave a reference to source material: http://mamidala.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/275/ Step 2: It is not about getting the numerical value of the similarity index below a threshold -- it is about making absolutely sure that your text does not convey the impression of claiming work that is not yours. What is at stake? In case you don't fix this, IIT Delhi would have MTech thesis to its name which would be guilty of plagiarism. This means a loss of face/reputation for not just yourself, but your supervisor, and the institute. A reputation for honest work is perhaps the only reputation of worth for a university/faculty member, and if that goes, it goes irreversibly. Further down, your future employers can/will also have access to your thesis and the plagiarism info. You can guess the consequences of that. In consultation with your supervisors it will be determined if any grade penalties are necessary. Please use your common sense in making these edits and do not e-mail us with further queries -- all the info that is needed has been conveyed.