rawalpindi - Quality Enhancement Cell of Fatima Jinnah Women University organised a workshop on avoiding plagiarism in academic writing for MPhil and PhD scholars at the main campus, said a spokesperson on Saturday.  The workshop was attended by large number of students, faculty members and other educationists, the spokesperson added.

Nosheen Naz, assistant director at the FJWU’s Quality Enhancement Cell, in her welcome address highlighted objectives of the workshop and said that we must avoid plagiarism in academic writing. She said that the workshop was to orient the participants about types of plagiarism and academic integrity and to guide them about writing the research papers while avoiding plagiarism.

The workshop was based on two sessions. In the first session, Dr Zenab Jehan, focal person for the Anti-Plagiarism Unit of the HEC, briefly talked about academic writing, characteristics, its types, dos and don’ts. She guided the participants about writing techniques to evade plagiarism and trained them on how to quote things while copying a text.

In the second session, Dr Mian Khurram Shehzad Azam, additional director at the FJWU’s Quality Enhancement Cell, said that plagiarism was an academic crime. Further, he talked about why should we avoid plagiarism in academic writing and briefly talked about plagiarism’s spectrum. He advised the participants to focus upon quality of writing and encourage students who make efforts to write at their own instead of copying material. He said that if you plagiarised someone’s work; this meant that you have failed to comply with basic standards of academic integrity. This is seen as a breach of discipline and can have very serious consequences, he said.