During the outbreak of Corona Virus, Minhaj University Lahore has been organizing a series of Webinars. In this connection, the Library and Resource Center (LRC) and Center of Research & Development (CRD) jointly organized the first webinar of the series on the vital issue “Academic Integrity and Avoiding Plagiarism” on Friday, 16th May 2020 for the MUL faculty, researchers, and students.

In the first session, Prof. Dr. Muhammad Shahid Soroya, Pro-Vice-Chancellor(MUL) in a precise wide-ranging way, lime lighted the Academic Integrity and Ethical Issues in Academia. He stated that Academic integrity means honesty in your studies, acknowledging the work of others and giving due credit where you have used the intellectual contribution of other people as part of presenting your arguments. He also spotlighted the policy of HEC for Plagiarism and defined it with key categories, Major penalty, Moderate penalty and Minor penalty.

In the second session, Mr. Zaheer Ahmad, Director Libraries(MUL) highlighted various features Turnitin Software. He gave an overview of how this software can practically be used to generate and evaluate a similarity report. Mr. Ahmad was of the view that if we don't properly acknowledge author's intellectual contributions, we are being academically dishonest and forgoing the opportunity to develop our critical thinking skills. He also briefly discussed different techniques like paraphrasing, quoting, referencing, and summarizing, which can be used to avoid or minimize plagiarism.

This webinar was attended by several participants with question-answer session and participants opined it highly informative and appreciated the approach of Minhaj University to keep the students intact with the Academia during the spree of COVAID 19.