Conference on plagiarism organized by Ministry of Education and Science of Bulgaria and StrikePlagiarism.com team
Almost all academic institutions took part in a conference sharing their worries and experience in the prevention of academic plagiarism. The hottest subjects, for sure, were disciplinary procedures and ChatGPT as well as its negative impact.
The Deputy Minister of MoES of Bulgaria Mrs. Chavdarova shared the importance to implement procedures and a code of ethics at the universities, as it seems like some universities still face a lack of experience and doesn't know what disciplinary actions shall be taken in case of plagiarism occurs in the diploma or PhD thesis. Bulgarian law doesn't specify disciplinary actions and doesn't impose sanctions for plagiarism in such cases, however, it still doesn't mean that universities are having their hands tied to use international practices. There is a general understanding of using the system as a control tool. Apparently, most of them don't look at the problem from the wider perspective of the development of student's skills, using antiplagiarism system to show them mistakes and prevent the development of a copy-paste skill.
An important subject was ChatGPT as it seems like a terra incognita for an academic world, hard to react adequately to the tool which is constantly developing and extending its abilities. However, the devil is not as frightening as you make him out to be. ChatGPT is a tool just like google search, open-source databases, translation tools - can be used for good and for bad. ChatGPT soon will not be only an advanced search tool but, honestly, it's still a great research tool. In Russia, students are defending diploma theses written by ChatGPT, because nobody reads them while the skills and knowledge gained at those universities are not welcome in the labor market. Universities in Bulgaria shall develop recommendations for the accurate use of the ChatGPT just like it is done by many universities around the globe, for example, Kozminski university. Let's not forget that text written by ChatGPT has no copyright according to the management of the company, so you cannot credit text to the ChaGPT.
The good news is that according to the Deputy Minister of Higher Education, Albena Chavdarova - the Academic Ethics Committee of the Ministry of Education and Science is currently examining about 20 cases of plagiarism!
A great example of sustainable procedures implemented at the university to prevent academic plagiarism both among teachers and students was shared by Mrs. Lyubka Aleksieva (Sofia University), Mrs. Irena Vasilyeva (New Bulgarian University), and Mrs. Vanya Grashkina from the National Center of Information and Documentation (PhD repository).
Special thanks for organizing this conference to the Minister of Education and Science of Bulgaria Mr. Sasha Penov, Deputy Minister Mrs. Chandarova and Mrs. Boicheva as well as Rector of Sofia University of Mining and Geology Prof. Luben Totev and His Excellency the Ambassador of Poland in Bulgaria Mr. Szymanski and ALL Plagiat.pl team from Warsaw, Romania and Bulgaria.
