Author | Ma Zhen
"Teacher, can I graduate normally?" Professional degree master's student Xiao A "lost soul" asked the tutor Professor Feng (pseudonym).
The cause is that Xiao A's master's thesis was found to have a copy ratio of up to 26%, and it was "stuck" at a critical juncture before the paper was submitted for review.
Nowadays, many graduate students are busy revising their dissertations and preparing to submit them for review, and "checking weights" has become a hot topic. Is it useful to double-check?
The teacher's distress: "It is impossible to prevent"
Speaking of cha-chung, Professor Feng, who teaches at a university in Shanghai, is radiant.
In recent years, revising each english paper of a student, he has "familiarized" to find a website of a double-checking company, upload the documents by themselves, and then scan WeChat to pay 60-120 yuan.
The reason is that he has been "repeatedly recruited".
A few years ago, he submitted several of his students' papers to domestic and foreign journals, and as a result, he encountered direct rejections one after another. The editor pointed out very bluntly: after the detection of the paper double check system, the paper repetition rate is close to 30%. This made him feel very humiliated.
At that time, Professor Feng did not know how to use the weight check system, nor did he know where the students' papers were repeated with other people's papers, so he changed the papers "from beginning to end" and then changed the papers that were "shot" to other journals.
The most outrageous thing is that a student wrote a paper, which looks good, Professor Feng and a co-supervisor have revised it, and the partner also asked someone to help modify the edit, so Professor Feng did not resort to the double-checking system; but the paper was submitted to a foreign journal, and the editor directly rejected the paper, and said that the copy ratio was more than 60%.
Professor Feng "heartbroken" checked at his own expense and found that the manuscript really came from various places in the east and west.
Since then, whether it is for his own students' papers or collaborative papers, he will use the double-check system to check the papers again, and he can always find problems and improve them.
The papers they pitched were also quickly submitted for review, and no one pointed out the problem of copy ratios.
"Spend money to buy one!" Professor Feng recommended the thesis review system to his familiar peers and graduate students taking his courses.
What should I do if my graduation thesis is checked and stuck? Be realistic
This time, the small a of Professor Feng's research group was "caught", and she was very depressed.
More than a year ago, Professor Feng said that when writing a master's thesis, don't copy the definitions and reaction mechanisms in textbooks, "because this is not your invention."
He also said, "Be more generalized by yourself, and don't open two windows to copy and paste when writing a paper."
Xiao A promised to check the weight on the Internet on the eve of submitting the master's thesis, because he was afraid that if he checked it too early, the master's thesis would be sold by others.
This time, Xiao A spent more than 1,000 yuan in advance, checked it on the Internet, and modified some texts similar to others, deducting only 1% of the copy ratio of my published articles.
The overall reproduction ratio of master's theses is 26%, because she has previously published two papers in Chinese core journals, and she uses these words for her master's thesis.
Someone may say: "You can't treat a published paper as a master's thesis as if it were intact." ”
But Professor Feng said: "Of course not. In addition to these two chapters, this master's thesis is preceded by an introduction chapter, followed by another chapter on experimental content and conclusions and prospects. ”
"It's not always necessary to 'mix sand' into the paper again to ensure a copy ratio of less than 10%, right?" Professor Feng was indignant.
After the paper was "stuck" for review, Professor Feng saw Xiao A's department check report for the first time.
Professor Feng had not read the rechasing report she had obtained at her own expense because he believed that it was the student's own business, and he believed that the student would revise and exclude the suspected copy of the paper he had published for his own graduation.
After reading the detailed re-examination report, he pointed to a few sentences marked in red and said: "Don't be lighter than just because you have checked it yourself and found that the reproduction ratio of your own published papers is only a few percent." As long as the text marked in red, it must be modified! Even if only one sentence is repeated, others can say that you copied! ”
However, Xiao A argues that although a few sentences are marked in red, they are not exactly the same as other people's words. She couldn't remember how she had come up with the sentence.
"You deleted these few sentences, and it didn't affect the meaning of your master's thesis!" Professor Feng felt that the students were too naïve to understand the stakes.
After personal appeal and department appraisal, Xiao A's master's thesis was approved for review. Of course, before being sent for review, Xiao A reduced the re-examination rate of his published papers to nearly 0%.
Lessons
Looking back, Professor Feng said to the next master's student of the research group: "Have you learned a lesson?" On the one hand, whether it is a master's thesis or a journal thesis, writing cannot be followed by the crowd. Delete the things that everyone knows, because if you write that way, others will write that way. The key is not that it is less than 10% copy ratio, but that not a single sentence can be copied! On the other hand, many things (such as whether the paper published by oneself as the first author can be directly used for the graduation thesis) have not yet formed a consensus. Originally, if Xiao A had originally published an English sci paper, and then translated it into Chinese put it into the master's thesis, nothing would have happened. ”
For Xiao A, Professor Feng did not forget to carry out the "research group thinking about politics".
He said: "The ability to resist pressure should be strong. After graduation, when you go to work, things will be more complicated, and you will even be tripped by colleagues. In the case of the failure to pass the paper check, you have two choices, one is to reduce the copy ratio to less than 10%, and the other is to appeal. I support you in sticking to your principles. However, you can't just sit in your office and wait for someone else's message to fall after you appeal. Ask yourself where you've come and what you need to do. ”
In order to "seek grievances" for the students, Professor Feng even if he fell into a broken bone, he said that he was willing to take Xiao A to the graduate school located on another campus to find them to lead. He actually approached the department's graduate secretary and called the graduate school to explain the situation.
Xiao A eventually received a factual evaluation.