Eid Mubarak

I would like to wish to everybody

"Selamat Hari Raya, Maaf Zahir dan Batin".

That is the normal phrase when Hari Raya comes again. This year we do not have to join the rush to 'balik kampung' since we are already staying near to my kampung (i.e. Alor Star). Normally my first hari raya I will go back to the house where I have been brought up. I lost both my parents when I was in the secondary school, but I have a very close-knit family with 11 surviving siblings (from 15 siblings) and our nieces, nephews, grand-nieces, grand-nephews and great-grand-nieces and great-grand-nephews. I have been keeping a database of all family members and this remind me that I should update it more often.

Normally the third hari raya, we will have a gathering and most family members will try to come back. Last year was very meaningful to me because that is when everbody celebrate my marriage. I got married in the UK while I was doing my Phd. Eventhough I came back in 2005, last year was the first year that my hubby came back from the UK.

This year we have not made any plan for the third hari raya. We'll see how it goes.

Plagiarism Again

It was just about a month ago that I wrote about plagiarism in this blog. Suddenly on Monday morning, a colleague from Shah Alam SMS me to read a news on plagiarism in Sun newspaper. I found the online version (no Sun paper in Kedah/Perlis) and the headline says "UPM duo in plagiarism scandal" This type of news is not normally publicised but hopefully this will be a lesson to all.

Academics should know that plagiarism is a very serious crime. The excuse given in this case by the senior lecturer was "it looked fine to me" uuuhhhh .... does that mean that he did not even write it, then why is he one of the author??? which part is his contribution??? another case of ghost author, another serious crime in academics.

Prof Datuk Dr Nik Mustapha, UPM vice-chancellor, said “The junior author, who recently completed her PhD, said that since the source was from the Internet, she thought the information was in the public domain and as such did not cite the article”. (theStar Sept 15) uuuhhh .... If that is your belief then you have been taught wrong. Don't you know how to do citation and what is meant by copyright? Where did you get your PhD?

I once review a paper submitted to a conference and it was taken 100% from a webpage (different owner). It was actually an insult to a reviewer to get such a paper.

In one of the course I attended on copyrights, one case study shows a website owner was sued for putting up a picture taken from another website. The materials on a website are actually protected under the copyright law. Whatever materials you used on your website which are taken from other website must be acknowledged and with permission granted.

Being a Research University (RU) is a big responsibility. Academics are required to maintain their status by requiring them to publish, publish and publish. "Publish or Perish" - the saying gives the whole picture for some but not all academics. Therefore some people resort to all sort of means to get a certain number of publications a year.

Plagiarism

Today I had a discussion with my master student. It is interesting to note that he was very concerned about plagiarism and he actually did some readings on plagiarism. He even mentioned that students should know what is plagiarism and how to avoid plagiarism. He also share with me an open source software (Viper) which can be used to detect whether your writing contain any plagiarism (Type I only).

In academic, plagiarism is a very serious offence. Base on Academic Policy, students maybe expelled if they are found to submit a plagiarized work as their own. Academics also need to write and publish our research work. There may not be a written rules on publication guidelines but as academics we should have an academic integrity.

According to Dr Barnbaum, there are five types of plagiarism:

Type I: Copy & Paste

Type II: Word Switch

Type III: Style

Type IV: Metaphor

Type V: Idea

Most of us are more familiar with Type I: Copy n Paste and are not aware of the other types. For more detail description and examples, refer to Dr Barnbaum page.

The following list some references on the different type of plagiarism:

Dr. C. Barnbaum, Plagiarism, A Student's Guide to Recognizing It and Avoiding It, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Valdosta State University.

Sue Ann Brainard, Plagiarism Workshop, Milne Library, SUNY Geneseo

Academic Integrity Tutorial, New York University

A Trip to Shah Alam

On Monday I drove from Jitra to Shah Alam to attend my student's PhD Defense Proposal. It was a 5-hours drive and it rain half of the way. I planned to meet my student, A before his presentation on Tuesday but unfortunately his handphone was off and only reply my SMS late evening with an excuse that he is not well and was sleeping ..... hhmmm. I also schedule a meeting with my other PhD student, R, again no luck she is also not well.

Anyway, I was there when A presented his proposal and later we went through his proposal again to make the necessary corrections based on the comments made by the panel. I asked him to sent me his corrections in a couple of weeks.

It was nice to meet friends in Shah Alam. Almost everybody ask me "Seronok ke kat Perlis" It is a difficult question but my famous answer is "Bolehla". It is just a matter of adjusting to new environment and new friends. One thing is obvious no more traffic jam and toll.

I left Shah Alam at about 2 pm and reach Jitra about 7pm

Semester Break

UiTM decided to move its semester break to this week. This is as a precaution against the spread of H1N1 virus (A couple of UiTM campuses are closed already). We got the information late Friday afternoon. It was already too late for me to give my students assignment during the semester break. Hopefully they will use this time to revise what had been covered in the first three weeks of classes (I doubt so). Classes will resume on the 2nd of August.

First Day of class

This is the first week of class. I started the first day with my first meeting with a newly registered Master of Computer Science research student. I have agreed to be his supervisor and the first discussion is on the topic and a planning on what to be accomplished during the 18 months of research work. He will need to attend the Research Methodology class which began last Saturday.

The following links should be helpful for our research students:

http://naimahmh.uitm.edu.my/resources.html

I do update my resources page (not as frequent as I like to) so if you find any broken link, do let me know.

For academic papers search, you can go to the following link:

http://www.scopus.com

http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/

http://scholar.google.com/

And of course you can always use the google search engine.

As usual, I don't encourage students to use white paper published on the internet. It is best to cite from papers published in well refereed conferences and well established journals or books.

New at UiTM Perlis

It has been a month since I transfer to UiTM Perlis from Shah Alam. It is a new environment which I need to get adjusted. This blog was set up sometime ago and I have not much idea on what to put here. I already have my academic web page hosted at FSKM web server and a duplicate copy hosted at the UiTM web server. I thought of migrating everything to UiTM web server but something is not right somewhere. I use to be able to search my name using google and the page from FSKM web server will appear but now it is gone ... hhhhmmm ... no clue why??? anyway I will start to build on this blogging thing... till then..