Course syllabus

This Canvas page is the designated page for PhD candidates of the GF faculty for submitting the electronic version of their PhD thesis for the mandatory plagiarism screening. Please read this page carefully.

The page works as follows: the PhD thesis has to be uploaded by the PhD candidate in a .pdf format. This upload is consequently analyzed automatically by TurnItIn, the plagiarism screening software. The default option is to NOT to include the uploaded pdf in the repository.

In order to minimize the administrative workload of the plagiarism screening, the GF faculty has opted for the creation of a single Canvas “course” for said screening. The result of this minimization of administrative burdens is that (in addition to the system administrators) two members of the GF faculty’s ZAP personnel (the chairman of the CDO and one administrative staff member) have access to the plagiarism scores generated for every submitted PhD thesis. Both are therefore expected to behave in a professional, discrete, and confidential manner in this regard and to always respect the relevant rules of the VUB ZAP Regulation and the VUB regulations on privacy and information security. These include respecting scientific ethics and deontology (art. 15 ZAP Regulation), comply with the duties of confidentiality and respecting the privacy of individuals involved (art. 18 ZAP Regulation), and accountability mechanisms related to enforce them (art. 20 ZAP Regulation).

If the PhD candidate or his/her promotors are not comfortable with this accessibility, e.g. for reasons of intellectual property rights or in light of privacy concerns, there is always the option of using the TurnItIn software directly, without using this Canvas interface) and providing the generated report to the PhD jury.

Important note: the file size of the pdf must be limited to 100MB to enable the screening by TunrItIn. This limit is irrespective of the canvas interface and can't be checked by canvas!

Instruction for the PhD candidates and the jury members are outlined below.

Instructions for the PhD candidates

1. In "Syllabus" or "Assignments": click on the link "PhD <academic year>".
2. Click on "Submit Assignment" and upload the pdf file (after agreeing with the End-User-License).
3. Check your own TurnItIn report using the link "Submission details". To have access to the complete TurnItIn report, you have to click on the similarity score (in %) next to the file name and file size. While TurnItIn in still processing your pdf, this similarity score is replaced with an icon representing a stopwatch. If neither the similarity score nor the stopwatch are present, then this implies that the TurnItIn report was not generated (e.g. due to file size limit)
4. Optional actions in"Assignments "PhD <academic year>":
   
   • Download the submitted pdf
   • Re-submission is possible using the "Re-submit Assignment" bottom. The jury members will always see all submitted versions. Iterative screening to fine tune the text to avoid the detection plagiarism is impossible as the original files are not deleted as remain visible to the jury members. 

Instructions for the jury members

1. Go to "Grades". The column "PhD <academic year>" can contain different information icons on the right of this column:
   • colored tag: the TurnItIn report is available
   • no tag: no pdf has been uploaded yet!
   • stopwatch: TurnItIn is still analyzing the pdf
   • exclamation mark: TurnItIn failed (e.g. due to file size limit)
2. Click on the information icons in the "PhD <academic year>" column of the PhD candidate.
3. The TurnItIn report is opened by clicking on the similarity score below the tag: "submitted files". If multiple submissions are uploaded, you need the chose the version using "Submitted multiple times, choose which to view".