Check the duplication of dissertations： I bought the ＂weight reduction service＂ paper and copied it correctly.

　　Check the duplication of dissertations: I bought the "weight reduction service" and copied the thesis correctly.

　　"Guard against gentlemen and not against villains" leads to "those who abide by the norms dare not cite them reasonably, while those who ignore the norms copy them in other ways"

　　As the graduation season approaches, many college graduates begin to worry about the repetition rate of dissertations.

　　After the first duplicate check, Tanyuan, a fresh graduate of a southwest university, found that the repetition rate of his graduation thesis was much higher than the school standard. Then, he reduced the weight of the paper according to the method in the weight reduction experience post. When he encountered a technical term that could not be relayed, he deleted that sentence directly. After two weight reductions, Tanyuan successfully reduced the repetition rate of his graduation thesis to 10%, and successfully passed the examination of the school.

　　According to the reporter’s investigation, it has become a common phenomenon for graduates to use various techniques to reduce the weight of papers according to the label in the duplicate check report, "delete when they see red, and change when they see yellow". What’s more, they will directly purchase the weight reduction service in order to make the repetition rate of the paper reach the standard.

　　Check the weight, the price rises.

　　In early March, Wang Benben, a fresh master’s graduate from a university in Southwest China, received a notice from the school requesting to upload his dissertation for preliminary examination. In order to ensure the smooth passage, she and another classmate combined their papers into one, and then bought a duplicate checking service online.

　　Wang Benben introduced that in order not to be discovered by the system, they adjusted the structure of the paper and removed all the titles that could be removed. "We spent a total of 180 yuan, 90 yuan each." She added, "It’s too expensive to check the weight. It’s done to save money."

　　The reporter learned that although the university where Wang Benben is located does not explicitly require students to check their own duplicates before submitting their papers, they must ensure that the repetition rate is less than 20%. To be on the safe side, most students will check themselves first, and then reduce the weight according to the check report, and then submit it to the school for review.

　　Although the price of degree thesis checking has risen sharply, graduates often dare to be angry and dare not speak.

　　Gion told the reporter that he had purchased duplicate checking service for undergraduate dissertations twice in the school’s print shop, with a price of 198 yuan each time. When I went to print documents recently, I found that the duplicate checking service had increased to 228 yuan each time.

　　On April 27th, the reporter searched on the e-commerce platform and found that the price of duplicate checking service for master’s dissertations was generally around 500 yuan, and the most expensive one was 1,800 yuan. According to the customer service of one of the education franchise stores, the duplicate checking service of 1,800 yuan can provide four reports and support the verification and elimination of published documents.

　　The reporter looked through the examination method of academic norms for dissertations in a university of political science and law and found that students whose repetition rate of dissertations exceeds 10% will be postponed or disqualified from applying for a degree.

　　Respondents admitted that the number of duplicate checking provided by the school was very small, and they were worried that the excessive repetition rate would affect the submission of papers, which was the main reason for them to rush to buy duplicate checking services.

　　At present, although domestic universities will focus on duplicate checking of dissertations, the results are often decisive. According to the customer service of HowNet, the academic misconduct detection system is a serious management tool, which only provides services to institutions and is not open to individuals. To this end, students who need to check the duplicate of papers can only purchase duplicate checking services through other channels.

　　According to the statistics of reporters, the monthly sales volume of duplicate checking services basically exceeds 2000 times, and some even reach tens of thousands of times. Based on this calculation, the monthly turnover of some businesses operating duplicate checking services on e-commerce platforms can reach several million yuan.

　　Secretly buy paid weight reduction service

　　In fact, businesses that operate weight checking services on e-commerce platforms secretly provide paid weight reduction services.

　　In order not to be discovered by the platform, these merchants did not put it in the window, but drained it to their personal accounts before trading.

　　When the reporter asked about the price of paid weight reduction service as a fresh graduate, many practitioners said that they would charge according to the students’ requirements on the delivery time and repetition rate and the number of repeated words in the original paper.

　　A practitioner said that it costs 1,800 yuan to reduce the weight of a paper with a total number of 50,839 words and a repetition rate of 17.9% to less than 10%. "This price package will be checked after weight reduction, and if it is not included, 400 yuan can be given a discount."

　　"We were changed by teachers, not machines." A contact person of an educational franchise store providing this service introduced. However, when the reporter asked whether the college teacher was responsible for weight reduction, the contact person said, "Don’t worry about the quality of weight reduction, and don’t ask much about others."

　　In addition to purchasing weight reduction services, some graduates will also take some skills to reduce their own weight.

　　Many interviewees reported that after they bought the duplicate checking service online, the merchants would not only provide the duplicate checking report, but also give them a "guide to weight reduction" to explain the duplicate checking rules and skills.

　　Looking through a "guide to weight reduction" provided by the interviewee, the reporter found that these weight reduction techniques mainly include synonymous substitution of keywords, sentence transformation, paragraph segmentation, semantic reporting, deletion of repeated parts and English-Chinese translation.

　　Because the duplicate checking system can’t recognize pictures, in 2020, when a university in Southwest China held the defense of graduate thesis, the teachers who participated in the defense found that a classmate inserted text screenshots into the thesis in order to reduce the repetition rate. Finally, the student was convicted of cheating and postponed his defense.

　　Respondents such as Li Jia, a graduate student in a university in Beijing, believe that the frequent phenomenon of manuscript washing of dissertations has something to do with some universities’ emphasis on low repetition rate, which determines whether students can graduate smoothly. "In order to meet the standards of the school, the paper may be changed beyond recognition." Li Jia said.

　　Liu, dean of a college in a southwest university, said that in the university where he works, students with excessive repetition rate in previous years have another chance to correct before leaving school. Starting from this year, graduation will be delayed depending on the situation, and may even be impossible.

　　"We must resolutely resist this kind of behavior of reducing weight through technical means or skills, and schools should let students realize the mistake of this practice." Zeng Yi, a doctoral supervisor at a university in Beijing, said.

　　Some interviewees also pointed out that buying papers online for duplicate checking may bring risks in intellectual property rights. "Some graduate students are at the forefront of research, and some are even classified. It is very risky to buy duplicate checking services online." Feng Xu, a doctoral student in a university in Beijing.

　　Paper review can’t focus on weight first.

　　In fact, since the duplicate checking system of dissertations was implemented in domestic universities, there has been a debate about it.

　　Some scholars believe that the implementation of duplicate checking system for dissertations and low repetition rate in colleges and universities are sticking to the bottom line of preventing academic misconduct.

　　"If you can’t even keep the bottom line of not copying, then students simply don’t write their graduation thesis." Zhuang Quan, an associate professor at a university in southwest China, said that the root of students’ fear of duplicate checking is that universities have not cultivated students’ scientific research ability and academic ethics, and students have not written their papers carefully.

　　However, some scholars have pointed out that it is actually a lazy political behavior for colleges and universities to rely too much on technical means when evaluating dissertations.

　　According to many interviewed scholars, at present, the repetition rate has almost become the only standard in the initial stage of dissertation.

　　According to the staff of the Graduate Quality Supervision Office of a graduate school in a university in Beijing, there are several master and doctoral graduates in this school every year, and their graduation is postponed due to the excessive repetition rate of papers.

　　In the view of scholars such as Zeng Yi, the mechanism of relying on repetition rate to decide whether a dissertation can be submitted for trial or participated in defense needs to be improved.

　　"Innovative topic selection and its value to scientific and social development are the most important criteria for evaluating the quality of papers, and repetition rate is only one of the auditing criteria." Zeng Yi said.

　　Both sides of the debate believe that duplicate checking plays a certain role in preventing academic misconduct, but it can’t improve the quality of papers. "Some papers with poor quality or plagiarism can reach the standard after weight reduction." Ceng Lin, a doctoral student at a university in East China, said.

　　Lu Wei, a scholar, once wrote that duplicate checking is more like a system of "guarding against gentlemen but not villains", which leads to the phenomenon that "those who abide by the norms dare not cite them, and those who ignore them copy them correctly", and even leads to "inferior talents drive out excellent talents".

　　Li Yuxiao, a doctoral student in a university in Southwest China, also believes that duplicate checking can’t curb plagiarism, and "people who want to copy will copy by other methods".

　　Respondents such as Li Yuxiao believe that colleges and universities pay too much attention to repetition rate when evaluating dissertations, which may lead students to follow the repetition rate when writing dissertations, and be forced to reduce quotations or wash manuscripts, and change the classic and repeated famous sayings beyond recognition.

　　"In order to avoid repetition, it is not conducive to cultivating academic ability to throw away sentences and theories carefully crafted by academic predecessors, or to change them beyond recognition." Guo Xiaoan, doctoral supervisor of Chongqing University, said that deliberately changing the classic sentences of academic predecessors is actually a new kind of academic misconduct. "But this can’t be discovered by technical means, only by artificial means."

　　Zeng Yi and other scholars stressed that the general direction of opposing academic misconduct is right, and the duplicate checking system cannot be completely abandoned and abolished. However, in practice, we must respect the laws of science, and standardize academic behavior depends on "human factors" after all. They worry that colleges and universities rely too much on technical means when evaluating dissertations, which may violate the original academic intention and even lead to technological alienation.

　　Respondents suggested that the evaluation of dissertations should be changed from "technology-oriented, assisted by people" to "people-oriented, assisted by technology", and the duplicate checking rate can only be used as a reference data. At the same time, it is necessary to establish a corresponding evaluation system and operation manual for dissertations, and strengthen academic moral education to help students establish the awareness of academic integrity.

　　The scholars interviewed pointed out that the internationally accepted academic evaluation method is peer evaluation, and the duplicate checking rate should not and cannot be the only standard. (Upon request, some interviewees are pseudonyms) (Reporter Zheng Minghong, Shi Qiangui)