According to a report by Beijing Daily on January 11, a new disciplinary policy aiming to curb plagiarism will be carried out at the city's China Agricultural University (CAU) this year.

The rule indicates that once a graduate student is found plagiarizing articles in any form, not only would the students be deprived of a degree and expelled from school, but the students' advisors will also be penalized.

Furthermore, advisors will be put on academic probation, forbidding them to recruit new graduate students for up to five years. In more serious cases, they would lose their position as a graduate instructor.

When interviewed by Beijing Daily, a spokesperson at CAU said one of the main du-ties of an academic advisor is to provide guidance during the thesis writing process and have a responsibility to uphold their students' academic integrity.

In recent years, there has been an increase in publicized cases of academic plagiarism, many blaming lack of proper academic oversight as a main cause. How do you view CAU's new policy? Is it feasible in reducing plagiarism in academia?

Wang Hongcai

A professor of education at Xiamen University, Fujian Province

The punishment should depend on the situation. If there are obvious problems in students' papers, the advisor should be punished. But advisors might not read everything students copy into their thesis. Under such conditions, the teacher wouldn't be punished.

Shen Yi

A graduate tutor at Beijing Foreign Studies University

Whether tutors can stick to their responsibility and supervise students' academic research is quite crucial, not only for student thesis writing, but also in their attitude towards academic research.

Sun Yan

A second year graduate student at Beijing Normal University

Lack of strict supervision is a reason why grad students' papers are always filled with plagiarized content. CAU's policy can be effective to a certain extent since it is at least deterrence towards teachers as well as students.

But it's better to set up a supervising body consisting of experts and professors to examine papers under suspicion of plagiarism. Simply relying on one academic advisor to monitor is too much responsibility and pressure.