UiTM apologises for placing own logo on graduates' theses

PETALING JAYA: Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) has apologised for the "technical and mechanical error" made when placing its logo on thesis papers of a few British graduates found on its digital repository.

However UiTM emphasised that they correctly displayed the full name of the graduates and the name of the University of Bath on the cover of their thesis papers.

"Due to the digitalised process of uploading their work onto our site, our system automatically and mechanically reproduced our watermark and the words 'copyright UiTM' on their cover page," said Vice-Chancellor Prof Emeritus Datuk Dr Hassan Said in a statement on Friday.

"Not a single word of their work was copied or plagiarised by any UiTM staff or student," he added.

Dr Hassan said that based on a thorough investigation, the thesis papers involved were given to the library as a gift by a UiTM staff member.

He explained that as it was a gift, the digitisation process used was for that for creative works produced by the university's fraternity.

"We regret that the process of checking and verification had failed to notice the external origin of the work and thus the unintentional presence of the watermark and copyright claim.

"It was not deliberate or malicious representation but a technical error.

"We had no profit motive and gained nothing from this act of using modern technology to disseminate knowledge," he said.

He added that to give the thesis papers publicity, they were uploaded onto UiTM's repository between April 10 and June 3, 2015.

"Only the first 24 pages were uploaded," he said, adding that this was normal practice to enable visitors to access the original work.

He said that the uploading was done at no cost to the authors in view of giving them international publicity.

He claimed that after receiving the complaint from Than Siew Beng on April 23, they removed the thesis paper in question and other similar papers from the repository.

He also said they were reviewing their verification process and classification and hoped that such errors could be prevented in the future.

"We wish also to state that developing digital platforms for knowledge sharing is a learning curve for us.

"Once again we apologise to those graduates from the University of Bath. We did not intend to, nor do we claim any copyright to their work," he said.