Year after being accused of plagiarism, MU prof continues as guide to research students

 It has been almost a year since Mumbai University (MU) received a letter from its history department accusing its faculty member, Prof Dr Sandesh Wagh, of plagiarism. While a probe ordered following the claims remains inconclusive, the professor continues as a guide for research students.

The complaint of plagiarism dates back to June 2021 when then head of the department of history, Prof Dr Kishore Gaikwad, wrote to the vice-chancellor of MU alleging that while functioning as a guide for research candidates, Wagh was allegedly “copying and reproducing already researched material from one research student’s work to another”.

The letter (accessed by The Indian Express) added that it has been observed that Wagh provides thesis – which has been deposited with the department – written by previous students, who had already completed MPhil and PhD degrees, to new students under his guidance. “…(The theses) are extensively copied and pasted in the newly-registered students’ dissertations… pages after pages are plagiarised verbatim,” it further said.

The six-page letter also provided examples of plagiarism by comparing research works submitted by old and new students.

Gaikwad, who is no longer associated with MU, said, “I held a department-level inquiry after receiving complaints from students. The examples given in the letter are just a few randomly-checked thesis works. I was also called to make a presentation of my findings before the university panel. But it has almost been a year now. There has been no development in the case while he continues to remain a guide for research candidates.”

When The Indian Express reached out to Wagh, he refused to comment.

In a statement, MU said, “A departmental academic integrity panel was formed in this regard. Following a meeting by this panel, the institutional academic integrity panel has held two more meetings. The investigation continues.”

An official from MU said that Wagh continuing as a research guide is not against regulations as the investigation is still pending.

Written by Pallavi Smart

Source: Indian Express, 9/05/22

Famed Chinese immunologist cleared of plagiarism and fraud

 

A distinguished Chinese immunologist, Cao Xuetao, has been cleared of significant wrong-doing more than a year after the government launched an investigation to review 63 manuscripts co-authored by Cao containing suspected problematic images. The investigating committee found that none of the papers contained plagiarized or fabricated data, but that some had images had been “misused”, which “reflected a lack of rigorous laboratory management”. Cao must now correct those papers and has been barred from applying for grants or recruiting students for a year.

Research leaders in China have been cracking down on problematic research for several years, following ongoing issues with plagiarism and research misconduct. Cao, now the president of Nankai University in Tianjin, China and a prominent voice for strengthening research integrity in the country, is among the most high-profile scientists to be investigated. The papers in question were published before he became university president.

The investigating committee, comprising representatives from the ministries of science and education, and several other government agencies, published a summary of its conclusions online on 21 January. However, it gave few details about the investigation, including how many of Cao’s papers contained misused images. Several scientists contacted by Nature criticized this lack of transparency; others disagreed with the committee’s findings.

Meet this super-spotter of duplicated images in science papers

 

“It is astonishing that [the committee] concluded that no fraud had been committed in any of these cases,” says Elisabeth Bik, a microbiologist based in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, who first raised issues about Cao’s papers in November 2019, which triggered the investigation. Bik devotes her time to spotting problematic images in scientific papers.

Bik says that in some of Cao’s papers, the same images have been used to represent different experiments, which could have been accidental. “That is sloppy, but does not necessarily mean it was done intentionally,” she says. But other papers contain images with unnaturally repetitive elements. “I cannot think of any technical reason or failure to correctly label images that could explain those repeats,” she says. “The images appear to be altered.”

Huang Futao, who studies higher education at Hiroshima University in Japan, says Cao should now explain why there are so many problematic images in his papers, and what measures he will take to prevent similar problems in the future.

Grueling investigation

Cao says the investigation was grueling. He and his colleagues handed over 1500 pages of material some stretching back more than 15 years, repeated experiments, and submitted new data. Cao says he was corresponding author on 54 of the papers investigated and that 35 contained unintentional errors resulting in image misuse. He blames the lack of “unified definitions and journal policies regarding image processing” ten to fifteen years ago when the problematic papers were published. “What are classified as ‘errors’ today might not be considered errors back then but instead, acceptable practices,” he says. Cao did not respond to Bik’s suggestion that some images looked intentionally altered.

In November 2019, Bik raised concerns on the academic discussion forum PubPeer about problematic images in dozens of papers written by Cao and his group. Several other people, mostly anonymous, raised similar issues in other papers from the group. At the time, Cao said his lab would investigate the issues raised and was confident they did not alter the paper’s conclusions. Some of Cao’s co-authors replied on PubPeer that some mistakes were honest errors, such as images being mislabeled.

As a result of the investigation, the committee ordered Cao to respond to the concerns in the papers in question and carry out corrections. Based on a Nature analysis, 19 have been corrected and 3 have been withdrawn since Bik first flagged the papers. Cao is also prevented from applying for national science and technology projects, and from acting as a scientific expert in any activities using government funds.

Cao says he will improve data archiving and image processing procedures in his laboratory. “We’re confident that with more stringent and updated data management and education, we’ll continue to make positive contributions to the advancement of human health and disease research,” he says.

Bik says that the most important upshot of the investigation is the committee’s instruction to Cao is to retract or correct the papers in question — but she is concerned that more papers have still not been retracted.

Sun Ping, a former research-integrity officer at China’s science ministry who now consults on research integrity at Siyidi International Education Consulting and Service in Beijing, would like the committee to make details of its investigation public. “If the investigation report can be made public, the interested readers will make their own judgements,” says Sun.

Others investigated

The committee also released its findings on several other researchers’ papers that had been flagged for problematic images. They found no evidence of fraud in papers by Li Hongliang, a cardiovascular researcher and dean of the School of Basic Medical Sciences at Wuhan University in China, but did identify misuse of images that “reflected the lack of rigorous processing of experimental data”. Li will face the same penalties as Cao, but they will last for two years.

The committee also found no evidence of fraud in papers by Geng Meiyu, a pharmacologist at the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, China, who gained fame with a controversial and contested finding that suggested a seaweed extract can slow decline in people with Alzheimer’s disease, but reprimanded her for incorrect use of images in papers. Nor did they find evidence of fraud in papers by Pei Gang, a molecular biologist at the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, China, and by Rao Yi, a neuroscientist at Capital Medical University in Beijing.

Li, Geng and Rao did not respond to requests for comment on the committee’s findings. Pei says the investigation into his papers was a waste of resources. “I still want to know what the evidence was that started this,” he says.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00219-4

UGC’s New Ethics Course for PhD Students Is Welcome but Not Good Enough

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has announced a new mandatory course for PhD students to familiarise them with ethical issues relevant to conducting and publishing research. In the long term, the course presumably aims to reduce the prevalence of research misconduct, for which India has developed an unenviable reputation.

The coursework the UGC has specified is to be completed before registration, and spans six units with 30 hours of teaching and which are all together worth two credits. It will cover topics such as (but not limited to) scientific conduct, publication ethics, open access publishing and research metrics.

There are many reasons why the Indian scientific community has a poor reputation when it comes to research quality. One of them is that most scientists and students are not very fluent in English, the de facto language of research worldwide, and are inclined to repeat what others have said when they can’t say it themselves. Another is that the education system – aside from notable exceptions at the level of some universities – has downplayed the importance of not plagiarising or not cherry-picking data.

Further, and to echo R. Prasad, science editor at The Hindu, the course is welcome to the extent that it addresses data fabrication and falsification but disappointing because it doesn’t extend to image manipulation.

In 2019, The Hindu reported that a string of papers published by Indian scientists had been flagged on a research discussion platform for including images that had been modified and/or copied from other sources in order to support a result when in fact they didn’t. The scientists that authored these papers, and who were thus responsible for the manipulation, hailed from prestigious national and state-level institutions as well as less prominent places, suggesting that the problem wasn’t affected by access to resources or better working environments but was likely more systemic in nature.

That many of these scientists also hold senior positions in their respective organisations, ergo the image manipulation was intentional and not inadvertent, supports the same conclusion. For example, in 2017, it emerged that V. Ramakrishnan, the director of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Thiruvananthapuram, had published 50 papers from 1984 to 2014 that contained plagiarised text – a charge that Ramakrishnan rejected.

While some people, including administrators and research funders, may only just be waking up to the true extent of the problem, Retraction Watch‘s searchable database of retracted papers suggests Indian scientists have been manipulating images for decades. Elisabeth Bik, a microbiologist and scientific integrity consultant, has also unearthed numerous papers on Twitter and the evaluation platform with problematic images and which had Indian authors.

The course is also limited because it doesn’t discuss, at least on the face of it, the consequences of engaging in unethical practices. Then again, if the corresponding sanctions exist, all institutes must implement them and uniformly so. Currently, very few researchers at various institutes have been appropriately punished for their transgressions, contributing to the widespread idea that, in India, you can plagiarise and flourish. It’s possible that simply ensuring intentional errors will be caught and dealt with, irrespective of who committed them and their stature within an institution, could significantly mitigate the extent of the problem. And if scientific institutions can make a habit of it, the UGC or any other body may have fewer reasons to interfere.

Thus, Prasad writes, “If UGC is serious about teaching research and publication ethics, it should make scientific conduct and publication ethics into two separate courses with sufficient teaching hours or devote more time to teach research ethics and necessarily include image preparation as part of the course.”

But if the course is going to be administered in its current form, then the UGC at least has to commit to two things: first, quantify the problem and maintain the numbers on record, and second, check whether the course achieved its intended outcomes, such as by reducing the number of cases of misconduct, once every five years and modify the course as necessary.

Source: The Wire, 10/01/2020

ICMR Policy Document Accused of Plagiarism

ICMR now says 'issue of plagiarism is not relevant' as document is 'not in public domain' – a claim not backed by facts.

New Delhi: The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the apex body responsible for guiding the country’s biomedical response to the coronavirus pandemic, has been accused of plagiarism, with a new policy document published by it lifting as much as 37% of its content from unattributed sources– a portion considered substantial by all standards.

But for the seriousness of the charge, it only joins a pile of concerns about the ICMR’s ethical conduct since March, when India’s COVID-19 outbreak turned serious.

A complaint was lodged anonymously with the Union health minister Harsh Vardhan on June 12, and a copy was shared with The Wire as well as with a secretary at the health ministry, the Directorate General of Health Services and the director-general ICMR.

The document – called ICMR’s Disabilities Guidance Document in short – appears to have lifted multiple passages from previously published work, including research papers, information websites like those of the WHO and from institutional websites like those of NIMHANS and AIIMS.

Its preparation was supervised by Raman R. Gangakhedkar, the chief epidemiologist at ICMR. It was conceived, “edited and compiled” by scientists Ravinder Singh, Sumit Aggarwal and Heena Tabassum. It was published sometime last month.

According to a ‘similarity report’ compiled using an online tool called iThenticate, the document had plagiarised 9,046 words in all – amounting to 37% of the text – in 106 different chunks. The biggest chunk is of 1,193 words from the WHO website.

As it happens, Harsh Vardhan was elected the chairman of the World Health Assembly’s executive board in May. The assembly is the international forum through which the WHO’s members govern the WHO.

The complaint asked that Vardhan initiate a probe if the charge of plagiarism was borne out, even as the complainant pointed to specific structural provisions that might help.

“To ensure the image of ICMR does not get tarnished, secretary of Department of Health Research and director general of ICMR set up a Research Integrity Unit in the division of human resource development, ICMR headquarters, New Delhi, in 2019,” the complainant wrote.

ICMR also requires all institutes in its purview to have a research integrity officer (RIO), whose job it is to ensure all official documents, including research papers, originating from each institute to be free of research misconduct. This typically takes the form of an undertaking that the authors of each document have to sign.

Whether this practice has the desired effect is hard to say, considering numerous government academic institutes in India have been embroiled in multiple plagiarism and misconduct controversies. For example, a year ago this month, the Indian Institute of Toxicology Research, Lucknow, came under the scanner after 130 papers published by its researchers were found to have used spurious images to hold up the results of research. The institute is a laboratory under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research.

The complainant in the present case also noted the gravity of the situation considering ICMR is responsible for ensuring other institutes whose conduct it oversees don’t plagiarise content themselves.

“ICMR is a body framing national ethical guidelines in research. It is their responsibility to act on their own plagiarism to send a consistent message to researchers and policymakers, that as the premier research institute of this country they will hold themselves to the same standards that they expect of other researchers,” the complainant’s note stated.

The complaint also reminded minister Vardhan that “the University Grants Commission (Promotion of Academic Integrity and Prevention of Plagiarism in Higher Educational Institutions) Regulations 2018, in clause 12.2, prescribes penalties in case of plagiarism in academic and research publications.”

These rules stipulate that documents that “plagiarism in academic and research publications” to the extent of 10-40% warrant the withdrawal of the manuscript.

Finally, the complainant asked for exemplary punishment against confirmed offenders and for the respective institutes they are affiliated with to initiate independent action.

Dr Aggarwal, one of the scientists who conceived, edited and compiled the report, is a member of the ICMR’s research group on operational research under the National Task Force (OR-NTF) on COVID-19. On June 16, a preprint paper coauthored by Dr Aggarwal, as well as Narendra Kumar Arora, the chairperson of the OR-NTF, was involved in a different controversy. The study described in the paper suggested India’s COVID-19 case load would only peak in late 2020. But while many of the paper’s authors are affiliated with ICMR and the paper also acknowledged funding from the body, ICMR itself said it hadn’t funded the study and distanced itself from the conclusions.

Anant Bhan, a bioethics expert, had said, “If ICMR say they did not fund the study, and the authors claim it was funded by ICMR, and ICMR claims its scientist who is a co-author was not aware of the manuscript, this is a gross publication ethics issue. So who is right?”

A rights activist said ICMR should urgently refrain from questionable practices, especially when it could simply have attributed the content it copied in the report to their original sources.

Incidentally, this report was the subject of discussion among disability rights activists last month. While they were impressed at first with the volume of work, their concerns eventually came to focus on the fact that none of the persons involved in drafting the report was from the disability sector.

Sangeeta Sharma, a professor and head of paediatrics at the National Institute of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases, New Delhi, noted that the OR-NTF – which recommended the report – needed to “include persons with disability for fairness and equality of justice”.

Emails to the offices of the health minister, the ministry secretary, the ICMR director general and the Directorate General of Health Services hadn’t elicited a reply at the time of publishing. The article will be updated if and when they do.

Source: https://thewire.in/government/icmr-policy-document-plagiarism-disability-rights

New repor t sug gests MU prof ’s wife copied from him

 2 chapters in Ra jani Mathur’s thesis a ‘verbatim reproduction’ of MU professor Neera j Hatekar’s original work, says institutional academic integrity panel; recommends re-examination of her MPhil degree

More than two years after being accused of copying excerpts from his wife Rajani Mathur’s MPhil thesis, economics professor Neeraj Hatekar has been given a clean chit by the University of Mumbai’s antiplagiarism committee. The institutional academic integrity panel (IAIP), formed under the order of the University Grants Commission, has instead pointed fingers at Mathur. The panel’s report, submitted in July last year to Vice Chancellor Suhad Pednekar, said that two chapters in Mathur’s MPhil thesis were reproduced verbatim from Hatekar’s PhD thesis. It recommended a reexamination of her MPhil degree. The report is a U-turn on the findings of a high-level probe panel submitted in January 2018, which had said that Hatekar had plagiarised 36 excerpts from Mathur’s work for his thesis, titled ‘Studies in the theory of business cycles with special emphasis on real business cycles and their applications to India’. Mathur submitted her dissertation in May 1993, six months before Hatekar did. The new committee, headed by Pro Vice Chancellor Ravindra Kulkarni, sent its findings to Vinish Kathuria, professor of economics at IIT-Bombay, to double-check them. In his report to the IAIP, Kathuria said Hatekar “did the work earlier and also wrote it earlier”. He pointed to similarities between two mimeographs (unpublished academic papers) and Hatekar’s PhD thesis. The mimeographs were written at least a year before submission of the thesis. “Both these working papers are for chapter 2 [of the PhD thesis], for which there is similarity. This implies that there is no plagiarism done by the author of the PhD thesis (sic),” said Kathuria. The IAIP report said a majority of the contents of chapters 5 and 6 in Mathur’s thesis was a “verbatim reproduction” of Hatekar’s “original work” in chapter 2 of his thesis. Noting that Hatekar typed out his wife’s entire MPhil thesis, it said, “He was fully aware of the contents of chapters 5 and 6, which constitute Hatekar’s original work. He ought to have taken due care in chapter 2 of his own thesis.” Since chapters 5 and 6 form a substantial portion of Mathur’s research, the panel pressed for a reexamination of her MPhil degree. “…whether the same (the two chapters) or remainder of her thesis can be treated as original contribution by Mathur needs to be verified… There is no original contribution by way of research by Mathur in chapters 5 and 6 with justifications as to acceptance or critique to the extracts taken from Hatekar’s research. In view of this, the awarding of the MPhil degree to Mathur on the basis of her dissertation/thesis attracts suspicion and deserves to be dealt with appropriately,” it said. Hatekar, who enjoys a cult status among students, admitted that he had typed his wife’s dissertation. “You must remember that in 1993, very few people had access to computers with a word processing software. Getting the typing work done professionally was very expensive. I had access to a computer and could also type. Hence, I did it. I, of course, was fully aware of the use of my work in her dissertation. She has, as far as I am concerned, adequately acknowledged it.” Insisting that he has no complaint about Mathur using his work in her dissertation, he questioned the need to put her MPhil degree under scrutiny. “I, as the author of the original piece, have no complaints,” he said, adding that he is yet to get a copy of the new report. Hatekar has guided 11 PhD students, has won two fellowships from the UK’s Cambridge University and has published several academic papers. In 2014, hundreds of students skipped classes in protest against his suspension for speaking out against the university. For many weeks, till his suspension was revoked, he held classes on the road outside the university’s main gate. Mirror reached out to Mathur and Pednekar. Neither of them responded. The plagiarism probe was initiated in November 2017 on the basis of a complaint by Swati Vora, an assistant commerce professor at Rizvi College.

Source: Mumbai Mirror, 20/02/2020

No two ways about it: Plagiarism is cheating

Strict guidelines, penalties and awareness programmes can help tackle the problem

Indian academics have contributed 35% of all articles published in fake journals between 2010 and 2014, the government-appointed P Balram panel has highlighted. According to a report published in the news website ThePrint, the committee also flagged plagiarism and data manipulation as issues of greater concern that damage the credibility of institutions.

Pointing out that there is a lack of qualified human resource for research guidance and poor infrastructure, the panel has suggested a slew of measures to improve research, including reviewing the practices in recruitment of faculty members, providing grant for new faculty, and reviewing the mechanism by which vice-chancellors are appointed with good academic leadership being vital for improving research culture.

There are several reasons why plagiarism has been flourishing: our academic system, starting from the primary level, encourages rote learning and not independent thinking; widespread access to the Internet; guidelines on research misconduct don’t have any time frames for the closure of plagiarism cases; lax punishment for plagiarism, and, there’s a kind of hesitation attached to openly discussing the problem.

But last year, India introduced regulations to detect and punish acts of plagiarism. Punishments for researchers or students caught breaking the rules range from requiring that a manuscript be withdrawn to sacking or expulsion, a report in Nature said. Earlier, punishments were left to the discretion of the institution. The regulations will apply to the 867 universities and their affiliated institutions that report to the University Grants Commission. The New Education Policy, which is in the works, is also alert to the challenge. “Students will be taught at a young age the importance of doing what’s right… In later years, this would then be expanded along themes of cheating, violence, plagiarism, tolerance, equality, empathy…” the draft policy says.

Along with the regulation, awareness will be critical. The university community and research organisations, Manjari Katju of the University of Hyderabad, writes in Economic and Political Weekly piece, have to spread awareness and collectively evolve a code that will transparently grade offences and correspondingly prescribe penalties. Doing this should not be too difficult: There are examples and precedents already present on what these guidelines and measures would look like; and this makes it easier for India’s institutions to evolve a code that would be universally applicable to all universities and research institutions across the country.

Source: Hindustan Times, 23/07/2019

The right to copy

In this age of copy-and-paste, plagiarism and piracy are rarely regarded as serious issues.

Who invented the revolver? I am not sure the question deserves an answer, since multiple people invented multiple things. Forced to give an answer, most people will opt for Samuel Colt. Thanks to Samuel Colt’s patent (there were separate British and US patents), he had a monopoly on manufacturing revolvers till 1856. The limited point is that because of Colt’s patents and his attempts to guard against infringement, innovations and development of firearms manufacture were impeded. Until the Colt patent expired, Smith and Wesson couldn’t do much.

Researchers agree, from a social welfare point of view, these patents did more harm than good. There is a similar hypothesis, though contested, about how patent wars impeded the initial development of aviation in the US, with the Wright brothers (holders of the patent) fighting Glenn Curtiss and others. Therefore, at the time of World War I, US airplanes weren’t good enough and the government had to enforce a patent pool. All forms of intellectual property right (IPR) protection involve a limited monopoly. That’s an incentive for placing details of the invention in the public domain and the static welfare loss (because of the monopoly) is compensated by dynamic welfare gains through new inventions and investments. The National Intellectual Property Rights Policy of May 2016 cites these arguments.

That trade-off between the static and the dynamic, the immediate short-term and the medium term, is an old debate and we have legislation (WTO, World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), bilateral, unilateral) on IPR protection. There are various forms of intellectual property — copyrights and related rights, trademarks/service marks, geographical indications, industrial designs, patents, lay-out designs of integrated circuits, plant varieties, undisclosed information. Some implementation (patents, designs, trademarks, GI-s) is with the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion and the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks, plant varieties with the agriculture ministry, integrated circuits with Department of Information Technology and biodiversity with environment and forests ministry. Finally, copyrights are with the human resource development ministry. We may have reduced all kinds of IPR to a common conceptual template, such as through the WIPO, but the two roots and antecedents are different — the Paris Convention (1883) for Protection of Industrial Property and the Berne Convention (1886) for Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. In the general discourse and debate, irrespective of legislation, we have accepted IPR more for varieties of industrial property, trade marks, industrial designs, patents, integrated circuits. We haven’t quite accepted IPR for copyright and related domains such as performing artists, recordings, broadcasters. At the back of our minds, we accept the Paris Convention stuff as inherently commercial, the Berne Convention stuff less so.

There was a recent Delhi High Court judgement, involving Delhi University and a photocopying kiosk inside the Delhi School of Economics. The kiosk prepared study packs — photocopying parts of books — and a few publishers brought an infringement case. The court dismissed the suit.
Under Section 52(1)(a), this act of photocopying was “a fair dealing with a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work”. My intention is not to get into the judgement. In any case, that is only about a very specific form of copying. How many people walk into a store and walk out with a stolen product? Barring thieves, this is a rare phenomenon. Within the set of honest people, how many have used pirated software, or downloaded and watched pirated films, musical performances and songs? Let’s ignore those who indulge in commercial counterfeiting and piracy. Barring them, even within the honest set, the number who have indulged in piracy will be high. Notice, a person will not typically steal a music CD from a store, but is quite amenable to downloading songs from the internet. Stated differently, there is a notion of theft when there is something physical or tangible, not otherwise. Copyright and related rights may assume physical form, but the notion is inherently that of something intangible and non-physical. We don’t accept these things as commercial. To the extent we accept copyright and related rights as commercial, we do it more for neighbouring rights and less for old-fashioned and narrow copyrights. Hence, plagiarism is rarely regarded as a serious issue, in this age of copy and paste.

Add to this a perception that copyrights benefit publishers, not authors (this debate on authors versus publishers goes back to the late 19th century). Books by Charles Dickens were published in the US for which he received no royalties. “Show me the distinction between such pilfering as this, and picking a man’s pocket in the street: Unless, indeed, it be, that the legislature has a regard for pocket-handkerchiefs, and leaves men’s brains, except when they are knocked out by violence, to take care of themselves.” This is a quote from Nicholas Nickleby by Dickens. Books by Edgar Allan Poe were published in Britain and he got no royalties either. Legislation for author versus publisher relationships may have improved since then, but there is still the perception that authors get little royalty from books. Those huge advances are extremely rare. An average (varies between hardback and paperback) royalty will be between 7.5 per cent and 12.5 per cent of the printed price, with a large part of that price swallowed up in the distribution chain. On royalties and sales records, few authors are happy with publishers and this undoubtedly reinforces the general impression of publishers being sharks. There is a famous economist with left-wing views. Being left-wing and anti-market, he doesn’t like IPR and vehemently argues against it. But his books always indicate the copyright is in his own name and he too rails against publishers.

The writer is member, Niti Aayog. Views are personal

Source: Indian Express, 13-10-2016

Just a question of rights

The plagiarism allegations against Udta Punjab come as a huge disappointment at a time when the film industry is becoming acutely aware of the importance of obtaining rights to novels

Of late, Bollywood has begun to read. An industry not known to dive into literature, other than a rare Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay or Premchand, has been seeking inspiration in books. While embarking on his Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!, filmmaker Dibakar Banerjee bought the rights to all of Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay’s Byomkesh Bakshi stories in all the languages other than Bengali. His Shanghai was based on the French novel Z by Vassilis Vassilikos. He also has the film rights for V. Sudarshan’sAnatomy of an Abduction: How the Indian Hostages in Iraq Were Freed, about the kidnapping of three Indians in Iraq in 2004.

Banerjee is not the only one. Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions had acquired the film rights for Amish Tripathi’s The Immortals of Meluha, Rahul Bose clinched Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid’s Moth Smoke, and Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment is reported to have Anuja Chauhan’s The Zoya Factor in its kitty. Not to forget the crowd favourite author, Chetan Bhagat.

Plagiarism allegations

It’s in this light that the plagiarism allegations against Udta Punjab, a film on the widespread drug abuse in Punjab, come as a huge disappointment. A recent story on a news website detailed the striking similarities between certain characters, situations, plot points, and devices in the film and Ben Elton’s 2002 novel High Society. If there were so many takeaways from the book, why couldn’t the film rights for it have been negotiated legally? In times of the World Wide Web, when any information is just a click away, the stealth also smacks of sheer foolhardiness and misplaced overconfidence that the inspiration will remain covert, that it won’t become public. The truth is that in this day and age, we have no place to hide.

Plagiarism is not new in Bollywood. It has been an eternal hashtag, especially when it comes to music. You can draw up a huge laundry list of films copied from — or, at the least, inspired by — other films.

It Happened One Night became Dil Hai Ke Maanta Nahin and Chori Chori, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers got made as Satte Pe Satta, Sabrina got turned into Yeh Dillagi, The Silence of the Lambsplayed out as Sangharsh, Ek Chhotisi Love Story blatantly lifted from A Short Film About Love right down to the title. Nothing came out of these revelations; perhaps the makers of the originals never even got to see or hear of these tributes.

The possibility of the imitation getting called out openly happened a few years ago when an online post went viral for detailing scene-by-scene lifts from foreign films in Anurag Basu’s Barfi!, India’s official entry to the Oscars.

Obtaining rights 

Something has been changing since then. Even filmmaker Sanjay Gupta, much maligned by accusations about consistently stealing from foreign films (he turned Reservoir Dogs into Kaante and Oldboy intoZinda) sought legal remake rights for his recent film Jazbaa, based on the Korean film called Seven Days. Like him, most mainstream filmmakers are becoming conscious of obtaining legal permission and remake rights. Warrior was officially adapted as Brothers, and The Man From Nowhere became Rocky Handsome. The Hindi version of The Fault in Our Stars is under production. Filmmaker Sujoy Ghosh travelled all the way to Japan a while ago to seek the film rights of Keigo Higashino’s The Devotion of Suspect X, even as viewers kept debating about the shadow of it lurking in the Malayalam film Drishyam.

At one level, the disingenuity of the makers of Udta Punjab undoes their own genuine efforts as well — the socio-political contextualising of the story, for instance. The time and effort spent in doing research in Punjab, the recreation of the dystopia the State has become, and how the film sheds light on the havoc that drugs are wreaking in Punjab all get sidestepped now under the looming shadow of the allegations.

It also comes as a major blow in how it gets the emerging young, offbeat, idealistic Hindi cinema under the scanner. In one shot, the cinema that had purportedly been re-energising the industry with its inventiveness, out-of-the-box ideas and narratives stands to lose much of its sheen, capacity for grandstanding, and moral high ground. If only the makers of Udta Punjab had made a call or sent an email to Ben Elton.

namrata.joshi@thehindu.co.in

Source: 2-10-2016

Author implicates publication in plagiarism case

Alka Dhupkar TWEETS @alka_MIRROR





Satish Naik alleges that the publication copied parts from his book for theirs; the charges have been denied on all counts

Satish Naik, editor of a Marathi book on noted artist Vasudeo Gaitonde and of Chinha pub lications, has alleged that English book Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde: Sonata of Solitude violated Indian Copyright Act 1957 in a plagiarism case. Naik had filed an FIR under Article 63 of the act on September 10 at Narpoli police station in Thane district, accusing project director of Bodhana Arts and Research Foundation Jesal Thacker, author Meera Menezes, trustee and co-publisher of the Raza Foundation Ashok Vajpeyi, editor Jerry Pinto, project edi tor Abhijeet Randive and Manoj Nair.Satish Naik claimed that before publishing the book on Gaitonde in Marathi, he had submitted the concept to Manish Pushkale of Raza Foundation, requesting funding but the book was rejected by them. Naik told Mumbai Mirror that the `content of the detailed concept note such as pictures, etc., have been copied in the English book.' On January 30, this year, Naik published a Marathi book on Gaitonde.This was his first book on Gaitonde, written in any language and till date, the only Marathi book on the subject.Naik and his team had done extensive research over 16 years for the book.
In the FIR, Naik alleged that an exclusive photograph of Gaitonde which he had bought from photogra pher Werner Dornik has been used in Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde: Sonata of Solitude without Naik's consent. Naik also alleged that three interviews he had taken with Manohar Mhatre, Sharad Palande and Prafulla Dahanukar were copied and used in the English one without his consent.“In the end notes of the book, the dates of the interviews with the three haven't been mentioned. This shows that the author never interviewed them and a look into my book will show how they are copies,“ said Naik.
Jesal, in an email conversation in February with Naik said, “I assure you that we have acknowledged some of your writings as important precedents for our project in the credits section.“
Naik, however, says that the Bodhana book has not credited the Chinha book anywhere. When contacted by this paper, Jesal stated that the allegations were baseless and made `with mala-fide intent'.In the email exchange, she said, “We have been working on this project for five years now, details of which are mentioned in the introductions.“
She added that her lawyer had emailed all the necessary documents to the inspector investigating the case and they were fully cooperating with the case. She also explained that her lawyer would clarify the use of Werner Dornik's photographs. “The Bodhana Arts and Research Foundation is a reputed organisation, which has been working in the research and publication of art for over 10 years and we have obtained all the necessary permissions,“ she said.

Source: Mumbai Mirror, 19-09-2016

ROW OVER SELF-PLAGIARISM - BARC scientist `copied own work for journal articles'

Munish Pandey





Fellow scientists furious as NK Sahoo, who allegedly lifted portions from his papers 15 times, is promoted

A senior scientist with Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) copied por tions from his own scholarly papers 15 times while submitting new articles to jour nals, staff at the premier facility have alleged in a complaint.Despite the blatant `self-plagiarism', Dr NK Sahoo was promoted in May and last week his title was changed from outstanding scientist to distinguished one, according to Bhabha Atomic Research Officers' Association, which has been outraged by his elevation.
Dr Sahoo, who is due to retire in 2018, is currently the associate director of group (physics).
The association, which includes scientists, has urged BARC director Dr KN Vyas to initiate action against him and threatened to take the matter to the prime minister's office if no steps are taken. Mirror has a copy of the letter.
BARC was set up under the department of atomic energy, which reports directly to the prime minister.
The scientific community attaches a lot of prestige to getting one's work published in journals. Most researchers list their published studies in the CV, which helps them gain prominence among peers and even plays a part in speeding up promotions in government organisations.
There is a debate about whether self-plagiarism amounts to dis honest and unethical behaviour.But most reputed scientific journals accept only “original work“, meaning it should not be copied or recycled from any source, even one's own previous studies.
“Dr Sahoo reused portions from five sets of his research papers 15 times while submitting new articles to journals.Two of his papers that appeared in two journals are exactly the same barring the title,“ a member of the association said.“There have been 15 instances of self-plagiarism, yet he has been promoted.“
Dr Sahoo refused to comment on the allegations. “I am not aware of this [the complaint],“ he said.
Another member of Bhabha Atomic Research Officers' Association said a member of the centre's editorial board noticed striking similarities in Dr Sahoo's published articles.
“It is a matter of great concern and hurting that in May, you appointed a scientist who is a habitual offender of self-plagiarism as associate director of a group,“ Dr AP Mishra, secretary of the association, has said in the complaint to BARC director.
“ We a r e a t t a c h i n g i n Annexure-1 a list of references of his several journal papers. It is beyond all doubts that self-plagiarism is deemed as an act of cheating and fraud, and condemned internationally.“
BARC scientists have questioned the apparent reluctance to take action against Dr Sahoo.“When there are national and international movements against plagiarism, should BARC keep silence?“ the letter asks.
A researcher at the centre said Dr Sahoo failed to specify in his articles for journals that he had used portions from his previous papers. “Whenever an author submits a draft to a journal for publication, heshe has to give a declaration that the work is original and it has not been published before. Even if someone wants to cite some fig ures from hisher previous work in the new article, the person has to make a disclosure,“ the researcher said.
“Dr Sahoo did not make any declarations in his 15 papers, which have similar parts and figures.“
BARC spokesperson refused to comment on the complaint, while Dr Vyas could not be contacted.
SCIENCE OF CHEATING
In June, President Pranab Mukherjee gave nod to sack Pondicherry University vice chancellor Chandra Krishna murthy for plagiarism and mis representation of facts while applying for the post In July, the central government senior scientist Swaranjit Singh from the Institute of Microbial Technology, Chandigarh, follow ing allegations that he had fab ricated data for his articles pub lished in a US journal

Source: Mumbai Mirror, 30/08/2016

Trump Campaign Dismisses Speech Plagiarism Claims

The Trump campaign on Tuesday dismissed criticism that Melania Trump directly lifted two passages nearly word-for-word from the speech that first lady Michelle Obama delivered in 2008 at t he D emo cratic Nation a l Convention, calling the complaints “just absurd“.“ T here's no cr ibbi n g of Michelle Obama's speech,“ said Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign manager. “Certainly, there's no feeling on her part that she did it,“ he said. “What she did was use words that are c o m m o n words.“
M r s T r u mp's star turn at the Republican Convention night captivated a GOP crowd that had rarely heard from the wife of Donald Trump. The passages in question focused on lessons that Trump's wife says she learned from her parents.
Manafort said Mrs Trump was aware of “how her speech was going to be scrutinised“ and said any notion that she picked up portions of Mrs Obama's convention talk was “just absurd“.
Reuters

Source: Economic Times, 20-07-2016

DUTA seeks probe into plagiarism charges against VC 

A probe initiated by the Ministry of Human Resource Development into charges of plagiarism against some teachers of the Delhi University has apparently irked the university’s teachers union which has now moved the ministry seeking investigations into similar allegations against the Vice Chancellor Dinesh Singh.

“We have come to know that the MHRD has set up a committee to inquire into allegations of plagiarism regarding some professors at Delhi University. We wanted the MHRD to be aware that there is a pending case of plagiarism against Vice-Chancellor Dinesh Singh. The issue is part of the White Paper submitted by us, but since there is already a specific committee investigating charges of plagiarism, we have requested the Ministry to include this case too,” said Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA) president Nandita Narain.

She alleged that the “case of Prof. Dinesh Singh’s suspected attempts to pass off five publications authored by someone else as his own,” was reported in December, 2012.

“The university had defended the V-C by claiming that his researcher profile on “ResearcherID”, a website maintained by a news wire, had been hacked and that a complaint had been lodged with the Delhi Police. However, its replies to RTI queries following the incident reveal glaring inconsistencies in the university’s claims,” she said.

The DUTA has also alleged that the university had remained silent on the details about the police complaint it had lodged.

- See more at: http://digitallearning.eletsonline.com/2014/10/duta-seeks-probe-into-plagiarism-charges-against-vc/#sthash.OBkuXCD2.dpuf

Sep 19 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

Plagiarism charge on IIIT teacher, HRD probe ordered

Akshaya Mukul

New Delhi:





Indian Institute of Information Technology teacher Vijaishree Tewari, daughter of Congress leader and Rajya Sabha MP Pramod Tewari, is caught in a plagiarism row with the HRD ministry setting up a oneman fact-finding panel to probe the allegations against her.Former IIT, Kharagpur director KL Chopra has been asked to submit the report within a month.
It is alleged that Tewari coauthored an article `Public Distribution System in India: The Problems and Dimensions' which was uploaded on Social Science Research Network (SSRN) website. The article is alleged to have been plagiarized from a report -Public Distribution System of Essential Commodities as a Social Safety Net: A Study of the District of Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh -submitted by Bhaskar Majumdar to the Planning Commission. The plan panel had financed the study . The article, authored by Tewari and others, lifts verbatim big chunks from Majumdar's paper, especially while profiling Allahabad and the sample size.
The article, co-authored by Tewari, was actually a project report by four of her students.Tewari and her colleague Madhvendra Mishra supervised these students for MBA degree from IIIT, Allahabad.Later, the report appeared as an article in SSRN.
Tewari outrightly denies the allegations. She says, “I have been told about the factfinding inquiry . I have done nothing wrong. The project report was done by students.“ Tewari says the complaint is “motivated“. She says the article carried the name of her four students as well as Mishra.
However, Tewari does not explain why she referred the SSRN article in appraisal information form of faculty members. In fact, the article is even mentioned as achievement in IIIT's annual report for 2010-11.
Chopra will go to Allahabad soon to conduct the inquiry . Tewari says HRD ministry is not to be blamed as it is trying to find out the truth.

Sep 11 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

Plagiarism lens on 2 DU teachers

Manash Gohain

New Delhi:





The ministry of human resource development has set up a one-member inquiry committee to look into the allegations against a senior chemistry professor of Delhi University and another teacher.The ministry on Wednesday has instituted the inquiry under K L Chopra, former director of Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, to look into allegations of copyright violations and plagiarism against Prof. Gurmeet Singh of chemistry department and another DU teacher.
On August 21, 2014, the undersecretary (vigilance), MHRD, wrote to the registrar of DU, forwarding a copy of the complaint against the teachers “for necessary action”.
In a complaint made by Society for Values and Ethics in Education on September 25, 2013, it was alleged that the research paper titled ‘Hibiscus Cannabinus Extract as a Potential Green Inhibitor for Corrosion of Mild Steel in 0.5 M H2SO4 Solution’ of Ramananda Singh M and Prof. Gurmeet Singh, published in J Mater. Environ. Sci. 3 (4) (2012) has been copied 85% and reproduced from his another paper title ‘Musa Paradisiaca Extract as a Green Inhibitor for Corrosion of Mild Steel in 0.5 M Sulphuric Acid Solution’. The complainant made similar allegations against two more papers by Singh.
The complaints, addressed to the vice-chancellor of Delhi University, Dinesh Singh, mention that an RTI plea has been filed, but the university is yet to reply.The complainant urged the university to inquire into the matter and take appropriate action as per Ordinance XI. According to an MHRD source, “An inquiry has been instituted to look into the allegations. Around two weeks time is likely to be taken by the committee. The ministry has also written to the university in this regard.” Singh rubbished the allegations saying that all his findings are new. “All the allegations are baseless and there is no issue of copyright violation of any kind. All my findings are different and this is nothing but simple harassment,” he said.

Sep 03 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

Noted Jamia scholar accused of plagiarism

Akshaya Mukul

New Delhi:





A shocking case of plagiarism has come out involving Janaki Rajan, a leading educationist teaching in Jamia Millia Islamia's department of teacher training & non-formal education.Rajan, also a member of the National Council of Teacher Education, whose work among teachers in Delhi and elsewhere has received wide acclaim, has been accused of lifting portions of her 1991 PhD thesis from Jadunath Sinha's book Indian Psychology: Cognition, a 1958 publication of Sinha Publishing House.
Huge chunks of Rajan's 1991 dissertation -Cognitive Development in Primary School Children with Particular Reference to the Con cepts of Space and Time -from Osmania University are allegedly taken from Sinha. Rajan's list of bibliography does not mention Sinha's book as a source. Rajan told TOI, “This is not true. I will comment only if it is brought to my notice.“ She refused to give any explanation. The plagiarism was discovered by a research scholar working on perceptions of teachers of higher education on the role of mass media in checking corruption. Sinha was a Premchand Roychand Scholar who taught in Meerut College. He was also author of a two-volume history of Indian philosophy . A subsection of Rajan's chapter II (Review of Literature) is entirely taken from chapter VIII of Sinha's book.
For the full report, log on to http:www.timesofindia.com