There is an urgent need for an institutional mechanism to deal with plagiarism and other violations of academic ethics.
A few months ago, I helped to organise a workshop on Academic Ethics at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai. It was a well-attended meeting, with many eminent participants from the sciences and social sciences, including the heads of some of our leading institutions. Over two days, several themes were emphasised relating to various forms of academic misconduct. Now that one of our leading scientists has hit the headlines over plagiarised text in some of his own publications, it seems it is time to revisit these issues and discuss them more widely.
It was widely reported in mid-February that an apology had appeared in the December 2011 issue of the journal Advanced Materials, by the authors of a paper that had been published in that journal in June 2011, for incorporating verbatim text from an earlier paper by a different set of authors. The newsworthiness of this arose from the identity of the last author: C.N.R. Rao, former director of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, founder of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore, fellow of the Royal Society (U.K.), scientific adviser to the Prime Minister of India, and one of the most celebrated living Indian scientists.
How it unfolded
The initial reaction of many scientists, including myself, was that this was a non-story: the plagiarism was in the introductory section, probably committed by a junior author inadequately schooled in the ethics of writing, and unnoticed by the senior authors; it was a short passage that did not affect the reported results in the paper; and, once alerted to this transgression, the authors quickly issued an apology. And there the issue should have ended.
Unfortunately, the senior authors (Rao, who was the last author, and S.B. Krupanidhi of IISc, Bangalore) did three other things. They both publicly blamed the first author, a graduate student of Krupanidhi. They both denied that it was plagiarism. And Rao declared that he had had little personal involvement with this paper. Suddenly, many topics discussed at the ethics meeting appeared starkly relevant.
Some major issues that came up for discussion in that meeting were plagiarism and data manipulation; authorship issues; and institutional mechanisms for dealing with reported transgressions. (Numerous related matters were discussed, including inadequate citation, victimisation of scientists, gender issues, and perspectives from scientific journals and funding agencies.)
It was observed by many speakers that students have a limited understanding of what plagiarism is; and the Indian educational system, which encourages rote learning and verbatim reproduction of answers from memory, was squarely blamed. Rao and Krupanidhi, by denying that plagiarism occurred, have demonstrated that the understanding of senior scientists is not much better. Plagiarism in the introduction is better than plagiarism of the results, but it is plagiarism nonetheless. It is disheartening to see a scientist of Rao's eminence claiming that a verbatim cut and paste is not plagiarism. But, on the bright side, one speaker (T.A. Abinandanan of IISc, Bangalore) noted that, since automatic plagiarism-detection software became widespread, about four years ago, the number of retracted papers from India (as reported by the PubMed database) has plummeted: most such cases are now caught by journals at the pre-publication stage.
Grey area
But cut and paste plagiarism is only the simplest kind. What if a researcher borrows the essential ideas from a previously published paper, re-expresses them in new languages, and fails to cite the original? Here, in my opinion, Rao's paper is in a grey zone. The paper that they plagiarised the introduction from deals with a very similar material (graphene thin films; Rao et al. also consider nanoribbons); measures similar physical properties (photocurrent, electrical transport properties, time response) using similar techiques (infrared laser); and even contains similar graphs. Rao and his colleagues were undoubtedly aware of the previous paper, since they plagiarised from it; yet they cite it only once, briefly and without discussion, in the introduction. Not only do they fail to compare their results with a very relevant prior publication: they nowhere even hint to the reader that such work exists.
Issues of authorship
Rao's response to journalists, essentially passing the buck to Krupanidhi and his student, also raises questions of appropriate authorship. There is a widespread convention in the experimental sciences that the student who does the hard work is the first author; the student's adviser, who plans and conceives the experiment, is the last author; and anyone else who contributes appears in the middle of the author list. In this case, by Rao's own account, the work was primarily that of Krupanidhi and his student: yet Rao is the last author (which is usually the case in Rao's papers). To claim “senior authorship” and then disclaim the paper in this manner is rather unsatisfactory. Though media attention has focused on just one paper (for which an apology was published), an anonymous commenter on my blog has given four other examples of papers authored by Rao that contain plagiarised text; none of these have, I believe, been apologised for. One paper, published in Applied Physics Express in 2010, is notable in that it does not include the aforementioned student as an author; the three authors are Rao's own student, Krupanidhi, and Rao. It lifts the first part of its abstract, much of its introductory paragraph, and some text elsewhere, from a 2008 paper by Matheu et al., published in Applied Physics Letters. Both papers deal with scattering from gold nanoparticles in silicon photovoltaic devices (in addition, Matheu et al. consider dielectric silica nanoparticles, while the Rao paper considers metallic ReO nanoparticles); the figures in both papers deal with I-V characteristics and photocurrent response. And, on this occasion, Rao and co-authors make no reference at all to the paper they plagiarised from.
Ethics body
So the Advanced Materials paper cannot be dismissed as a one-time incident, and it seems inappropriate to blame it entirely on one student. This does not, of course, invalidate the work that Rao has earned respect for over the decades. Rao is a prolific scientist — he has over 1,500 published papers, an unthinkable number for most scientists. Five questionable papers may seem a small number in comparison, but they should not be ignored. A scientist of Rao's stature needs to ask himself some hard questions, and then share his answers with the scientific community.
There was widespread agreement among the participants at the ethics meeting on the need for institutional (and perhaps governmental) mechanisms to deal with cases of lapses in academic ethics in an impartial manner, without fear of influence or conflict of interest. Rao himself has previously urged the necessity of such a body. It is a pity that he is now demonstrating, in word and deed, the need for such a mechanism.
In the article, Matheu was misspelled as Mathieu. The author also issues the following clarification -
'Erratum. I should not have claimed that the authors of the Applied Physics Letters paper do not cite the paper by Matheu et al. They do, but (again) inadequately in my opinion. In the case of the paper plagiarised from Istkos et al, published in J.Luminiscence and reported elsewhere in The Hindu, they do entirely fail to cite that paper.' - Rahul Siddharthan
(Rahul Siddharthan is with the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai.)
Very good article. Really Great.
Most of the comments on this article and on this issue in general make it out that Indian scientists are not truthful. It is very sad, that someone of the strature of CNR is under a cloud,he has done something wrong and it would have been better if he had acknowledged it. The extent of his involvement should have been discussed before his name was put in as an author not after it.
I happen to be a researcher and have seen papers being duplicated with different titles by same authors in different journals even review papers, not only by Indian scientists. I just want to higlight that integrity does not depend on the nationality, it depends on the individual.
Blame the defaulters for their misconduct, dont generalise please, Indian researchers, world over, are respected and regarded as hard workers
Now with this present controversy I guess it will be more hard for beginners in India to get funds for research.
Science,Indian Science, is a loser in this controversy. Sad for that :-(
this is prevalent in most colleges...the professors expect the students
to include their name even though they haven't contributed an iota of an
idea to the work...if the student fails to include, they include it
themselves. they threaten using internals etc...
scientific ethics is seriously lacking in india!
I won't be surprised if Prof.CNRao's students, linkers, and networkers
whervever they are will do the fire-fighting. Ask any "true" scientist how many papers one can possibly publish in a year.The average maybe Minimum five and maximum ten (even with colloboration). It is not humanly possible to publish 1500 papers without doing some tricks. In Indian science every field has a feudal LORD but CNR Rao is LORD of Lords. Many will get Ph.D in bibiliometrics if they analyse authorship patterns and their affliation/link with CNR in all his publications. Look at Directors of IISER (DO Only chemistry people carry out science in India?) which is one of the brainchild of CNR.
In the same vein one should probe grants and the associated committee from DST, CSIR and DBT wasting crores of tax payers money for nothing when our country has millions of people below poverty line.
I wish to state that this public domain analysis on a scientific ethics issue involving Indian scientists only reminds me of an article I read many years back, roughly titled ‘Crab mentality plagues Indian Science’. I am told that at least two examples of established foreign bylines attempting to usurp credit from the work of Indian scientists were presented at the said Workshop on Academic Ethics. The Report on the Workshop, in public domain, makes no mention of this serious problem. Nor does this article. Are we biased?
I think researchers are nowadays much interested in creating blogs, writing to newspapers and writing critics about others rather than writing research articles. I dont know how they get free time (including me )being a good researcher. A researcher says he cant get 4 to 5 publications. I know many research supervisors who got more than 10 publications a year. I know few Ph. D., students who got more than 4 publications a year. People are bit worried about others.
Response to Mehter Mohamed Allam (Mar 9)
"If you kindly reflect on the preceding sentence, you will note that it is composed of several plagiarisms..."
This is very well said. However, there are many words and phrases in English with meanings sufficiently close together so that it gives a taste of variation avoidance of monotony.
In this context, if the author feels that there is no need to alter the phrases with equivalent non-verbatim phrases, there is a mechanism to invoke others phrases. One could say, "To quote his phrase...", especially, when the new work is very similar to the earlier one.
Why should scientific community feel embarrassed to begin with an introduction "...so & so work has been done on so & so compound by so & so authors...we are extending this work for a new material which is promising..."? If, what is new is a standard set of experiments with a new compound, would it not be acceptable by editors if motive is stated in plain English? (a question for editors)
A very good article by the author. I'm eager to know whether the
author is hounded by his organisation or boss for writing this type of
article discussing the "truth" boldly. The issue of giving authorship
to the head of the department or the director of the institute is
widely prevalent in many institutes and universities of our country.
In other words it is institutionalised. Researchers are eager to
please their boss for one or the other reason and one way is just to
add their name in the article. As a working scientist I know that it
is very difficult to publish more than 4-5 research papers of quality
in reputed journals. Then how come few persons could have papers in
1000? In our country most do research!!! for taking salary home, not
to find new thing. Western countries will find something and we will
repeat it here. No importance is given for original research or
innovation.
I am an ex-research associate from CIPHET,Ludhiana,i worked for DBT project and made very important contribution in the production of bioethanol from cotton stalk, Lantana camara, Prosopis juliflora and Sweet sorghum and also isolated a cellulase producing fungus which works at par with commercial enzyme with effect that I was pressurised to resign from the job only for reason that PI didn't want to give credit for work which can be patented. It was my own idea,my design of experiments and my execution of the idea even my PI criticized me when I discussed my idea with him but still I went on and that I have got good results he doesn't want to give me credit. PI presented my work at New Delhi in the annual report.I feel I am been punished for doing all the hard work. My nerves would prick me when PI would tell me when I initially joined the project "I want business",its such a pathetic situation of scientist to seek business in research,i am faced with humiliation in spite of my hardwork
I somehow felt that this newsclip from Nature
(2008,doi:10.1038/452015d) should be cited here, for many of the
commentators’ may not be aware of it!
India to propose regulatory body to curb misconduct:
India is to consider creating a national body to investigate
plagiarism and misconduct in science after a string of high-profile
frauds. C. N. R. Rao, who heads the national science advisory
committee, told Nature that he will discuss the proposal at his next
meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Rao was reacting to the
news that Sri Venkateswara University in southern India is to reopen a
massive fraud case involving chemistry professor, Pattium Chiranjeevi.
Last month, Chiranjeevi was found guilty of plagiarizing or falsifying
more than 70 research papers published in a variety of Western
scientific journals between 2004 and 2007. Some of the journals have
started retracting the articles.
most of the science projects in india are doing fake research, this research is just an excuse to get money form the govt to make fake
bills and engulf that money, even funding agencies are very much
involve in this business. Give them 20% and they will not see what
research you are doing. In most of research projects even one hour
research work is done. Science is the biggest business with 100
safety form being caught. There will be no future of science and
scientist in india,
This is like 2G scam in academia.The author has got the courage to expose India's leading scientist/educationlist and generally Indias sciece.The comments are very interesting exposing the IISc and IIT Professors.Prof Rao's image is tarnished and so India's science as he is a leader.However Rao has made contribution to Indian Science and he should be allowed to defend his accuser like Edmund Burke and Warren Hastings in the House of Commons in London.
Rahul,
Your thoughts in the article are true to the core & string of comments on issue are also apt. I have been in Governmental system of Academic Institution,wherein such things happen because whomsoever is the HOD or Director,his/her name should be part of any research paper or study reports. It happens that many research scholors , Faculty may be imvolved extensively for a particular paper or report but "system" may be such that "all have to be approved by Director" or HODs. In all such cases if their names ( HODs or Director) appears in the contributing authors,it becomes easy for approval or even for publication in any journals. My experience or estimate suggests that almost 90 -95% of Research papers are authored by Junior faculty or students & PI or senior faculty generally does only "editorial" correction like 'comma' full stop or paragraph alteration etc.
The above comments are based on my personal experience of 22 years in a Govt set up with no intention to hurt anybody.
Regulatory mechanisms are important to contain plagiarism and dishonesty in Science. I am afraid the distinguished private science academies are also playing an indirect role in encouraging the dishonesty in Science. Now with their proximity, they could influence the government to end up paying extra remuneration to their elected fellows. Quite often, I hear the academies go by numbers and your proximity to the council members rather than on assessing who among the authors is important for the idea and make it work b) how fundamental is the observation c) whether the work is further progressing along the same lines or it is shelved as it is of no use either fundamental or applied value or it could not be reproduced. Where did the idea come from? Based on his own work and grants or extracted while peer reviewing a thesis/project or paper? Plagiarism in students' theses can be contained by running them with the necessary software. But to that effect let every supervisor endorse the thesis that it is checked and the original data (triplicate tests/ worked and unwoked exptl results/ ) are all available in the laboratory for ready verification
Author talks about plagiarism in papers published in Journal. One more ramification of this is verbatim plagiarism in the thesis work that is submitted by students in Indian Universities.Writing a paper has devolved to cut, copy and paste. Professors are indicting their graduate students for the perpetration, but are they not the stakeholders who are conducive to the plagiarism? Are they not the people who should guide a student how to write his thesis work ? But in place of that, they are vindicating themselves and refuting the accusations by passing the baton to a graduate student.
I am also an IISc product and currently a faculty at IITM. Following is an example for misusing public fund for personal benefit. While seeking fund in particular area of research from funding agency, PI of the project need to establish some link between what he propose to do and with his prior experience in related area of research. In order to do that, he will form a critical mass grouping junior faculties from within and/or outside his department, and claim huge grant (in many crores!!!). In reality, he will give few percentage of his grant to the Co-PIs and continue to carry out the research on his whim and fancy, especially he will be focused on establishing facilities that will support his mainstream activities, and those are barely useful for the proposed project. Generally,Junior faculties do not complain as they got enough money for their consumables and they won't even allowed to know what PI is doing after that. I could not imagine what kind of quality research PI could do
Only in India the authors pride themselves in publishing hundreds of articles. How many are originals ? At least CNR Rao must know this. This is a very bold article and the author has the courage to challenge Rao whose attitude to step on others is well known. Probably memory fades as one is past 60.
There is a widespread malaise called mediocrity in Indian academia
that has stifled originality but has been rewarded, awarded and
glorified. Most of the high level scientists in India exemplify the
above statement. If mediocrity is rewarded, and merit is punished,
then the younger scientists will look at the ways their seniors have
followed to achieve power and pelf, then that is what they are going
to follow. there is an unhealthy emphasis on the number of
publications in foreign and Indian journals is the root cause of the
problem. More than half the faculty teaching in Indian state
universities do not even how to spell plagiarism and what it means.
can anyone explain why so many octogenarian scientists of India still
occupy leadership positions when in fact, they have not done any real
research in the past twenty to thirty years of research?
From the historical perspective, modern science was never invented by us. We just try to follow the system implemented by others. And in a process, our majority of the publications are not a part of the attempt to solve the problem at hand but mere representation of the desire to exhibit our intelligence. No wonder publications will lack originality. However, it should be partly blamed to the 1 billion plus population where everybody is under huge amount of pressure to perform. Moderating competition and admiring the simple innovative research over complex borrowed research will bring sea change in our attitude towards the science. Science without purpose is useless.
Plagiarism is inevitable when science writers are unable to distinguish between what is writing from the source and what is writing the source. In India, most “researchers” indulge in the act of verbatim copying and it is widely believed the right way to communicate science and is also encouraged by so the called “mentors”. This is the reason why most PhD holders are unable to publish their science in reputed journals. Plagiarism prevails in every field in India and it is not just prevalent in IISc alone. Most Indians do nothing or simply reproduce everything, but when they do so, they selectively suffer from amnesia.
I think it is a dangerous trend in Indian research to try to sell
quantity as quality. Why does a person need to publish more papers than
he can reasonably handle? How can one explain the need of a senior
scientist with 1500 papers to put his name in paper which he did not
have time to carefully read before submitting? As a community we should
really ask ourselves what our aspirations are and what they "should" be.
Unfortunately, in politics as well as in Science we have (mostly) all
the wrong role models.
Thanks a lot for this article! I am doing my PhD now and sometimes feel that I don't have enough skills to write in English what I want to express, so its quite alluring to copy a few words from some other text that reflect my own opinion in a better words.. But i know of this issue of plagiarism and never do so..
It is unfortunate that Academic Research has gone abysmal and that too
is evident even with the so called top scientists indulging in cut and
paste tradition.
Whoever wrote the manuscript, but it is always the corresponding author who corrects the manuscript finally, if he is not aware that there is some plagiarism in the manuscript then he should leave the corresponding authorship otherwise should take the responsibility.
"plagiarism" is not the new to research. It is as old as research and
mot possible to control in our country unless total system of awarding
Ph.D's should be reshuffled. It is prevailing at very serious levels in
the field of management and other areas.
The cut and paste culture in Indian Science and dishonesty in Indian
Science has to be taken seriously and it would move more rapidly as
the members of elected bodies of National Academies in India are being
rewarded with additional money. In addition to plagiarism , the mutual
understanding reached between the corresponding author and the senior
author for obtaining various benefits like research grants, laurels,
extension on superannuation can make them any thing that is not right.
It is a cycle. I think instead of rewarding a scientist who published
more than four good papers in a years , he should be under scanner
whether the work is genuine, related to the ongoing research projects
in the lab, abilities of students, verification of original data books
etc.,
I believe that the malaise of plagiarism afflicts Indian education
system very severely. As a student of India's top law school, National
Law School, Bangalore, when I campaigned to bring in Turnitin, world's
best anti plagiarism software, there was a lot of a resistance to it,
not just by students but also by faculty members. In fact, on testing
a number of doctoral thesis we found that most of them were heavily
plagiarized and PhD's had be awarded to candidates earlier for
similarly plagiarised papers! However, there is a culture of
complacency and an uncaring attitude which doesn't let authorities
take the idea of academic integrity serious. This must stop soon or
knowledge creation in this nation will suffer. Online plagiarism
detectors must be used and an online digital repository must be
created for all papers/projects/essays by students of all reputed
institutions, which will not just check plagiarism but also bring
academic rigour and transparency to this otherwise dark area.
It is unclear when the practice of routine authorship to heads of laboratories started but it is commonplace in the USA. Even Nobel laureates follow it as a given and are occasionally burned by "ethical violations" attributed to the "junior workers". Although not considered proper in blackboard disciplines the heads and chairs of departments often impose the the practice on junior faculty, especially on "foreigners". The basic objective of academician is search and dissemination. The research and the consequent accumulation of knowledge,in general, is motivated by not wealth, but by desire for a bit of immortality. Hence the notion of honest credit to the true sources is crucial. The expansion of knowledge makes keeping the ethics consideration in focus imperative. Therefore, the conference devoted to the topic praiseworthy. It is to be hoped that it will be held periodically; to impress the point on decision makers is important.
This is a very sad reflection on the state of Indian research. But there is a silver lining as well. It is very difficult to get away with plagiarism now. That itself should help, produce more original papers in India. Also, it is not difficult to figure out what plagiarism is. Indiana University Bloomington not only has a free online course and quiz you can take, you also get a certificate for completion of the quiz successfully. The site's address is https://www.indiana.edu/~istd/plagiarism_test.html . There is absolutely no reason for anyone to plagiarize.
Dr.R.Siddharth had the mettle and courage to reflect on the lack of ethics by India's present day Scientists of high repute and indeed this is a sad commentry on the Indian Academicia.
Time has come to review all the scientific community's work for which government is paying tax payers money. Are the the tax payers getting value for their money from government scientists in India?
While plagiarism exists universally it is quite rampant in India. I however do not criticize the Indian situation too much, because that will only mean that I fail to deconstruct the methods by which plagiarism has been institutionalized, legalized, formalized, and patronized in various non-Indian economies and cultures, and reaping the economic benefits. By the term non-Indian, I categorically mean all non-Indian countries. In any case, the article is highly relevant and timely, but of basd taste. Although CNR Rao is the hero/villain of this article, I think it is extremely unfair to pull his leg publicly, because the alleged "crime" is extremely tiny and inconsequential, but it is extremely consequential in terms of detroying a great scientist belonging to India. I think the article could have dealt with all the issues, without being scandalous.
The major problem is in our system. The capability of scientists or professors are measured through black and white magic, that has been done by them. The promotion, salary, name and fame, all are based on number of papers published by them.
Also in India,a bitter truth is that maximum students (not all) are going for research not due to their interest but just to get the higher degree.
"A mistake by the teacher is tolerated but not that of the student' and "all credit to me, all debits to others" is more painful and junior Author should not have been crucified by Jesus (Dr Rao ). One the VC of Monash University in Australia resigned because of plagiarism! Authorship war is another trauma for young Scientists. A ward of mine recently sweat and wrote the abstract for a paper and when sent to the supervisor, it came with several unknown names unrelated to the paper. When my ward complained to me, I cool downand told thats the order of the day. In one of the foreign Universities, two Indian professors were there and when the Junior professor made it clear "there is no free lunch" and if you dont add value to the paper, do not add your name. The senior professor played a trick to get the contract of the Junior professor, although finally the management found the foul game. If one wants to be closer to the sun, then be prepared for the blisters.
I have taught at IIT-Madras as a visiting professor; the rate of plagiarism was over 80% among submitted assignments--term papers, etc.--at the undergrad as well as Masters levels. That was despite the fact that the syllabi I had turned in to the students at the beginning of the semester had categorically explained "plagiarism." The problem is that except at the dissertation or thesis level, IIT-Madras does not wish to deal with plagiarism seriously at all. The teacher is totally helpless when, under such circumstances, way more than half the class has plagiarised--as that is the norm anyway. Also, most teachers simply do not care and do not rigorously check for plagiarism; if they do, as I did, they are isolated among the faculty and hated by the students and the administration. IIT-Madras was really pathetic.
In India, Plagiarism is not only an academic issue but also rooted deep
in the media as well. I see news papers/news websites re-printing exact
text as others. According to me this malpractice exists in all the
departments of everyday lifestyle (work, academic, social etc). Zero
tolerance on plagiarism must be made as a priority requirement.
Erratum. I should not have claimed that the authors of the Applied Physics Letters paper do not cite the paper by Matheu et al. They do, but (again) inadequately in my opinion. In the case of the paper plagiarised from Istkos et al, published in J.Luminiscence and reported elsewhere in The Hindu, they do entirely fail to cite that paper.
While we should condemn plagiarism, the real worry is when results are modified/changed,partially reported,completely omitted or completely fabricated. I am not condoning cut and paste work,but critical appraisal of research that leads to policy change usually focuses on methods and results-where we need extreme honesty.
Personally i do not believe we are any more honest or dishonest than people of any other race/ skin colour.
When BA PASS babus (IAS) decide the merit of scientists for promotion, reward, salary they deserve etc then how can scientist (from senior to junior) be expected to remain committed to science only. After all every man loves to be recognised/rewarded for his work. India believes a BA pass babu (IAS) knows it all.
I just wish to add the following, which should be read with the
comments from "alp" that, Prof. CNR Rao had resigned from the
Superconductivity Project after spending about 20 crores Indian tax
prayers' money, as reported in front page by Indian Express
(Bangalore issue) in mid nineties. Obviously, no body knows what
extraordinary advancement was achieved from the project.
I was a student of IISc but from engineering background. There is a mad competition that exists among profs in IISc to publish papers but there is one beautiful quote at CSA dept. IISc, "If you are interested in publishing journals you should become a journalist not a Researcher and research is not paper work". Though the profs at IISc I worked with has some genuine contribution in their papers, I came across an intern who had lot of papers and all I saw in most of his papers is rewriting of some other paper with "NEW DATA SETS".
Hope to see at least IISc publish papers with original work/ideas and more importantly not paper-able work that doesn't push the boundaries of science and technology
Good article and discussion of issues in a thoughtful manner. But, please keep the government out of this! Any monitoring or issue of guidelines needs to be from the academic bodies. You know what happens when you bring a politician or an IAS officer into an issue like this - it becomes a worse mess.
@David: Did you not read the article and the importance of that fact that the corresponding author needs to read the manuscript verbatim and with lots of pain before submitting it to the journal. A corresponding author, I may explain, is the one who would be contacted by the researchers world over about the results, discussions et cetera and needs to fully analyze and comprehend the paper before proceeding for submission. If Prof Rao doesn't have the time to go through each and every detail then he should excuse himself of the corresponding authorship. Moreover, it is the trend everywhere that the first author writes the manuscript but that is painfully perused by the corresponding author and sent back multiple times to the student with corrections and comments. Corresponding author means responsibility and if a mistake has been made, the author should own it up rather than passing the buck.
The term "plagiarism" is a curse, but to our utter surprise this term
exist in every where, including some of our reputed educational
institutions. Firstly we must ask ourselves, about the presence of
"plagiarism". In my view our educational system is the main reason for
this evil, and thus ultimately in the higher level our research can be
held responsible too. Students doing research in India are firstly
demoralized by the little amount they get as stipend, and also their
lengthy duration of completing their research, they fell prey to
plagiarism. Secondly most of the scientist under whom scholars and
students do their researches are more attracted to publish papers
compared to having their own patents, due to this rat race plagiarism
is growing. So if this menace is to be eradicated from the face of our
research and educational institutions, we must provide a lucrative
offers for the fields of research and development. And also proper
scrutiny must be done to the thesis-es.
Abstract:
Our research is very new. In this article, we followed a cut, copy and
paste mechanism. We restate several interesting results from the other
paper without attribution. We are of the opinion that future work along
similar lines need to be done.
We have two issues and one basic fault. Verbatim Plagiarism in the
published papers are the main issue here and whoever is the author, at
what position the person is, not an excuse and that must dealt with
seriously. More detrimental is idea plagiarism. It is unfortunate
that in India we do not even understand the seriousness of it. How
this can removed, at least phase by phase is to be thought of. Look at
the text books we get from many Indian publishers for even graduate
level courses. It can be clearly seen that many are copies of other
authors and verbatim copy without even proper references. Students
learn from here. There is no restriction for any such activity. The
basic fault is that we never teach what ethics in a society is, and
that remains the same in the case of professional ethics. Let us
start this activity of bringing up the younger generation by making
them understand what professional ethics means. If we can seriously do
this, yes, there will be a solution.
We must distinguish between text plagiarism, and idea plagiarism. Text plagiarism can be corrected easily using software and by teaching students to make word changes. This will save us from allegations of plagiarism, but what we really want is that our students must think freely and confidently pen their ideas.
We must realize that established foreign bylines also plagiarize from published Indian work (both text plagiarism and idea plagiarism), but for some reason we do not discuss it. Discussing this is essential as it will help our young students gain confidence in our ability to be original.
One SOLUTION to this problem in our S & T activity IS to follow :1.to encourage "single author" works! This can be done by ALLOWING students to write/submit/publish their work with all Guides and seniors be THANKED in the ACK area of the manuscript. This may sound "revolutionary" but i did hear some Profs at MRC Labs do follow this convention. 2. Thanks to UGC scales, it is PART of DUTY of Profs to guide students etc for which salary is paid. Why go for additional credits ? 3.All thr'o school/college days we are told to write answers in YOUR OWN WORDS including Sight Words & Phrases of the area [ & sequences ]. If this practiced in to-to all thr'o study periods the problem of Plagiarism would NOT arise.
I agree David!
dont you think, people are just extrapolating things and extending the strings! If one is publishing articles at such a rate its not possible for him to check each and every word. "Then what is the difference between nursery school and research". First author has and owes much responsibility and to some extent the second author. The GUIDE/SUPERVISOR/PI can help to keep you on the track and helps to analyse the results.
In summary what I can say is, may be voluminous jealous factor which was burning out in everybody's heart since last many years against Prof. Rao is coming out like a Lava now. Even I have a soft corner for the first author. May be he just wanted to write something like that what he copied to change/modify it later in his own words, but unfortunately he missed due to some reason.
The students (PhD/Scholars) should be given Ethics Research course work (which should not be just a mere formality) during first/second semesters course work
Many institutions now use plagiarism detection software to detect this curse! They can be remarkably effective, though it may not detect ghostwriting.
When there is an issue with the published work then the stone falls on the poor student. However, when the same work wins an award then the senior author (or the super author, depending upon the size and nature of the award/prize) takes it away. This may be yet another unwritten Murphy's law.
Having nothing much to do, people the world over are concentrating on plagiarism. If you kindly reflect on the preceding sentence, you will note that it is composed of several plagiarisms and I wrote it only because several phrases are imprinted in my mind because of my exposure to my parents (to a very small degree –they didn’t speak English), to my teachers in school (to a large degree) and the vast number of good and bad novels I read from my childhood to date; including at least six works of William Shakespeare and three unabridged works of Sir Walter Scott.
What I am driving at is (I can’t imagine or recall just how I have assembled the preceding phrase and the sources that inspired it – it just burst out of me) that one cannot say something in an attractive way without extensively borrowing from and also without giving credit to uncountable personages of the past for the simple reason you can’t remember them.
What is important is that we have something to say even if trivial.
We must distinguish between text plagiarism, and idea plagiarism. Text plagiarism can be corrected easily using software and by teaching students to make word changes (this will save us from allegations of plagiarism, but what we really want is that our students must think freely and confidently pen their ideas). We must realize that established foreign bylines also plagiarize from published Indian work (both text plagiarism and idea plagiarism), but for some reason we do not discuss it.
The analysis by Dr. Rahul Sidhaarthan here (under 'Grey Area' and 'Issues of Authorship' in his editorial here) brings out not so publicised aspects of, possibly more prevalent, plagiarism by Prof. Rao and his group -- 'copying' or 'reproducing' work by others without really citing them --, should now prompt a responsible action from this celebrated scientist! I don't think he deserves the kind of responsibilities and leadership that he has been entrusted with in the country!
One SOLUTION to this problem in our S & T activity IS to follow :1.to encourage "single author" works! This can be done by ALLOWING students to write/submit/publish their work with all Guides and seniors be THANKED in the ACK area of the manuscript. This may sound "revolutionary" but i did hear some Profs at MRC Labs do follow this convention. 2. Thanks to UGC scales, it is PART of DUTY of Profs to guide students etc for which salary is paid. Why go for additional credits ? 3.All thr'o school/college days we are told to write answers in YOUR OWN WORDS [ & sequences ]. If this practiced in to-to all thr'o study periods the problem of Plagiarism would NOT arise.
4.One needs to cultivate[takes time & efforts] copious reading habits and writing habits to AVOID humiliation circumstances in life.Thereby be safe in this E-era.
This doesn't surprise me at all. All through my school days and graduation day
(law) we were instructed to take help strictly from from reference books (aka
textbooks). A number of times I went beyond and made projects in a manner
where I would insert my personal opinion and observation so as to make my
project an original work which I could be proud off but when I talked to my friends
a lot of them told me that they would either copy the project as is from the book or
borrow it from a senior friend. I used to be disappointed when I saw that the
teacher would grade me the same marks as them, I felt my hard work was never
appreciated nor acknowledged. I do not intend to suggest as I realise it will fall on
deaf years but I think it would be better for our education system if we encouraged
creative and abstract thought instead of rote learning and copying.
Yes, our school system does not deal properly with plagiarism. So, what do we do?
We stop research and wait for 60 more years till we train all schools. Or we give
admissions in research institutes to only urban covent educated students and close
the doors to the 0.7 billion students in small towns and village who may be bright
but not polished. We may turn them as cheap labour for the western countries.
What is Prof. Rao has done for Indian science is great. So many opportunity for
students, INSPIRE, increase salary for scientists. Regarding, Plagiarism, Prof. Rao is
a fellow of all science academies, Professor at all great universities in the world. Is
anybody saying that he does not understand plagiarism? It reminds me of the old
story that people said that when Tagore got Nobel prize, the elite urban said his
work is not original, he does not know how to write etc. Does anybody remember
them? To quote: Akla cholo re (when nobody comes with you, walk alone and reach
your destiny)
One has to understand few things. Yes, in our school system, the students are not
well-trained to write proper language and how to cite. So, what do we do? Looking
at what Mr.Siddharthan is saying, we will wait for 50 more years till our country
learns how to write. Or we will have research institutes in India with only very
urban convent educated city people and no place for the fresh but unpolished
students from small town and villages. In a country with 1.2 billion people with
rising aspirations among young people mostly from villages, we have to train them
in science. Prof. Rao is a fellow of all the academies of sciences in the world,
professor at all great univ. in the world. Do you think that he does not understand
plagiarism? This is just a very very cheap design to defame him. It is sad that
after all that he has done for this nation, he has to listen to all this. But, as Tagore said: Jodi tor daak sune kue na asshe, Akla chalo re (Go alone when nobody comes
to you).
I have two comments. 1) It is the responsibility of senior authors to
educate and instruct students about plagiarism and specifically ask
them if they have included any such material. 2)The sequence of
authorship referred to is not universal. For example in tens of
papers published by me and my colleagues the authors are in
alphabetical order. The last author is not necessarily the PI. If a
student or a colleague has contributed more than others, his/her name
appeared first, the rest in alphabetical order.
"When quantity starts getting attention, quality becomes a casualty" is very much true in the case of research.
Rahul,
Assume that I publish a very sensational paper with an experiment to show that sand is converted into gold(some alchemy. I will get the Nobel Prize too!). I copied the whole introduction of that paper from other journal and published it. Of course, I agree that it should have been avoided.
Now can you say that this experiment is not a original one and it is a plagiarized one. Will the society won't give the credit to that experiment just because I copied the whole introduction from some other journal or even carry out some similar experiments done with iron oxide. Or can you say the sand is known and gold is known and there is no originality? Which part of the paper is important in a science journal. I will leave it to you to decide. But don't think like a journalist better think as a scientist.
At a time when research work was carried out with due reverence and
exact reporting was done,it is very disheartening to know the truth when
eminent scientists from India plagiarize in order to rake up their name.
Myself being a young budding researcher I was, in the very beginning of
my research career, taught about plagiarism and perils of plagiarism
from my guide and mentor. It is always important for research students
to get to know 'what not to do' than 'what to do'.
The term "plagiarism" is itself a very tricky term, being a post
graduate of engineering stream I have seen people terming this as
smartness or tactfulness. But before going deep into this matter first
of all we must see why now a days people are resorting into such kind
of acts, point one most of the people now a days opting for phd, post
doc etc higher degrees are not properly guided and monitored by their
guides, all of them are in a rat race to publish their papers in
international and national journal, in a bid to do so plagiarism takes
place. Point number two, research area of our country is very weak
compared to US or UK, students dedicating their life for the research
are given a meager amount of 15K 20K rupees pm stipend,so most of the
genuine students go outside India, remaining stay back so we cannot
expect them to be genuine enough as they need the degree as soon as
possible for this they resort to plagiarism. So to avoid this we must
upgrade the research scenario in india.
Also no science in doing "Nonscience". These are some unintentional mistakes happened in the introduction part of few papers of Prof. Rao collaborated with the other expert. He wanted to do some device characterization for the graphene/RGO samples he synthesized. He trusted their expertize in the device fabrication and would have got the results. The other expert also did not notice this mistake in his draft before giving it to the final correction. It is also impossible to check every line in the introduction whether it is copied from some other journal or not. The practical difficulty will be known to every one who is doing science but not to the people who want to keep their name in the newspapers by finding every small fault from the well-known persons and try to make mountain out of mole. No famous scientists are bothered about this issue. They know this can happen to anyone and should be careful in future. For non-perofmers it won't happen anyway
Plagiarism needs to be discouraged right from the school level. At
colleges & universities, Anti-Plagiarism software should be used
regularly to discredit the copy-paste work and fine the culprits. Some
of the IIM's do it regularly, other colleges can also take a cue. The
culture of copy-pasting is an impediment to original research work in
our institutions of excellence.
Two arguments are made to 'explain' the verbatim lifting of material, generally in
the introductory or concluding sections of papers. (1) "Students are weak in English." (2) "Our educational system at both school and college levels rewards verbatim reproduction of textbook material, and this habit persists." Both arguments are untenable, if not laughable. (1) If I KNOW that a student is "weak in English", and yet produces polished manuscripts, I would become immediately wary and, at the very least, ask the student for the sources consulted, to check out for myself that they have not been used inappropriately. (2) All of us applaud and praise toddlers who accurately mimic their elders. Is anyone amused by this practice when the children are grown up? Research scholars are in their 20's at the least, and certainly know what's copying and what's not. By the way, even our much-maligned educational system does not condone copying, although it might encourage memorisation.
Rahul..I have been following your efforts to tarnish CNR RAo’s image through your blog.. Why don’t you understand that these are just 5 papers out of his 1500 and more importantly there is another senior professor who is common in all these papers? Being a scientist, who collaborates a lot, you will definitely understand that CNR has collaborated for this research with another senior scientist. Normally the student who is the first author of the manuscript writes the manuscript (I hope in your group you also follow this trend) and it is not possible at all to check manually whether one or two sentences are copied by the student. Why don’t you ever analyze this whole issue from that angle? After reading your comments, I seriously doubt that you have some personal vengeance in this case.
I am glad that we are now beignning to realize what Intellectual Piracy means, laws should be enfroced against this crime which is actually greater than other blue collar crimes we see like murder, assult, rape etc. This stealing someone's mind and denying them of thier wages -in the UK, USA etc it is a serious crime-Intellectual Piracy, but in India we seem to be taking it very lightly.
Introduction section is to describe the motive behind current work in the paper and how it is useful to advance the scientific understanding than already published work. Along with this some introductory things are added to make a paper readable for a new person; here repeatability with other paper is possible; but it should not be taken as a serious issue, nobody bothers it if results and conclusion are new. I think that people, who don't know how to write a scientific paper (e.g. journalists), are making a non-issue a serious issue and forgetting that results and analysis are the important part of paper to be looked into.
I disagree with your critical comments. There are many experiments reported using carbon nanotubes. If the same experiments are carried out in graphene and find out the same properties can you say that all are carbon and should not be published in any journal. You may have this wrong opinion but others, I am sure won't have it. The similarity of the experiment/papers in any two papers is always subjective and better you leave it to the publishers and the expert reviewers in that field. You need not be a self-proclaimed arbiter here to judge the merit of a paper.
Student who does the hard work is the first author; the student's adviser, who plans and conceives the experiment, is the last author; and anyone else who contributes appears in the middle of the author list.
Plagiarism is indeed a menace in research and must be understood in full to curb it. Certainly, Mr. Rao's paper has brought disgrace not only to himself & IISc but also the whole scientific community. As pointed out in the editorial, plagiarism is not well interpreted and sometimes intentionally ignored.Academic ethic training sessions for student authors is imperative to avoid such embarrassments.
In India the seniors ask or pressurise the actual working person to include their name to shower future academic favour to the actual working person.Sometime they even do not know what is being written. Prof CNR Rao being known as a towering figure in his field should have better discouraged such happennings.Such type of pliable behaviour is destroying research in India.
A good way of doing science is in following steps-
1. You think and do an experiment (or theory)
2. You circulate it amongst your colleagues and get their feedback
3. You go to a conference and present your data/conclusion
4. you publish the paper and acknowledge the colleagues mentioned in step 2.
The problem happens is that most of these steps are missed if you publish 2 or 3 papers per month (the case with Rao).
Also, it seems that there is a trick being played in this paper- Rao's name was included to increase the gravitas of the report. This is a very common trick where established scientist are brought on board at the final step and these scientist give their consent for authorship in lieu of an 'easy' paper. This brings to another question- why does Rao need this publications? The journal was no Nature/Science and Rao is above the 'publish or perish' crowd.
Excellent! The author has clearly shown that the malaise goes deeper than a 'cut-n-paste' introductory paragraph. (1) It might help if each publication has a footnote stating the role of each author in the publication. I believe this is still anathema to most researchers. It would be better than following some feudal system in which the first author is the work-horse, the second or third author is the person who inspired rather than perspired and then the rest are heads of division or organization. (2) Doubt and criticism at times remain within an old-boys network and does not become knowledge in the public domain. It is usually a lucky day for Science when erroneous publications are casually mentioned as inadvertent errors in footnotes. Errors should be highlighted as much as fraud.
Plagiarism in colleges: When professor gives 'assignments', he usually gives a part of the syllabus so that he won't have to teach that. The syllabus would be the sequential order of the contents of a 'foreign author' textbook. Thus, the students copies those topics from the textbook or from internet. I do not find anything wrong in that. Plagiarism will be dealt with plagiarism. Unless there is an appreciation for original work, plagiarism will prevail. I found that plagiarism is smart work than doing original work and not getting any different marks.
I hope the author of this article knows the quote - 'If you copy from one author, it's plagiarism. If you copy from two, it's research.'
This article very clearly illustrates the malaise affecting the Indian Society and the tolerance shown by the society for transgressions by the so called people in power. In most of the Western Societies, any individual holding such a prominent public position would have resigned, or asked to leave. Not in India. They provide innovative excuses to show why they are innocent of the misdeed and merrily carry on. The article talks about this prominent scientist having authored 1500 papers; I rest my case.
Whole heartedly agree
Peer reviews at the institution of origin before sending a paper for publication and periodic audits of experiments and results - are something scientific community need to think of.
Well... if the scientific adviser to the PM has been minimally ethical, he wouldn't claim (by including his name) that he had contributed at least partially to 1500+ papers! It is just impossible and every one of us know that! It becomes all the more hopeless when a PhD-holding PM could not see such an impossibility. The node with most connections in a network becomes prominent, irrespective of the means that it used to acquire such connections. That's the reason thugs rule us. External mechanisms to control such prominence is meaningless and futile. The solution is to prop up artificially other "good" nodes to counter the bad and the ugly. Individual self-interest is most effective in pulling down intellectual impostors. The fight has to be personal. Got nerves?
Dear prof. Siddharthan, Thanks to dare to say truth against a big Boss.Perhaps you will agree these bosses encourage plagiarism.The rule is not even strictly followed about the serial number of authors of the paper.There is no rule of it so that big boss may escaped any time from the responsibility but take credit all the times.Why not scientific community come forward for strict action against plagiarism?All big bosses are involved in this game.
With the increasing use of internet it easier than ever to plagiarize. Every educational institution should have plagiarism policy in place. Students should be well informed about what plagiarism is before they are expected to follow the ethical practice. Student should be given F grade if they are caught plagiarizing. Education should be engaging and thought provoking. But it is very hard in the Indian educational system where rote learning is encouraged and students just put on the paper the answers they memorized.
Rahu Sridahran writes, "It was observed by many speakers that students have a limited understanding of what plagiarism is; and the Indian educational system, which encourages rote learning and verbatim reproduction of answers from memory, was squarely blamed."
Dr. Sridahran, there is a very simple fix to this: Ask ALL research students in the very stages of their work to enroll in a course for credit on technical writing that covers citation protocols and discusses plagiarism in some detail. Maybe Dr. Rao's case may be cited as very Indian example of the embarrassment it can cause to big name scientists.
It is really sad for Indian Science that plagiarism is so rampant that it has completely killed the reliability of findings in research work. How many research papers were published by great scientists of the world including Newton, Einstein and such others. Govt of India should set up a committee to examine all papers published by C.N.R. Rao & S.B. Krupanidhi in light of present allegation to find out the originality of those papers. And they should be suitably punished if it is conclusively proved that they knowingly plagiarized from other workers or published manipulated data. It will go a long way to clean scientific research in India.
Nice article. While the issue of verbatim plagiarism is the casus belli of the media
furore. The issue of authorship and plagiarism of ideas is much deeper and more
concerning. This situation is, in my opinion, rather endemic in academia all over the
world. Usually adding a "senior" author to the paper has become a norm in order to avoid political confrontation or simply to earn brownie points much to chagrin of the person who actually worked on the article. In some cases the primary authors themselves add a "senior" author to get the paper recognized in a reputed journal (on whose board, the "senior" author may be a member) :).
I am from IISc, when CNR Rao was the director. This kind of taking authorship from almost entire SSCU/MRL department as if, he is the main idea contributor and rest of the professors does not have original idea has been going on for several years. What has come out is only the tip of an iceberg. There is an avalanche of irreproducible results based papers he published especially in the area of superconductivity. All, it requires for some one to test the papers he has published and people will find the truth..
If Dr. C. N. R. Rao is involved in such kind of activities, from whom
only excellence in all aspects of scientific works is expected; then I
am afraid how other scientists in India would be working? Further, a
very obvious doubt has crept into my mind is that, if all the 1500
papers published by Dr. Rao reflects truly the genius??
Dr. Rao might not have anticipated but it really given a further poor
image of India in terms of scientific conducts. Its a pity.
There is definitely a need for regulatory Board to curb such unethical acts. This article looks like it is picking on Mr.Rao. I hate to see such articles from researchers bashing someone else in their own community. A more generic one would have made more sense.
I agree every researcher has to display some moral values before they start writing/publishing their thoughts/papers.
From Tom Lehrer's Lobachevsky:
Plagiarize,
Let no one else's work evade your eyes,
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,
So don't shade your eyes,
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize...
Only be sure always to call it please "research".
One of the main reasons why some researchers do not cite references they take ideas or phrases is that they think their work will be less original. This is a wrong thinking, more they cites more better the paper is. Of course, there have to be work by themselves too.
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