Group plagiarism: from student to minister

Abstract: The article describes four cases of group plagiarism and proposes one of the ways to combat this negative phenomenon.

Much is currently being written about such a negative phenomenon of scientific life as plagiarism, but in the vast majority of cases we are talking about either master's and doctoral dissertations, or student work. Almost nothing is said about plagiarism by faculty not related to obtaining academic degrees, and one may get the impression that such a problem simply does not exist. But this is not so - faculty plagiarism not only exists, but sometimes manifests itself in such a disgusting form as group plagiarism. This can be seen in a number of examples taken from a subject area such as information technology.

I will give these examples, using the word “plagiarism” as a synonym for appropriation of authorship, about which the information letter of the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation dated March 30, 2001 N 36-15-01 ( http://docs.kodeks.ru/document/901810174 ) says: “Assignment authorship (plagiarism) is expressed in the fact that a person declares himself the author of someone else’s work, releasing it in whole or in part under his own name (pseudonym). Attribution of authorship is recognized as <…> the use in one’s own works of someone else’s work without reference to the author.” At the same time, I will not touch upon the scientific value of primary sources, which tends to become obsolete over time.

Let me start with the fact that in 2002 I summarized the early results of my information theoretical research and published them in the form of an article: Vyatkin V.B. Synergetic information theory: general characteristics and examples of use // Science and the defense complex - the main resources of Russian modernization: Proceedings of the interregional scientific and practical conference. Ekaterinburg: Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2002 [1]. In the same year, the article was supplemented with a contextual application and posted on the Internet [2].

And so, on July 25, 2011, on the portal of the Moscow City Palace of Children’s (Youth) Creativity, in the section “Publications of the Department of Technical Creativity” [3], a verbatim copy of my article appeared along with an appendix in the form of a separately published textbook with the same one as me, title, but without any mention of my last name: Dementyev I.O., Ilyin I.V., Kovalev S.N., Matchin V.T., Mordvinov V.A., Svechnikov S.V., Trifonov N.I., Tsypkin V.N. Information and communication technologies. Information environment in education, part 6. Synergetic theory of information: general characteristics and examples of use / ed. Doctor of Technical Sciences prof. V.K.Raeva / MGDD(Yu)T, MIREA, AMO, FGU GNII ITT “Informika”. M., 2008. Plagiarism 100%. All “authors” of this manual are employees of the Moscow State Technical University of Radio Engineering, Electronics and Automation (MSTU-MIREA), and with the exception of one – Deputy. Dean of the Faculty of Cybernetics Associate Professor V.N. Tsypkin – represent the Department of Technical and Information Management Systems (TISSU) of the Faculty of Information Technologies represented by the head. department, laureate of the Government of the Russian Federation, Honored Worker of Higher Education of the Russian Federation, Honored Worker of Higher Professional Education of the Russian Federation, Professor Mordvinov V.A., Deputy. head department of associate professor Kovalev S.I., associate professor Dementyev I.O., associate professor Svechnikov S.V., associate professor Trifonov N.I., senior teacher Matchin V.T., assistant Ilyin I.V. General editing of the manual was also carried out by an employee of the TISSU department, Professor V.K. Raev.

Thus, judging by the output of the textbook, nine (!) people worked on it. Moreover, all the “work” of this impressive team boiled down to the fact that they crossed out the name of the author of the copied article and wrote in their own names, and also removed all author’s publications from the list of references. That is, everything was done to ensure that not a trace remained of the name of the actual author of the published material.

The discovered fact of unceremonious group plagiarism prompted me to conduct a corresponding analysis of some other publications by employees of the TISSU department. As a result of the analysis, a number of works with a significant amount of plagiarism were revealed, some of which were published in collaboration with representatives of the State Research Institute of Information Technologies and Telecommunications (FGU GNII ITT “Informika”). To demonstrate this, I will first point out two issues of the so-called “Postgraduate Readings”, regularly published by the TISSU department. At the same time, I will immediately note that in the general list of authors of plagiarized works, the names of people from the highest echelon of managers of Russian education appeared. But, in order.

Employees of the TISSU department have previously been publicly accused of plagiarism. This was done in 2006. Professor of the Kuban State Agrarian University Lutsenko E.V., who, in one of his articles addressed to the TISSU department, said that his developments were published there without any reference to the author [4, p. 10]. I contacted Professor E.V. Lutsenko. and asked him whether he had taken any additional action against plagiarists. The professor replied that he had a telephone conversation with the manager. department Mordvinov V.A., during which he was apologized. Time has shown that these apologies are an empty phrase, as evidenced by the work published literally a year later: Dementyev I.O., Mordvinov V.A., Matchin V.T., Nikulin G.S. Information morphism and its model representation. Semantic-entropy characteristics of the information morphism model / Postgraduate readings, issue 08, MGDD(Yu)T, MIREA, AMO, FGU GNII TT "Informika" M., 2007 [5], one of the authors of which, in addition to the already familiar plagiarists, is ( at the time of publication) student of MSTU-MIREA Nikulin G.S.

The analysis showed that 55% of the content of these readings (pp. 5-9) are an almost verbatim reprint, along with pictures, of sections 4.1-4.5 of the article by Lutsenko E.V. Mathematical method of SC analysis in the light of the ideas of interval bootstrap robust statistics of objects of non-numerical nature // Scientific journal of KubSAU, 2004, No. 01(3) [6], and again without any mention of the author.

The next example of group plagiarism is the 12th edition of postgraduate readings of the TISSU department: Ivannikov A.D., Mironov A.A., Mordvinov V.A., Sigov A.S., Tikhonov A.N. Modern synergetic theory of information processes and systems / Postgraduate readings in the specialty “Systems analysis, management and information processing”. Issue 12 – FGU GNII ITT “Informika”, MGDD(Yu)T, MIREA. M., 2009 [7].

A detailed analysis of these readings showed that 72.8% of their volume is plagiarism in the form of verbatim cutting of text from four works: Synergetics: processes of self-organization and management. Textbook / Under the general editorship of A.A. Kolesnikova. In 2 parts. Taganrog: Publishing House TRTU. 2004. Part I [8] (5.8%); Vyatkin V.B. Introduction to the synergetic theory of information // Website “System education: information and reflection” [9] (27.3%); Kolesnikov A.A. Cognitive capabilities of synergetics // Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2003, volume 73, no. 8 [10] (16.5%); Suvorov V.V. Synergetic concept of self-organization // Synergetics. Proceedings of the seminar. T.Z. Materials of the round table “Self-organization and synergetics: ideas, approaches and prospects.” M.: Moscow State University Publishing House, 2000 [11] (23.2%).

None of these works are listed in the list of references, but there are plenty of publications by the authors themselves, who also say in the annotation that the readings “contain authorized contributions of the compilers <...>, reflecting the results of their scientific, industrial and educational activities” . The quality of the authors of the readings is simply amazing - out of five people, four are laureates of the Russian Government Prize, and two are from the highest echelon of Russian science and education. In addition to the already mentioned Professor Mordvinov V.A., this is the rector of MSTU-MIREA, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, member of the Scientific Council under the Security Council of the Russian Federation, laureate of the Government of the Russian Federation and the State Prize of the USSR, honorary worker of higher professional education of the Russian Federation, Professor Sigov A.S. .; Director of the Federal State Institution GNII ITT "Informika", academician of the Russian Academy of Education, former Minister of Education of Russia, four-time laureate of the Government of the Russian Federation, Honored Worker of Higher Education of the Russian Federation, Professor A. N. Tikhonov; first deputy Director of the Federal State Institution State Research Institute of Technology "Informics", twice laureate of the Russian Government Prize, Professor Ivannikov A.D. The fifth co-author is simply the assistant of the TISSU department A.A. Mironov.

All of the indicated cases of plagiarism refer to those publications by employees of MSTU-MIREA and the Federal State Institution GNII ITT “Informika”, which are separate publications. Along with this, plagiarism occurring on behalf of these organizations has already penetrated the well-known List of Higher Attestation Commissions of leading scientific journals. An example of this is an article in one of the oldest Russian magazines - Bulletin of Tomsk Polytechnic University: Kulagin V.P., Matchin V.T. Mathematical modeling of an OLAP cube in the context of aggregation of simple and hierarchical dimensions // Bulletin of TPU, 2010, volume 316, No. 5 [12]. One of the authors of this article, in addition to the teacher V.T. Matchin, who has already been convicted of plagiarism, is again a titled scientist - Deputy. Director of the Federal State Institution GNII ITT "Informics", laureate of the Presidential Prize of the Russian Federation and the Prize of the Government of the Russian Federation, Professor Kulagin V.P. (currently acting rector of the Moscow State Technical University of Electronics and Mathematics (MIEM)).

The “Amount of Information” section, which occupies 23% of the volume in this article, is a summary with verbatim quotes from that part of the monograph by E.V. Lutsenko. Automated system-cognitive analysis in the management of active objects. Krasnodar: KubSAU, 2002 [13], where the so-called emergence coefficient is constructed (Section 3.1.3). Again, there are no references to the source, and the bibliography lists only two reference books on mathematics, neither of which are referenced in the text. The presentation of the material is accompanied by such words as equate, find, obtain and, as a result, readers should have the opinion that this is an article by the actual authors of the obtained mathematical formulas. It should also be noted that copies of the TPU Bulletin magazine are sent to leading libraries in the world, including libraries in countries such as the USA, Great Britain, France, and Germany. Accordingly, it can be stated that plagiarism by representatives of MSTU-MIREA and the Federal State Institution GNII ITT “Informika” has already crossed the borders of Russia.

Let's summarize. The article describes 4 cases of group plagiarism, the volume of which in the relevant publications varies from 23% to 100%. The general list of authors of plagiarized works includes 15 people, including 6 professors, 5 associate professors, 5 laureates of the Government of the Russian Federation, 1 laureate of the President of the Russian Federation, 1 laureate of the State Prize of the USSR, 1 corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 1 academician of the Russian Academy of Education, 2 honored workers higher school of the Russian Federation, 2 honorary workers of higher professional education of the Russian Federation. The years of publication of plagiarism are 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010. Taken together with the total plagiarism of students, this cannot be called anything other than the degradation of the scientific and educational system of Russia.

Science has probably never encountered such a phenomenon as systematic group plagiarism. The main reason for its appearance should be considered the lack of effective penalties for appropriating the results of other people's scientific research and simply fragments of published scientific works, regardless of their significance . Now it is realistic to punish a scientific plagiarist, and at its own discretion, only his management, as well as the dissertation council or the Higher Attestation Commission, can punish him if we are talking about obtaining an academic degree. And if you are a leader yourself, or enjoy the patronage of management and, in addition, already have an academic degree, then, by and large, you have nothing to fear. – The existing legislation in this regard is almost completely toothless and contradictory.

On the one hand, in the chapter “Copyright” of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, Part 4 of December 18, 2006 N 230-FZ [14], in Article 1255, paragraph 1, it is declared that “ intellectual rights to works of science, literature and art are copyrights” , and on the other hand, Article 1259, paragraph 5 states: “Copyright does not apply to ideas, concepts, principles, methods, processes, systems, methods, solutions to technical, organizational or other problems, discoveries, facts, programming languages.” The content of almost any scientific work can be summed up under this point. Accordingly, if the author of a scientific work, having discovered plagiarism, wants to protect his copyrights in court and receive compensation for moral damage caused, then he will inevitably encounter this point and, having wasted time, nerves and money, will most likely receive a court decision “ deny the claim."

We must finally begin to wage a real large-scale fight against scientific plagiarism, not limiting ourselves only to public reprimands and sanctions against students, graduate students and doctoral students. It is necessary to apply financial measures. – It is possible, for example, to deprive plagiarists of the opportunity to receive grants and take part in competitive work under R&D and federal target programs. To do this, it is enough to create and maintain in open access an all-Russian database on scientific plagiarism and reject, without consideration of the merits, competitive applications for carrying out any work at public expense, if the applications include people from this database.

Until such measures are taken, plagiarism will flourish in the Russian scientific and educational system.

Links:

APPENDIX

Evidence base for plagiarism

(comparative tables of texts from primary sources and plagiarized works, which are attached to the article in the form of separate files)

1st instance of plagiarism
2nd case of plagiarism
3rd instance of plagiarism
4th case of plagiarism

Information about the author of the article:

Viktor Borisovich Vyatkin

Academic degree : Candidate of Technical Sciences

Public title : Corresponding Member of the Academy of Informatization
education

Place of work : unemployed

Last place of work : senior researcher at the Department of Informatics and Science Science of the Central Scientific Library of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Email address : vbvvbv @ yandex . ru