Review 5 3 Universities & 1 Institute − Plagiarism in grant application for 465,000 Euros from Public Budget − INSCC, Politehnica Bucharest, Transilvania Brasov, Pitesti


Alege limba 

This is a grant application for a nationally funded project in Romania, signed off by 4 (four) Romanian institutions, as part of the Partnership Research Programme PCCA 2011. It was suspected of plagiarizing 5 international works. As usual, a number of international researchers are asked to review the conduct.

The proposal was asking for 465,000 Euro (2 MILLION RON) from the public budget, the maximum that could be claimed, as specified in the call for proposals. Of this sum, roughly 116,000 Euros/year were planned for salaries (excluding indirect costs) for 4.5 person-month over 2.5 years (see table 6). Each of the four institutions justify 2 persons. One institution was asking 4 times more the amount for salaries than the other three.

Also read the Nature article and the Adevarul article (English Translation), by Dr Alison Abbott and Liviu Avram respectively, the two correspondents we collaborated with for this case. Details below.

Events leading to this case

One of the official external reviewers of PCCA 2011 for this application found that it is extensively plagiarizing 5 (five) international works, and they notified the National Ethics Council of this on 22 Feb 2012. The legal deadline stipulated by the Romanian law for resolving such a case (since notification to publication of decision) is 90 days.

We were told that the National Ethics Council investigated this case, formed a report and proposed several sanctions, and in May 2012 they sent their report for approval to the legal department of the ministry of research.

Shortly afterwards, in June 2012, all the members of the National Ethics Council were dismissed and replaced with new members, some of which have received public accusations of plagiarism supported by evidence.

To this day, 5+ months after the expiration of the legal 90 days deadline, no decision has been published regarding the initial notification from Feb 2012. It is assumed that either the legal department of the ministry did not reply or that the Ethics Council report never reached the legal department.

The PCCA 2011 organizers published a list of 14 grant applications that had “problems of originality” notified by the official reviewers. This grant application is the 1st in that list: PN-II-PT-PCCA-2011-3.1-0781.

The former Ethics Council did resolve 5 (five) notifications of plagiarism concerning PCCA 2011 grant applications, 4 (four) of which can be found in the above list of 14 problematic applications. These 5 are decisions no. 517, 539, 543, 545, 547. Of note is the fact that all these 5 decisions received the approval from the legal department of the ministry (required for publishing the decisions).

We were informed that, since then, Nature and the Romanian newspaper Adevarul have both requested information about the above 14 applications, under the equivalent Romanian law of the Freedom of Information Act, given that those applications concern public funds, and had already been identified by the official reviewers as having originality problems.

Recently, in September this year, the ministry published (local copy) a proposal to modify (among many other things) the regulations of national research competitions, in which it eliminates the requirement of having external reviewers in the evaluation process. The regulations still in force, instated by former minister Dr Daniel Funeriu, require at least 50% of the reviewers to be external, and it is believed that this is the reason behind the high number of notifications of plagiarism within the PCCA 2011 funding call.

Recently, the Romanian newspaper Adevarul, obtained this proposal and the original notification of plagiarism from an anonymous source. The newspaper sent these documents to Integru.org for an analysis, and for the conduct to be reviewed by international researchers.

Our analysis

The Integru.org analysis of this proposal is based on the original notification letter written by the official external reviewer to the National Ethics Council in Feb 2012. We analyzed the proposal and the sources independently, and also extended the reviewer’s initial findings.

At the bottom of this page you can find the result of our analysis (i.e. highlighted+annotated proposal and sources, and head-to-head comparison), as well as a copy of the original leaked documents as they were sent to us by Adevarul.

It is worth noting that one of the signatories on this grant application is Prof Ecaterina Andronescu, who was at the time the Rector of “Politehnica” University Bucharest. She is currently the minister of research since 2 July 2012, and the president of the university’s senate. She has also been a Senator since 2008.

The project manager, Prof Florin Constantinescu, is a full professor at “Politehnica” University Bucharest. He appears on the grant as member of the INSCC Bucharest, the coordinating institution of the 4 institutions. The INSCC confirmed he did not hold a position at the INSCC in the last 30 years.

In term of salaries, Table 6, which provides the person-month percentages for personnel costs, shows 2 (two) persons from each of the 4 institutions, totaling 4.5 person-month. Prof Florin Constantinescu is missing from Table 6, while the other 3 local project managers are listed, each with 0.5 person-month. The proposal asks for roughly 116000 Euros/year for only salaries, over a period of 2.5 years, out of the total of 465000 euros. It is worth noting that the INSCC asks for roughly 4 times more funds for salaries than the other 3 institutions, roughly 73000 Euros/year.

External independent reviews

We want to extend our warmest thanks to them for taking the time to do this and for publicly upholding academic values.

Prof Christopher Davis, US
Prof Christopher Davis
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Maryland, US
 . . .  This research proposal provides a blatant example of gross academic misconduct. It is also clear that the authors have attempted to hide their lack of expertise by plagiarizing the work  . . .
Q1. Conduct. To what extent does the main body of this research grant proposal comply with ethical norms that you are aware of? Please also consider the gravity of the conduct, given that this is a grant proposal seeking public funds as opposed to an academic paper.

This research proposal provides a blatant example of gross academic misconduct. Much of the research proposal is plagiarized almost verbatim from two journal papers and three books. The authors of the proposal might have thought that they could get away with this by quoting from sources that are old and which have not had a significant impact in the field. Their unethical conduct is revealed not just by a direct comparison with the original publications from which have taken long sections, but by the instances of their poor English that have been interspersed with the better quality English of the original publications.

It is also clear from the proposal that the authors have attempted to hide their own lack of expertise by plagiarizing the work of others. Some of the descriptions of the work of others that they have plagiarized, suggesting that these are their own ideas, reveal their lack of expertise. Some of the plagiarized parts of their proposal describe old academic work, which has either been shown to have feasibility issues, or has been overtaken by technological advances. This demonstrates a lack of qualification to seek funding to carry out research that they do not understand. The proposal requests the spending of public money on the described research, yet even if the authors had quoted and cited all the plagiarized paragraphs as ethical norms dictate, their proposal would still have revealed their lack of expertise and their proposed research would not have been funded anyway. The authors have attempted to obtain public funds in a dishonest, misleading way, and they might be subject to sanctions that go beyond academia.

Q2. Grey zone. Does the material include elements that are controversial but which cannot be clearly qualified as misconduct?

There can be no excuse for plagiarizing the work of others, even if in certain circumstances this might be claimed as a “lazy” way to avoid writing a description of proposed work and the supporting background material. Although many of the plagiarized paragraphs in the proposal are non-controversial, others purport to be original ideas of the proposal authors. The comparison between the relatively good English of the plagiarized publications and the writing errors in joining sections or word changes in the proposal reveals the incorporation of material written by others.

Q3. Significance. What would be the outcome and impact if colleagues from your institution, or another institution in your country, submitted a similar grant proposal which reached the public’s attention? You may think of conceivable procedures, impact on the individuals, research, institution, public perception etc.

If such a plagiarized proposal were to be submitted in the funding environment in the USA and the plagiarism were proved there would be serious consequences. At a minimum, the leading proposal authors would be banned from submitting proposals for an extended period, and possibly for life. At an institutional level individuals found guilty of such scientific misconduct would, if untenured, be denied tenure. Depending on the case, their appointment might even be terminated, but, regardless of the case, their careers would most likely never recover. If students were to be found guilty of even a fraction of the degree of plagiarism revealed in the proposal they would be failed in a course for reasons of “academic dishonesty.”

Q4. Resources. What can you say about the available research resources declared by the authors, and about the feasibility of the project with respect to the planned budget?

The authors of the proposal clearly lack the material resources and expertise to carry out the research proposed. Indeed the research proposed is largely infeasible and impractical. They claim to have some software and a few PCs but no other significant hardware to support the grandiose research program that they are proposing. In their wish list of equipment that they would like to procure to support their optical wireless work they describe a “Free Space Optics System (Full duplex, 1400 -1600 nm, tunable laser, min. 10 GB/s, self alignment system, auto-tracking).” No such system exists commercially, although a few similar systems have been fabricated in research programs, typically with costs on the order of 1 million USD. Their lack of specificity in this would immediately attract the attention of a funding agency in the USA, who would request the manufacturer and model of the equipment requesting to be purchased. It is virtually certain that in the USA a proposal demonstrating such inadequacies in expertise and resources would not be funded.

Dr Tudor Stanescu, US
Dr Tudor Stanescu
Department of Physics
West Virginia University, US
 . . .  This research grant proposal completely disregards the ethical norms that I am aware of. The plagiarized text has been cut and pasted [from other sources] with only minor changes that sometimes  . . .
Q1. Conduct. To what extent does the main body of this research grant proposal comply with ethical norms that you are aware of? Please also consider the gravity of the conduct, given that this is a grant proposal seeking public funds as opposed to an academic paper.

This research grant proposal completely disregards the ethical norms that I am aware of. The main body of the proposal consists of a compilation of texts from two journal articles and three books. The plagiarized text has been cut and pasted from those sources, with only minor changes that sometimes alter the original work in a direction that raises technical question marks.

The sources of the plagiarized text are not cited. In addition, even assuming that they were properly cited, there is the fundamental problem that this research proposal does not contain any specific new work (specific problems, methods to be used, main hypotheses, possible issues and alternative approaches, etc.).

Considering that the basic concept (section 1.1.1) is reproduced (practically taken literally) from a journal article and that the very section describing the “original” elements of this proposal (section 1.1.3) is plagiarized from another source, the only logical conclusion is that this proposal is seeking public funds to carry out research that has already been done by others. This is, in my opinion, an extremely serious case of misconduct that warrants immediate and thorough investigation.

Q2. Grey zone. Does the material include elements that are controversial but which cannot be clearly qualified as misconduct?

No.

Q3. Significance. What would be the outcome and impact if colleagues from your institution, or another institution in your country, submitted a similar grant proposal which reached the public’s attention? You may think of conceivable procedures, impact on the individuals, research, institution, public perception etc.

I am not aware of any case of such gross misconduct. Submitting a similar proposal by one of my colleagues would completely destroy the professional and academic reputation of the Principal Investigator (PI). However, submitting a proposal with this type of budget (budget structure and budget justification) by someone from my institution, or similar institutions within the US, is, practically, impossible. The budget has to have a clear and detailed justification and, before the department and the university approve it, the budged is thoroughly screened for inconsistencies by specialized individuals. Furthermore, blatant plagiarism in a collaborative proposal involving several PIs would be practically impossible, if for no other reason, because at least some team members would not be willing to compromise their professional careers by engaging in this type of conduct.

Cases of suspected misconduct are thoroughly investigated by the home institution and the funding agency. In proven cases of milder misconduct, sanctions can include debarring individuals from receiving funds for a certain period. For more serious cases, sanctions can go as far as the dismissal of the subject from the institution or even home confinement and paying restitution (e.g., the case of a former professor at a Tennessee university who pled guilty to a federal felony charge of making a false statement under an NSF grant).

In cases of plagiarism involving individuals other than the PI, e.g. postdocs or PhD students, the PI, as the signatory to the proposal, is ultimately responsible for the misconduct.

Concerning public perception, only the high profile cases reach a large audience (e.g., article in the New York Times on the case of a former Bell Labs scientist, H. Schon, who faked experimental data). However, when proven, serious misconduct has devastating consequences for the status of the individual within the academic and scientific communities.

Q4. Resources. What can you say about the available research resources declared by the authors, and about the feasibility of the project with respect to the planned budget?

The proposal does not include any specific description of proposed new research. Strictly speaking, there is no project whose feasibility could be judged. Nonetheless, I would expect the budget of a research proposal in this area to include significant resources for high-power computing (not listed as available at the participating institutions), software, and relevant equipment (e.g., networking equipment). Instead, most of the planned budget is allocated to personnel costs, the requested computing resources are rather standard, while for the requested software and other equipment there are no clear specifications, list of manufacturers, prices, etc. Furthermore, the justification for the personnel costs is not clear.

The proposal requests about 116000 Euros/year for salaries, and the “key participants” are listed in Table 6 with a total of 4.5 person-month. However, the proposal does not mention any open positions to be subsequently hired using grant money; I cannot imagine that the total of 4.5 person-month from Table 6 could, by itself, account for such high salary costs.

Dr Ian Wassell, UK
Dr Ian Wassell
Computer Laboratory
University of Cambridge, UK
 . . .  This is one of the most blatant cases of plagiarism that I have encountered and in my opinion it constitutes gross misconduct on behalf of the applicants. The bulk of the  . . .
Q1. Conduct. To what extent does the main body of this research grant proposal comply with ethical norms that you are aware of? Please also consider the gravity of the conduct, given that this is a grant proposal seeking public funds as opposed to an academic paper.

The main body of the research proposal does not comply with accepted ethical norms. The bulk of the project proposal is made up from text that has been cut and pasted from 5 (five) sources (2 journal articles and 3 books), none of which has been cited.

This is one of the most blatant cases of plagiarism that I have encountered and in my opinion it constitutes gross misconduct on behalf of the applicants.

In my opinion, seeking public funds in such a blatantly dishonest manner is extremely serious and warrants further investigation by relevant authorities with a view to establishing whether any national or European laws have been violated.

Q2. Grey zone. Does the material include elements that are controversial but which cannot be clearly qualified as misconduct?

In general, the linking text between plagiarised passages and the minor changes made within the plagiarised text are sloppily written and contain a variety of typographical and grammatical errors. Sometimes these changes severely compromise the integrity of the original work and consequently the proposal now contains a number of aspects that are technically questionable.

Q3. Significance. What would be the outcome and impact if colleagues from your institution, or another institution in your country, submitted a similar grant proposal which reached the public’s attention? You may think of conceivable procedures, impact on the individuals, research, institution, public perception etc.

If colleagues from my university were discovered to have submitted a grant proposal put together in a similar manner to this one, then such misconduct would be investigated with all possible thoroughness and vigour. If such misconduct is proven, the usual remedy is the dismissal of those concerned from the university. In certain circumstances, it may be the case that the incident is also reported to the police who may investigate it further.

Q4. Resources. What can you say about the available research resources declared by the authors, and about the feasibility of the project with respect to the planned budget?

The project has 4 (four) member institutions. Yet the reported available equipment consists primarily of a low specification PC and a couple of printers, while  in terms of computing equipment in the request for resources, all that is being asked for are a couple of low specification PCs.  They also ask for a free-space optical system, but no specification or manufacturer for the equipment is given and no costs for this equipment are quoted.

It is worth noting that even though the project lists a large number of deliverables it is not very clear what they will actually be doing or at what scale. That said, they don’t appear to be requesting resources for any networking equipment and if the free-space optical “system” they are proposing to purchase has only a couple of ends, then any practical deployment will clearly be trivial in scale.

Prof Martin Maier, Canada
Prof Martin Maier
Optical Zeitgeist Laboratory
Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS), Canada
 . . .  This grant application is a clear case of research misconduct. [...] The vast majority taken verbatim from several publications without providing any references [...] based almost entirely on a single  . . .
Q1. Conduct. To what extent does the main body of this research grant proposal comply with ethical norms that you are aware of? Please also consider the gravity of the conduct, given that this is a grant proposal seeking public funds as opposed to an academic paper.

This grant application is a clear case of research misconduct. The vast majority of the research proposal is taken verbatim from several publications, including IEEE journals, without providing any references. Specifically, the proposed concept is based almost entirely on a single previous journal publication. The description of the concept contains paragraphs taken literally from that publication using exactly the same phrasing and punctuation.

Furthermore, every of the five claimed novelties of the proposed research project were taken to a large extent verbatim from another non-cited book dating back to the year 2002, which itself renders the originality of the proposal questionable. Finally, almost the entire section on the state of the art consists of paragraphs taken verbatim from two widely used textbooks and another journal publication without appropriate references.

The extensive degree of plagiarism is especially serious given that it was done in a grant application that requested the maximum amount (465,000 Euros) of funding from the public budget.

Q2. Grey zone. Does the material include elements that are controversial but which cannot be clearly qualified as misconduct?

This case does not fall into any grey area, but clearly represents a serious case of plagiarism and in part also falsification.

While significant parts of the grant application are taken verbatim from non-cited references, the authors of the research proposal apparently had the intention to cover up their misconduct by using a slightly changed acronym (OWHAN instead of the original WOBAN) and falsifying some of the original ideas in a way that does not make much sense.

Q3. Significance. What would be the outcome and impact if colleagues from your institution, or another institution in your country, submitted a similar grant proposal which reached the public’s attention? You may think of conceivable procedures, impact on the individuals, research, institution, public perception etc.

Beside their ruined reputation, the involved researchers would have to deal with examinations at the institution and funding agency levels. In Canada, the federal research agency NSERC has a set of policies in place to deal with research misconduct involving falsification or fabrication of data and plagiarism. Depending on the gravity of the misconduct, NSERC decided in the past that individuals involved in research misconduct are declared ineligible to apply for or hold agency funding for multiple years. In addition, IEEE might ban these individuals from publishing in any IEEE publication for a couple of years.

Q4. Resources. What can you say about the available research resources declared by the authors, and about the feasibility of the project with respect to the planned budget?

Given the lack of novelty, it is unclear why the (maximum) amount of funding is actually needed and how it is spent. The requested equipment is either general-purpose computing equipment (PCs, display), which are already available, or simulation software, whose description remains vague and unspecific. The justification for the purchase of the requested equipment is weak and it is unclear whether it is readily available, e.g., as free software.

Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether the requested funding will lead to novel insights, let alone new “end products,” as indicated in Section 1.1.4 of the research proposal.

Case report

MISCONDUCT: Plagiarism in Grant Application for Public Funds of National call for Proposals
Application TITLE: Optical Wireless – based Multi-Gb/s Hybrid Access Network for Broadband Multiservices Applications (OWHAN)
Application Code: PN-II-PT-PCCA-2011-3.1-0781
national CALL: Partnership Research Programme PCCA 2011
DATES:
  • Submission of proposals: Nov 2011
  • Notification of plagiarism to the National Ethics Council: 22 Feb 2012
  • Decision of the National Ethics Council (max 90 days legal deadline since notification): missing − former Ethics Council however did investigate and sent their report and proposed sanctions to the legal department of ministry for approval
  • Preliminary results published: 22 may 201214 applications mentioned as having originality problems identified by the official reviewers
  • Final results published: 29 June 2012
Persons on the Grant Application: - Dr Ion Stanciulescu (INSCC, Director, Legal Representative)
- Dr Florin Constantinescu (INSCC, Global Project Manager)
- Dr Radu Dragomir (INSCC)
- Viorel Manea (INSCC)- Prof Ecaterina Andronescu (“Politehnica”, Rector, Legal Representative)
- Prof Paul Schiopu (“Politehnica”, Local Project Manager, Head of Dept)
- Dr Adrian Manea(“Politehnica”, Vice-Dean)- Prof Gheorghe Barbu (Pitesti, Rector, Legal Representative)
- Prof Ioan Lita (Pitesti, Local Project Manager)
- Dr Silviu Ionita(Pitesti)

- Prof Iona Visa (Transylvania, Rector, Legal Representative)
- Dr Otilia Croitoru (Transylvania, Local Project Manager)
- Dr Adrian Alexandru (Transylvania)

INSTITUTIONs: - INSCC Bucharest (Coordinator Entity)
- “Politehnica” University Bucharest
- Pitesti University
- Transylvania University Brasov
Current POSITIONs Prof Ecaterina Andronescu is currently the Minister Of Research since 2 July 2012, the president of the University Senate, a Senator of Romania, and a full Professor at “Politehnica” Bucharest. She is no longer Rector since April 2012.Prof Florin Constantinescu(project manager) is a full professor at “Politehnica” Bucharest. He did not hold a position at INSCC in the last 30 years.To our knowledge, all other persons currently have positions in the institutions mentioned above in the “Persons” section (please contact us if you have more accurate information).

Documents

IDENTIFIED SOURCES (Compiled): Identified Sources
HIGHLIGHTED Core Proposal: Core Proposal
HIGHLIGHTED Full Application: Full Application
Head-To-Head Comparison: Head to Head Comparison
Documents received from the Adevarul newspaper:   PDF version: Notification-Ethics-Council

Proposal: OWHAN

Sample: