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.

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.

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.

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.