1) http://cordis.europa.eu/projects/rcn/108902_en.html
2) http://cordis.europa.eu/projects/rcn/110478_en.html
3) http://cordis.europa.eu/projects/rcn/101280_en.html
4) http://cordis.europa.eu/projects/rcn/103464_en.html

I would like to see that Nature, in its scientific impartiality, would be interested to publish about using a fake doctor title by Norica Carmen Godja, a manager of scientific area from an Austrian company, even is a Romanian with the Austrian citizenship, in order to get funded by EU programs-Clean Sky.
Her fake doctor title was changed by EU Commission in Mrs after I wrote more times, but not this is a problem. The problem is maybe more grave than that in which someone wrote the references at the end of dissertation. Using a fake doctor title is named imposture and it is punished by law. Why nobody noticed this?

I also disagree with Dorin assessment that plagiarism at this scale has been the norme in Romania for the past century. Plagiarism did exist before 1989, but it has grown at an explosive rate only after the political changes.

With this caveat in place, I do agree that plagiarism has reached epidemic proportions in Romanian academia, and there is a real danger that the culture at large may become imune to the stigma attached to this phenomenon.

There is resistance to this phenomenon from within the academia, mostly (but not only) from pre-1989 trained individuals. However, the immense political pressures render these efforts impotent. For example, the University of Bucharest took up the case of Mr. Ponta and concluded it was plagiarism but the powers that be thought otherwise. This to me shows that the academic autonomy of Romanian university is de-facto non existent.

What can be done?

I think that Integru.org is a first important step for two reasons. It brings back in the spotlight the the stigma and immorality of plagiarism. More and more newspapers are quoting Integru findings. The recent resignation in Iasi shows that the public opprobrium can have an effect.

As importantly, Integru is at this moment the only place where intellectuals from inside Romania and beyond its borders can approach and hope that suspicions of plagiarism will be given the attention they deserve, without the fear of political intimidation I sensed in some of my friends bravely on the academic barricades in Romania. Integru makes it easier for the Romanian diaspora to help their colleagues back in Romania who still care about this issue.

Integru alone cannot dramatically change things. Some structural changes are badly needed. Real academic autonomy springs to mind. Rigorously enforced academic honor codes of the type used in many US universities can also help. This is a bit tricky because enforcing ethical standards requires individuals whose reputation is beyond suspicion.

Next, we need to have some concrete data to better gauge the right prescription.

While many of us believe that plagiarism is widespread, none of us have a real idea what widespread means. Take for example the doctoral dissertations in the last 20 years: how many of them are plagiarized, 1%, 10%, 20%? I have to admit that I do not know what organization in Romania can carry such an investigation.

Are the very bureaucratic promotion criteria and the dismal lack of resources aggravating the plagiarism phenomenon? If say a chemist or a biologist is to publish in a high impact journal, yet she has no appropriate resources to conduct research, how can that person make genuine and honest progress?

Im my view there is no immediate solution to this problem, and at some point politicians need to get involved. There has to be a critical mass in the Parliament that thinks that this course leads to the destruction of Romanian education, culture and reputation. How big are the odds of this happening? In my estimation they are discouragingly low. On the other hand I am sure of one thing: if everyone is quiet about this, nothing will change. That is why I am a bit more optimistic since Integru appeared on the scene.

I’d like to comment on Professor Galloway’s point, which basically says that prevention is better than reaction.

While principially that’s very true, I think that concentrating most or all of the efforts in prevention wouldn’t quite work right now in Romania due to the already wide spread phenomena and the lack of sanctions, but most importantly, the lack of authority. Currently in Romania, sanctions would have to first start being applied in order to discourage others. Then you can build a prevention system on top of that. The problem is that there is no actual authority to implement sanctions: the head of the government has shamelessly copy/pasted his PhD thesis, has been exposed, reviewed by international experts in his field, and still refutes all accusations, and has been supported by the minister of research and education, most heads of institutions, etc ever since they (effectively) overthrew the former government last year (*) and then were voted by the people with an overwhelming majority …

Such a climate makes one wonder “what can really be done to stop this?” And let’s not forget, stopping it woulnd’t be enough, we need to improve it after that. Sure, prevention is better than reaction, but we’re facing a really deep and wide problem which requires actual measures.

In my opinion, these crooks exist because the people allow them to … the people voted for Victor Ponta (plagiarist, then prime minister, still prime minister) and for Ecaterina Andronescu (plagiarist, then minister of research, now puppeteer)! So as Dorin correctly said, the people too are responsible for the current state. In my opinion, the public perception has to change before we can hope for any actual change. How do we do that?

Well, dear Professor Galloway, to me it seems like the hope is coming from you and authoritative voices like you. I’m not saying it’s the only way (although frankly, I can’t quite pinpoint another) but this could really work. Like Dorin, I also hope that more of us realize the importance of this and start contributing.

I too appreciate this platform, Integru.org, and I too appreciate you and the heavy-weights like you for having taken the time to offer reviews on Integru.org.

Tudor.

(*) I should point out that the previous minister of research, Dr Daniel Funeriu, this time a respectable academic internationally (unlike the atrocious and plagiarist Ecaterina Andronescu), made some very impressive steps towards cleaning and improving the romanian academic system, including prevention e.g. by requiring external international reviewers for research grants. It was going in the right direction. Andronescu reversed most of his measures after Ponta and his crooked gang came to power last year, by issuing ministerial orders. For example, following Integru.org’s Review 5 of the plagiariazed research grant asking for 600,000 USD of public funds, Ecaterina Andronescu eliminated the foreign reviewers saying they are too expensive. The funny thing is that all reviewers have been paid the same sum, regardless of geographical location or nationality.

You seem to appreciate those who are honest, which is completely skewed. In a normal environment, that’s not something to be appreciated. That’s something to be expected. The fact that in Romania it became something to be appreciated shows that the opposite entity, i.e. the dishonesty, is wide-spread …

The argument you portray continues to baffle me, as I see it skewed and dangerous (if not even harmful). In short, it sounds like “the country is not 100% rotten, so let’s not say that if there are exceptions, and leave the matter alone” … and it is precisely what has been happening in Romania for more than half a century: nothing has been done about it. It continued to flourish and now we have a prime minister with a plagiarized PhD and a whole stream of high, medium and low profile cases like him in pretty much all universities across the country!

Ethics wise, the academic environment in Romania is awfully rotten, and I will not have a debate about exceptions. The first step in fixing any problem is pointing out and admitting that there is one. This step is most efficient if the ones who do the pointing out that there is a problem are authoritative voices. That’s why Prof Galloway’s contribution (both in Review 10 and also in this article) and of all the other international experts on Integru.org is so crucially important.

Remember, we are responsible for this dreadful state too. Let’s wake up, and then do something about it.

Meanwhile in Romania the solving of present misconduct cases is expected by all honest academics as a way of preparing a better future. For this there is Integru.org.

First, Prof Galloway’s article and title simply narrow the scope to that of the plagiarism in Romania, and is actually written from quite a fair perspective. The title to me looks pretty much perfect. There is no finger pointed at the country as a whole, but at a phenomena that exists in Romania, regardless of how thick or thin it is in comparison with other countries.

But you do raise an important point, and I again disagree with your opinion on it:

Those authors DO represent the country too, and not only themselves.

I don’t think it’s necessary to remind of the almost endless stream of Romanian research ministers (!!!), prime minister, rectors, deans, “researchers” etc., but just in case, remember Ioan Mang, Corina Dumitrescu, Ecaterina Andronescu, Victor Ponta, Leonard Azamfirei, Constantin Copotoiu, Klara Branzaniuc, Aurel Ardelean etc etc etc? … who still refute any plagiarism or misconduct despite blatantly clear evidence!

All of them very much also represent the country Romania. It is them and their actions that make you (and all of us) feel some shame when seeing “Romania” next to “plagiarism” in the same sentence, and it is THEM, THEIR INSTITUTIONS and STATE INSTITUTIONS who you should target your anger/disappointment/shame to and do something about it.

I for one feel ashamed that such international personalities like Professor Galloway are taking precious time out of their schedule to go beyond the line of duty and try to clean the mess which happens to be in our back yard. As I see it, they’re not doing it for Romania, nor for the worthy academics there, but out of a sense of respect and duty for the academic profession and title.

Quite frankly, we should be thankful to them for stating facts and doing things that we didn’t or still don’t have the courage to face and do … for that, shame on us!

Integru.org is doing a fantastic job by exposing thieves like the ones above, while experts like Professor Galloway are providing the immensely needed authority. The fact that “Romania” and “plagiarism” are in the same sentence should not make us resentful, but instead should make us contribute to fixing the actual problem.

I think it’s time we all did. Integru.org and its experts are doing a fantastic job!

Dorin.

p.s. I will support the Integru.org portal by recommending and inviting experts I know. I don’t yet feel enough of an expert in my field to answer review questions.

We all know how poor and shrunk were the humanities in the Romanian universities before 1989. Their expansion after that moment was remarkable but decorated with some peculiarities. My teachers wanted very much to specialize in some field or another. It was so much to recover. So, many of them thought seriously of finding a field, as narrow as possible, and became a professional in that field. Each shall approach some of the big unexplored sea of the humanities and secure their position as specialists and chair holders. So far, so good. Now think of a large sea with many, many small boats. For me, nothing yields more uncertainty than this image. Only poor communication is possible. Little collaborative effort can emerge in front of a storm. No critical support. It was like that in the humanities (it still is, I would say). No wonder that some find themselves tempted to pick someone’s very specialized and quasi unknown (at least in the local geography) contribution, say a PhD thesis from the 80s, and to show it as their novel contribution to the field, their accreditation as specialist. The supervisor is in another boat, not so far from her pupil, but far enough and he can barely distinguish what is original in that contribution and what is not. This magical concept, i.e. inter-subjective validation of one’s scientific activity, requires at least two people engaged in collaborative research (or, to maintain the analogy, at least two people in the same boat). More than two is better. A whole globalized community watching on my little boat is the best I can wish for my peers.

I am just a computer scientist, I have nothing to do with the current universities here in Romania (besides the fact that I graduated CS at the Institute Politehnica of Bucharest).

I’m writing you this comment because I believe it is worth investigating this.

The culture of plagiarizing comes frm the communism era. You need to realize that:
1. The intellectual elite was replaced brutally by the communist regime with individuals who had other ‘virtues’: the ability to bend before the Party, the ability to lie and denaturate the truth.
2. At those time, Ro was an enclave. Very few people had full access to foreign books; it was those people above that were placed in positions from where they could have access to the information published ‘outside’, in the western world. This is especially true in sciences.

Reproducing the work from ‘outside’, those individuals gained more power and more privileges. Of course, since they believed at that time nobody will check, they just did copy-paste. Hooray. Those individuals soon started to form aurae, aquiring entire circles of disciples, all based on the theft above. They were promoted even more.

This status perpetuated until after the Romanian Revolution of 89; they were still not able to understand that the world has changed around them. They still believed we are isolated, on our own island, therefore they continued to act as before.

These people never promoted real intellectuals of scientists. Or even if a guy showed signs of promise, he was forced first to put some dirt on him (plagiarizing was an accepted practice), so that the ‘field master’ could blackmail him in the case he needed to (don’t you love the communist system ?). So, one hand washes the other, and everything was fine …

Until mr. Ponta’s case, there was no real punishment for those here caught in wrongdoing. We have members in our Academy who plagiarized – we read it in newspapers, the subjects are still members! (e.g. Constantin Popa, copied entire chapters from Harrison – “Principles of Internal Medicine”, he destroyed the Neurology in Romania, AFAIK; another case is mr Ionel Sinescu, still MD, still a member of our Academy, and so on). In fact, you will see that there is still no punisment on the local level for those exposed in this site – anyway, I find it very hard to believe that this will change soon …

Lack of punishment, lack of power of people exposing plagiarism, the relative omnipotence of such ‘field masters’ plus all the above requires a real investigation (and -why not – may be a subject of some sociology phd thesis).

Ok, sorry for this long message, I just hope I gave you some starting points for a nice research. Interdum stultus bene loquitur

A general culture of academic integrity has yet to take root in today’s Romania. Identifying and exposing cases involving those who teach the next generation is an essential part of pushing for improvement – which is why the Integru site is so very important.