Hi,
Thank you for your work and for providing this space.
I’m an independent researcher and an article I published in an online journal was plagiarized in a Ph.D. thesis from an American university (name omitted for confidentiality purposes). The institution denies plagiarism after I submitted six pages of instances of academic integrity violations. The plagiarism is less word-by-word type and more structural, using the same analysis framework, the same divisions/subtitles and the same examples to demonstrate the same ideas. I contacted the university’s Student Provost Office to ask for help dealing with this situation and obtained no response. I met in person with one of the Jury Members of the thesis and this person acknowledged the lack of citations and described the situation as an “institutional grab” to silence my claims. The advisor refused to meet or talk with me.
What other resources do I have to deal with this situation as an independent researcher?
Dear all,
Thank you so much for your response to my case. I would like to express my gratitude to all the mentors for their time and expertise. Thank you for the detailed steps on the letters’s content – that’s very helpful. I’m glad that this forum exists and that you are open to the community regardless of background. It has been challenging as an independent to push back on the University and be heard, and it was very reassuring to have your input, support and opportunity to share my experience with others.
With gratitude,
C.
Dear colleague,
After a thorough discussion with a team of mentors from ENAI about your case, I would like to provide our advice on the situation you are facing. First, we want to praise your efforts to have this issue solved. We believe raising the issue with a lawyer and having a lawyer send the university leadership (perhaps the thesis supervisor and copying the provost) a letter explaining the situation would have the greatest chance of getting attention to the matter and the thesis revised. Although we are not lawyers, we suggest the letter include the following:
- A recitation of the facts, especially including the timeline of the events from the moment you detected the issue to the several attempts you made to have the issue solved;
- A brief analysis of the similarities (e.g. like a similarity report from a plagiarism detection tool – Turnitin – would give) reporting the different unacknowledged similarities. Yet, please bear in mind that a plagiarism detection tool has limitations concerning their ability to match similar words;
- A list of all the attempts made to get this corrected thus far;
- A detailed request of what you wish to correct the situation. We suggest asking for a thesis revision with full acknowledgement of your work. Of note, we suggest that you make this point clear that you do not wish to see the similar sections removed from the work, but that your work is acknowledged in the sections where similarities were found, to comply with principles of academic integrity;
- A reasonable date by which you expect to receive a reply.
We suggest you refrain from threatening to go to press or someone else, as this might cause more trouble when trying to solve the issue.
Additionally, you might wish to explore the possibility of requesting support from the Office of Research Integrity (ORI), which may also be able to support you with this matter. However, from our experience, an attorney’s letter is likely more efficient than ORI.
We hope you find these suggestions helpful and wish you every success in your future endeavours.
Kind regards,
Rita Santos