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How Russian minister of education is going to eradicate a plagiarism in scientific activity

Russian minister of education has explained to Russian news agency what she is intended to do in order to eradicate a plagiarism in scientific community and prevent stealing results of individual intellectual activity or ideas from each other.

She has explained what is to be implemented in order to handle so called “dissergate” in scientific community. First of all, she, as a historian, explained the reason of dissergate, when there is a lot of plagiarism in scientific dissertations. “When any change, any uneasiness, which Russia has survived, has reflected in socium, when for different reasons in the end of 90s and in the beginning of 2000s dissertations have been not considered as scientific work anymore and became a “simplified option”, we have received what we have now.”

She is adversary of any scientific works containing plagiarism. Procedure of VAK, Russian supreme Attestation Commission (assigning scientific or academic status in Russia), provides the provision that dissertation or thesis containing plagiarism cannot be defended in Russia. This requirement exists very long time, many decades. Dissertation containing plagiarism is not a dissertation, it is not scientific research.

What to do to “fix” it? Dissertation Councils should be formed in new way. Prior to be included in dissertation council the Renome of person must be considered, i.e. the role such person plays in the field of science in question. And the most important innovation – Russian organisation of higher education will assign scientific status. Before implementation of this novelty, Russian supreme commission assigned scientific status upon recommendations of dissertation council where dissertation was defended.

Now only Moscow state university and Saint-Petersburg state university can assign scientific status. The list of organisations of higher education, who can assign scientific status, will be expanded with a time. If the organisation, where dissertation is defended, will assign a scientific status it will also bear responsibility for this assignment. The dissertation council will be responsible for assignment of scientific status. Such novation must be a strong incentive to avoid plagiarised scientific works. If dissertation council accepts scientific work for defense it takes responsibility if the work is not eligible for defense.

What is PhD dissertation? It is scientific work by young aspirant, summarising what has been done before this aspirant and including his own little work. What is doctoral thesis? It is a new groundwork or summarizing what has been done before researcher. Before the scientific work to be accepted for defense in any dissertation council, it must pass through anti-plagiary system. This system is very harsh. Besides, the candidate, who writes scientific work, must mention when he quotes someone else. It is correct from scientific point of view.

It is also necessary to make an order with research supervisor. It is unacceptable when one candidate has many research supervisors and even doesn’t know some of them in person or doesn’t know the theme of scientific research.