Scientific plagiarism in India

Academic plagiarism is rising in India. A lack of oversight and a lack of proper training for scientists have led to the rise of plagiarism and research misconduct in India. India does not have a statutory body to deal with scientific misconduct in academia, like the Office of Research Integrity in the US, and hence cases of plagiarism are often dealt in ad-hoc fashion with different routes being followed in different cases. In most cases, a public and media outcry leads to an investigation either by institutional authorities or by independent enquiry committees. The authors responsible for plagiarism have been at the receiving end of some severe punishments including suspension, removal and demotion. However, no fixed route has been prescribed to monitor such activities. This has led to calls for establishment of an independent ethics body.

The Society for Scientific Values is an independent body of scientists with the goal of upholding ethics in the Indian Scientific community. In absence of a statutory body to investigate academic misconduct, the society has been acting as an independent watchdog over the years. The society has been active in recent past over several cases involving plagiarism. K. L. Chopra, ex-director of Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur is currently the president of the society while N. Raghuram of GGS Indraprastha University is the secretary.

On 17 August 1992, a student complained to the Director IIM "While doing my summer project, I had to do some modelling and data analysis. I had carried my copies of Levin (Statistics for Management), and Baumol (Economic Theory and Operations Analysis) along. From the organisation I was in, I borrowed copies of Wagner (Principles of Operations Research) and Quantitative Techniques for Managerial Decisions by U. K. Srivastava (a CMA Prof. at IIMA), G. V. Shenoy, and S. C. Sharma. As I was browsing through the books, I came across a most interesting thing. At several places, the Srivastava, Shenoy, Sharma book had simply lifted stuff from the other three books (Baumol, Levin, and Wagner) and no references anywhere in the book". Upon enquiry a Committee, based on a report by a student, found that the book Quantitative Techniques for Managerial Decisions by U. K. Srivastava, G. V. Shenoy, and S. C. Sharma had copied without acknowledgment of the source at least at 10 different places including 5 foreign books and some other Indian books, such as Baumol, Levin and Wagner (all books were published prior to the publication of the book).

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