This message was sent on various mailing lists on the Internet
on the 6th of June 1995. Reproduced with permission of Chris Jesshope
(c.jesshope@ee.surrey.ac.uk). Click here to
see the role played by SCAM.
The original message of June 6, 1995 included a list of papers,
which had either been published by or submitted to professional
journals and conference proceedings, in which the alleged plagiarist
was listed as the author or a co-author. Although D-Lib Magazine
condemns plagiarism, we have withheld the name and identifying
affiliations of the individual.
Dear Computer Science Community, authors, CS publishers, Conference
Chair-persons,
This e-mail gives a comprehensive account on the case of a plagiarism
concerning papers submitted to EURO-PAR 95 and subsequently invested on
behalf of the Steering and Programme Committees of the EURO-PAR conference.
History of the case:
During the meeting of the Programme Committee (PC) of EURO-PAR'95,
last March, it was discovered that plagiarised papers had been submitted to
the conference. The case was brought to the attention of the Steering
Committee (SC) of EURO-PAR, which decided to further pursue the issue, by
conducting an investigation.
The investigation has reached some conclusive results, which
point to a single name behind these plagiarisms: {Name}.
The investigation conducted with the help of several people
around the world, has identified so far, with conclusive
evidence, that the real person {Name}, is the person behind
of all listed below cases.
The conclusions are based on (a) copies of 'his' papers compared against
papers/reports received from his victims, (b) on e-mails and correspondence
received from his victims and (c) on copies of correspondence exchanged
between {Name} (and/or other ghost persons) and the involved Conf. and
Journal's officials, which the latter have provided us.
Results of the investigation:
(a) {Name} is a real person. He is currently registered
as a Ph.D. student at the Univ. of {Name}
(earlier he was registed at the {Name} but he was
expelled because of plagiarism cases).
(b) {Name} has managed to publish several plagiarized papers
to international journals and conferences (see section A below),
he has submitted several plagiarized papers (see section B below),
and he has several suspicious published papers in his CV (see
section C below).
(c) ftp over Internet seems to be the means {Name} has
used for his actions. Unfortunately, the current state of the art
in the area of authentication, access control, authors's rights, etc
are unable to identify, beyond doubt, the intruder's ftp action.
(d) All plagiarism cases though they involve various names of authors and
affiliations, they all give as correspondence address that of
{Name} mentioned above.
(e) Some plagiarism cases of {Name} were known by
offended authors much earlier than the time the SC and PC of EURO-PAR
found out, but were not publicized. This gave him time to continue his
practice.
What it is proposed:
a) the offended authors, publishers, etc, to take the initiative
to react the way they think appropriate.
b) the offended authors to react the way they think appropriate
towards publishers, editors, {Name}, etc, in
order to get the credit deserved for their plagiarized work.
c) the CS community to think of measures and techniques, of new refereeing
methods, tools, etc., that may prevent such phenomena in the future.
d) the above case to be publishised by everyone as widely as possible.
Acknowledgements:
The SC and the PC of EURO-PAR wishes to pay tribute to (a) the referees
of EURO-PAR'95 who spotted the submitted plagiarized papers, (b) offended
authors who kindly provided evidence and (c) Narayanan Shivakumar from
Stanford, the SCAM tool of whom, has remarkably identified most of
the below listed sources of plagiarisms, (d) and last but by no means
least to Costas Halatsis who has contributed much of his valuable time in
conducting this investigation.
The Steering Committee of EURO-PAR conferences
Chris Jesshope, Chairman
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