Pak lecturers plagiarise nuclear research paper

The head of the centre, Fazl-e-Azeem, was sacked along with his colleagues Rashid Ahmad, Sohail Afzal Tahir, M Alam Saeed and Maqsood Ahmed. The orders for their dismissal were recently issued by Punjab Governor Khalid Maqbool.

The lecturers were accused of plagiarising their Ph.D thesis from six different publications of the institute in Geneva.

8220;According to my personal reading of both articles, about 90 per cent of the later article by four of your faculty members is identical, word for word, with large segments of the earlier article written by our former director-general Prof Llewellyn Smith,8221; said John Ellis, the advisor to the director-general of the European Centre for Nuclear Research in Geneva.

8220;I see no original idea of synthesis in the later article by your faculty members. Prof Llewellyn Smith8217;s article contains 19 references to previous academic literature, whereas the article by your faculty members refers to no other articles,8221; Ellis was quoted as saying by Newsline magazine in a letter he wrote to the vice-chancellor of Punjab University.

Ellis wrote to the vice-chancellor two years ago. The varsity initially took mild action against the teachers because they are believed to be linked to the Jamaat-e-Islami8217;s student wing Islami Jamiat Talaba.

Pakistan8217;s Higher Education Commission is now taking measures to stop plagiarism by both students and teachers.

It has installed plagiarism detectors 8211; an application called 8220;iThenticate8221; 8212; which can compare sentences and paragraphs. But there are limits to the computer software. If the text has not been lifted from the internet, it is difficult to 8220;catch the thief8221;.

8220;If the software finds matching text in inverted commas, it ignores it, presuming it has been used in quotes or references from the original source,8221; university librarian Chaudhry Muhamed Hanif said.

The head of the psychology department at the university, Mian Aftab Ahmed, too has been accused of plagiarism and has been suspended.

The suspension has not gone down too well with the university8217;s academic staff association. The president of the association blamed the suspension on new vice-chancellor Mujahid Kamran, who he claimed had personal grudges against some faculty members.