This month continues to bring us more news of plagiarism in academic settings. Three university professors in India have been accused of plagiarizing the same work in two separate incidents. The article on mining, originally published in 1997, was that of Dr. ML Jhanwar, the former director of the Geological Survey of India. Dr. Jhanwar discovered that his work had been published verbatim but with a new title by a Dutch publication in 2000 and was credited to 3 co-authors, Rajiv K. Sinha, DK Pandey, and Ambuj Sinah who is the son of Rajiv K. Sinha. Rajiv K. Sinha and DK Pandey were both teachers at Rajasthan University in India at the time.
In a strange twist, Dr. Jhanwar’s work was published again in 2010, under yet another title, and was credited to Surendra Singh Chauhan, a teacher in the department of environmental science at Rajasthan University. This time, the article was published in a Dehli, India based publication.
Dr. Jhanwar brought the incidents to the attention of Rajasthan University as well as Griffith University in Australia where Rajiv K. Sinha is now employed. Not having received a satisfactory response from Rajasthan University, Dr. Jhanwar is now bringing his case to the governor of the Indian state Rajasthan.
Recent plagiarism news from the United States brings us to Charlotte, North Carolina where plagiarism accusations have been brought up against a prospective charter school. The Charlotte Learning Center filed an application in 2011 to become a North Carolina charter school, and the application was denied. While reviewing the successful 2012 applications, which are all posted online, an official from the Charlotte Learning Center found a number of alarming similarities in the successful application of the Cameron Creek Charter School. There were several instances of the Charlotte Learning Center name appearing in the Cameron Creek Charter School application. Charlotte Learning Center has accused the Cameron Creek Charter School of copying large portions of their 2011 application. Sylvia Cole, the Cameron Creek Charter School official who filed the application, says that the portions of the applications that are identical were taken from public documents, and the prospective charter schools are encouraged to reference those documents. The state’s Board of Education will decide early next month whether or not to pull the Cameron Creek Charter School’s charter for the 2013-2014 academic year.
