HEC considering minor penalty against ED over plagiarism

ISLAMABAD: After its Executive Director has been caught red-handed with over 80 percent plagiarised research paper, the Higher Education Commission (HEC) has decided to seek comments from the foreign co-authors of the controversial paper before taking a final decision about its top official, The News has learnt.

According to sources, the HEC management is considering a minor penalty for Executive Director Dr Arshad Ali despite the fact that the commission’s own official software Turnitin has confirmed that his research paper is 88 percent plagiarised.

A recent meeting of the HEC presided over by its Chairman Dr Mukhtar Ahmad considered the matter after the issue came to the light through this paper, a spokesman of the commission said.

The meeting was told that Dr Arshad’s research paper “A Taxonomy and Survey of Grid Resource Planning and Reservation Systems for Grid Enabled Analysis Environment,” published in July 2004 is almost the exact copy of a paper authored by Chaitanya Kandagatla University of Texas, Austin America in February 2004. When Dr Arshad’s paper was examined with Turnitin it confirmed overall 88 percent similarity index against 19 percent limit set by Pakistan’s higher education body. In addition, 47 percent similarity index has been reported from single source “authored by Chaitanya Kandagatla against the 5 percent approved limit. Dr Arshad Ali is main author of the paper along with several others including foreigners.

“The Commission has decided to contact co-author of the research paper written by the HEC Executive Director and seek his opinion about the allegations of plagiarism,” HEC Spokesperson Ayesha Ikram told The News.

She said the commission would hold its meeting again next week and a final decision would be taken about the fate of Dr Arshad. However, the sources said the decision could be minor penalty where the Executive Director would be asked to render an apology and submit an affidavit that he would not cite that paper again in his curriculum vitae (CV). “Since the violation occurred in 2004 while HEC’s plagiarism policy was formulated in 2007, the official might get away without major penality,” an HEC official privy to the issue told The News.

However experts believe it will be a violation of HEC’s own plagiarism policy which states, “If most of the paper (or key results) have been exactly copied from any published work of other people without giving the reference to the original work, a major penalty of dismissal from service could be imposed.”

The policy further states, "If a co-author has listed a paper in his/her resume and applied for a benefit forthwith, any co-author is deemed to be equally responsible for any plagiarism committed in a published paper presented to or published in a journal or presented at a conference." Interestingly, the Curriculum Vitae (CV) of Dr Arshad Ali proudly mentions the controversial research paper.

The policy also mentions that such a plagiarist may be blacklisted and may not be eligible for employment in any academic, research organisation, and (c) the notification of “Black Listing” of the author(s) may be published in the print media or may be publicised on different websites at the discretion of the Vice-Chancellor/Rector/Head of the organisation.”

While speaking to The News on the issue, Federation of All Pakistan Universities Academics Staff Association (FAPUASA) President Prof Dr Kalim Ullah Bareach claimed that HEC had been strongly punishing all those teachers involved in plagiarised research papers even if their work was published before 2007.

“How can a person as senior as the executive director be allowed to hold such an important post after major plagiarism has been proved against him?” he asked. He said that HEC’s website carried the name of black-listed professors and academicians whose papers had been found plagiarised by over 20 percent.

“If the teachers can be penalised strictly why HEC does not implement same policy on its own top boss,” he questioned. He said the academic community will not accept the Commission’s double standard regarding the implementation of its plagiarism policy.

Fighting plagiarism is one of the major functions of the Higher Education Commission (HEC). In an expression of its resolve against academic-theft, the commission has placed about 21 black-listed faculty members and researchers on its website along with its detailed anti-plagiarism policy.

According to HEC Act and rules, the Executive Director is the second most important officer of the commission being the principal accounting officer of the body that manages about Rs90 billion annually. He acts as head of HEC Secretariat and also as the Secretary of the Commission’s governing body which makes policies on improving quality of education and fighting plagiarism.

Despite repeated calls and text messages Dr Arshad did not respond to The News on the issue. However in his earlier talk with The News on the issue, HEC ED had promised to look into the matter according to the commission’s policy. He claimed that his co-authors were reputed professionals from institutions like CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research. Dr Arshad Ali was appointed as HEC Executive Director In January 2016 by the selection board and governing body headed by current HEC Chairman Dr Mukhtar Ahmed.