When the duplicate checking report showed that the document copy ratio of the paper was over 50%, Yao Hongjun once thought that the plagiarism he wanted to report was "certain".
The associate professor of the School of Law of Shanghai University of Political Science and Law has been concerned that Hou Huaixia, the president of our school, is suspected of "plagiarism" for 9 years. The duplicate check report of China HowNet provided by him shows that the copy ratio of Hou’s doctoral thesis is 55% except his published literature, and the other five journal articles are 97.8%, 69.1%, 55.4%, 53.1% and 47.6% respectively.
Relying on these duplicate checking reports, he wrote a tip-off letter to the higher education authorities, reflected the situation with the schools involved, called the authors of journals and papers one by one, and posted on the Internet. The result was without exception.
The Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, where Hou Huaixia works, responded that it did not constitute academic misconduct, and China Ocean University, the alma mater who awarded him his doctorate, recognized it as "not minor plagiarism". A professor from the Academic Committee of Haida University made it clear that Hou’s paper was flawed, but it was by no means plagiarized. "The survey materials are informative, and we are always waiting to report to the relevant departments."
Yao Hongjun, who passed the judicial examination with a score of 272 and studied intellectual property law, was puzzled. In order to find out the facts, the information in his computer has been saved for several g’s, but it seems that the more information he has, the farther away he is from the truth.
In fact, not only Yao Hongjun, but also the experts who participated in the evaluation are faced with difficulties: there are errors in duplicate checking of HowNet, manual evaluation is not trusted, and there is no unified standard for academic plagiarism … …
Faced with this "plagiarism" appraisal, they are also thinking: when academic plagiarism is discussed overwhelmingly, what is the most accurate evaluation standard? Where is the boundary between plagiarism and non-plagiarism?
Experts "deny" the results of the duplicate checking system.
As a colleague, Yao Hongjun first paid attention to Hou Huaixia’s "suspected plagiarism" in May 2010. After reading a paper she published in a journal, he suddenly felt "some problems".
He has read many articles by Hou Huaixia. "She has published many articles in a wide range of fields, including litigation law, advertising law, environmental law, intellectual property rights, foreign investment and corporate responsibility, but her research direction is relatively fixed, and the research in the legal field has been subdivided in 2000." In Yao Hongjun’s view, such a "multi-faceted attack" by Hou Huaixia is basically impossible.
Yao Hongjun put many academic articles of Hou Huaixia into HowNet to check them again. Among them, Hou Huaixia’s doctoral thesis "Research on Environmental Rights and Their Relief in Private Law" is shown in the duplicate check report of HowNet, which coincides with the contents of 25 published papers.
According to the statistics of each chapter, the copy ratio of Hou Wen excluding his published literature is: preface 30.6%; The first chapter is 49.8%; Chapter II 54.1%; Chapter III 57%; Chapter IV 62.8%; Yao Hongjun calculated that, on the whole, the copy ratio of the whole article except my published literature is about 55%.
This report on duplicate checking of HowNet was generated in 2015, and Hou Huaixia passed the defense on June 6, 2008. The copied articles listed in the report also included some articles published after the publication of Hou Wen.
In order to "prevent errors", Yao Hongjun conducted a manual comparison. He circled the words in Hou Wen that were more similar to others. "The most conservative estimate is more than 60,000 words."
Hou Huaixia’s doctoral thesis has a total of more than 160,000 words. According to Yao Hongjun’s algorithm, these similarities account for at least 36% of this thesis.
In 2010, China Ocean University, where Hou Huaixia graduated, promulgated the Measures for Handling Academic Misconduct of Postgraduates of China Ocean University, in which Article 10 states: The whole paragraph with the same content accounts for more than 30% of the whole academic achievement, or the academic achievement of others is regarded as the main part or substantial part of his own academic achievement, which constitutes serious plagiarism; It accounts for 10% and is not the main innovation, which also constitutes mild plagiarism.
Official website from the Graduate School of Shanghai University of Political Science and Law shows that Hou Huaixia was admitted to China Ocean University in 2004, majoring in environmental planning and management (direction of environmental resources law). On June 6th, 2008, she finished her graduation thesis.
According to the duplicate checking report of HowNet provided by Yao Hongjun, another five journal articles of Hou Huaixia were also accused of plagiarism. Analysis of the Meaning of Monopoly published in 2004, Establishment and Perfection of China’s Credit System published in 2006, On the Environmental Rights in the Constitution and on the Commercial Subject Nature of Sole proprietorship Enterprises published in 2007, and On the Environmental Rights in Human Rights Law published in 2009, except for my published documents, these papers accounted for 53.1% and 69.1% respectively.
Yao Hongjun believes that these data show that plagiarism is a clear fact. However, the conclusion given by academic degree evaluation committee Office of China Ocean University is that Hou Huaixia’s doctoral thesis is not enough to constitute mild plagiarism; The conclusion of Shanghai University of Political Science and Law is that Hou Huaixia’s journal articles do not constitute academic misconduct.
This "fact" was also refuted by Hou Huaixia himself. She told China Youth Daily and Zhongqing Online reporter that copying is marked by common sense and laws and regulations, and she either directly quoted or indirectly used other people’s opinions. "This academic norm is allowed."
Hou Huaixia insisted: "I didn’t infringe and take other people’s things in any way. Whether I copied the current school has reached a conclusion. These conclusions are based."
She also said that one of the journal articles, "On the Commercial Subject Nature of Sole proprietorship Enterprises", was actually "copied by others, and I published the essays first". As for the specific information of this collection of essays, she said that "time is too long to remember."
"I don’t have those problems. If it really constitutes plagiarism, I am willing to bear any responsibility. " Hou Huaixia said.
Believe in machines or people?
Yao Hongjun couldn’t understand: "I also studied law. Isn’t it enough to confirm that the evidence in black and white is here?"
In his view, the high "copy ratio" is an irrefutable fact.
However, in the eyes of Li Qi, an expert who participated in the appraisal of Hou Huaixia’s thesis by the Academic Committee of China Ocean University, the figures in the duplicate checking report are not necessarily convincing.
Li Qi admitted that "Hou Huaixia’s paper is flawed", but he also stressed that "this is by no means plagiarism".
According to him, the duplicate checking of HowNet will mark the same sentences, but it can’t make a more subtle division. In particular, Hou’s doctoral thesis belongs to the category of law, which involves citing a large number of laws and regulations.
In his impression, Hou Wenzhong was reported the same part, covering popular science narrative, news reports, and related laws and regulations, which should be comprehensively judged according to the actual situation.
"Some historical summaries are sometimes inaccurate in their own words. It is better to directly quote existing statements." Li Qi said. "Checking the duplicate of HowNet cannot be used as the only criterion to judge academic plagiarism."
Since 2007, the problem of academic misconduct has been paid more and more attention. Some colleges and universities require that both master’s thesis and doctoral thesis need to be checked by CNKI, and only after passing the test can the thesis be defended. This requirement has subsequently been extended to the undergraduate stage.
Compared with manual screening, its database is huge, the screening standard is unified, and the working cycle is short. In the face of an increasing number of papers, it ensures the review speed, and it has gradually become an irreplaceable "first line of defense" for academic screening.
In 2012, the Ministry of Education promulgated the Measures for Handling False Dissertations, and in 2014, it promulgated the Measures for Sampling Doctoral Dissertations. Judging from Baidu’s search index, the search index of HowNet’s duplicate checking has increased since 2012.
However, even though HowNet duplicate checking is a relatively reliable duplicate checking tool in China at present, there is a certain difference between machine detection and human identification, and some disputes about academic problem identification often arise as a result.
Li Qi said that after the introduction of HowNet, academic circles often regard "copy ratio" as the only criterion to judge whether a paper is qualified or not. The problem is that many excellent papers are promoted on the basis of existing achievements, and there are outstanding innovations, but there may also be many similarities, which are easy to be copied and killed by this indicator; Others have found a shortcut — — You can have no opinion, but you should be able to package it in a fresh way.
In Li Qi’s view, on the one hand, HowNet does ensure the originality of the paper, but at the same time, it also "encircles the gentleman and lets go of the villain".
This loophole has been rigidly pegged by many people. In the market, a so-called "anti-knowledge network duplicate checking" became popular, and various paper detection systems came into being. Open Taobao, and the software that sells more than 550,000 pens a month can also provide "weight reduction" service.
Take this software, for example, it can automatically calculate the "weight reduction" price of the paper according to the duplicate check of the paper. If the demand is urgent, it will need to add more money after 24 hours of processing. During the graduation season, the price of the paper check and the "weight reduction" service in this shop rises sharply.
It has been concluded that those who attempt to plagiarize can avoid the duplicate checking of HowNet in various ways, while those who devote themselves to the creation may not pass because of citation problems.
"In the final analysis, the existence of the HowNet duplicate checking system is for convenience, not absolute." Chu Zhaohui, a researcher at the China Academy of Educational Sciences, said, "Whether academic misconduct should be judged by professional organizations and professionals."
Xiong Wenzhao, a professor at the Law School of Minzu University of China who has paid attention to many academic plagiarism incidents, also agrees with this statement. He said that the similarity of the statistics of HowNet’s duplicate checking system can be used as a hint, and whether it constitutes plagiarism must be further identified and analyzed.
Among the numerous academic misconduct, most of the targets of academic counterfeiting come from obvious plagiarists who directly carry other people’s works. As a more subtle way, "soft" plagiarism is not easy to attract people’s attention.
Besides "softness", there is a broader category — — "Hidden" plagiarism. A student studying in a well-known domestic university revealed to the reporter of China Youth Daily and Zhongqing Online that his graduation thesis co-authored with his tutor was "occupied" privately by his tutor: abbreviated as a short paper, and secretly published in a journal in his own name. The tutor explained that only one author appeared as a "periodical requirement"; However, the journal responded that "this situation is basically impossible".
Even for professional organizations and professionals, it is a difficult problem to identify and analyze plagiarism. For example, what can be the criterion for judging plagiarism in the middle zone where the boundaries are not clear?
Li Qi’s method is to judge whether the author has put forward a new point of view. But the problem is, "the opinion machine can’t recognize it and needs to rely on human evaluation. But people are hard to be trusted. "
They can only return to the software again, and the professor is helpless, "but the software can’t be error-free."
In fact, in foreign countries, screening papers mainly rely on such anti-plagiarism detection systems. Turnitin is the most widely used system in foreign universities.
Turnitin will compare the documents uploaded by users with the articles in the background database, calculate the proportion of similarity, and "original report" containing a lot of relevant information.
But this system has an extremely huge database: over ten thousand different periodicals and magazines, millions of books and tens of billions of web pages. It also adopts intelligent corpus technology — — Even if you rewrite the original, it will be exposed.
Can new technology detect old problems?
Liu Huirong, who was written by Hou Huaixia in his doctoral thesis "Thanks", is now the Party Secretary of the School of Law and Politics of China Ocean University. Hou Huaixia said that Liu is his friend, former leader and colleague, and he gave himself a lot of encouragement during his reading.
Liu Huirong told the China Youth Daily and Zhongqing Online reporter that in 2008, at that time, there was no means to check the defense in the college. The review of Hou’s thesis is the review of the content by the members of the defense team through several layers of comments.
"There was no problem at the time." She stressed.
In her view, the problem is the report itself. "Hou’s doctoral thesis was published in 2008, and the whistleblower was detected by HowNet’s duplicate checking software in 2015. This is to detect past articles with current software and standards."
She said that, firstly, the articles that HowNet detected as "reference" covered the articles published after Hou Wen’s publication, and it is hard to say who can learn from them; Secondly, the times are different, and it is not reasonable to trace and characterize the academic misconduct of past articles with the current standards. Even from a legal point of view, there is a saying that let bygones be bygones.
In 2009, the Ministry of Education promulgated the Guidelines for Academic Norms of Humanities and Social Sciences in Colleges and Universities. In fact, after being accused of plagiarism, there are always universities and parties who respond: "The published papers were published earlier than the various specifications."
Zhang Shiyou, a professor at the School of Politics of Chongqing Normal University, has been teaching for 21 years, and 10 papers have been accused of plagiarism. During this period, the title was promoted from lecturer to professor and transferred to another university. At least 8 of these papers "quoted" a large number of references at the end of the paper, and some almost all of them were composed of multiple references.
In this regard, Zhang Shiyou gave the statement that most of the reported papers were published before 2005. "Does it constitute so-called academic plagiarism or academic misconduct? It is really different from the standards 10 years ago."
Cai Hongying, dean of the School of Finance and Public Administration of Hubei University of Economics, was publicly reported for "academic misconduct". More than half of her two papers quoted other people’s published papers. The monographs published during her Ph.D. were similar to those published by others in some chapters, and two articles were suspected of being submitted for more than one manuscript.
However, the academic committee of the school decided that the publication time of Cai Hongying’s two papers was before the implementation of the regulations. At that time, the academic research management in the humanities and social sciences in colleges and universities across the country had not been fully standardized, and the phenomenon that the citations were not standardized was common, which was also allowed by the magazines that published the two papers. "There are academic problems that are not standardized, but they do not belong to ‘ Academic misconduct ’ Behavior. "
Although it has long been strange, in Xiong Wenzhao’s view, "old problems cannot be traced back with new technology", the key point is to distinguish whether the main criteria for judging plagiarism have not changed for a long time — — For example, no matter what period, large-scale overlap is not allowed.
"In the case of certain standards, this is just using new technologies to detect problems that have not been discovered before." He said.
Who is in charge of plagiarism or not?
As a member of the Academic Committee of China Ocean University, Li Qi remembers that after receiving the report materials, the school set up an expert group, but it was a "heavy workload" to study Dr. Hou Huaixia’s thesis.
From analyzing the paper to writing the report, Li Qi spent two whole days. Plus some procedures stipulated by the school, it took almost a month before and after.
He studied all the relevant domestic and foreign norms, but found that there are still many vague areas that cannot be covered by the provisions. He even created a set of evaluation criteria, holding the paper "word by word", but whether the paper is plagiarized is still "a very difficult thing to define".
"First of all, there is no regulation on plagiarism at home and abroad; Secondly, specific to each paper, hard standards do not work, depending on the situation. " He said that this process needs a lot of discussion and discussion, and there is no way to apply the duplicate checking system mechanically.
He said that the Academic Committee of China Ocean University was "independent" and had gone through all the necessary procedures as required. He himself did not keep the detailed analysis report of Hou’s thesis.
China Youth Daily Zhongqing Online reporter contacted the Academic Committee of the Law School of China Ocean University, and the other party said that the relevant situation was in the charge of the discipline construction and degree management office of the graduate school, and no one answered the phone of the office.
However, such a review result, which made Li Qi struggle, was not recognized by the reporter Yao Hongjun.
For a long time, professors in colleges and universities have been accused of "plagiarism" and submitted to the academic Committee of the university for review, and the conclusions are mostly "over-quoted" or irregular, which has also been questioned as "demotion".
Xiong Bingqi, vice president of 21st Century Education Research Institute, believes that the independence of academic committee is very important to the review results.
At present, the scientific research departments under the academic committees of many universities in China, even independent institutions, may be interfered by administrative factors, and it is difficult to ensure that the review of reports is fair enough.
Moreover, identifying plagiarism is not just a difficult problem for colleges and universities. Many periodical articles reported by Yao Hongjun that Hou Huaixia was suspected of plagiarism were published before the publication of HowNet duplicate checking system.
China Youth Daily Zhongqing Online reporter contacted Journal of Suzhou University and Journal of Zhengzhou University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition), which Hou Huaixia had published.
As a core journal, Kang Jingkui, the editor of Journal of Suzhou University who was in charge of Hou Huaixia’s articles, said that according to the current processing method, the delivered articles were first screened by HowNet, and the copy ratio was less than 20% before entering the editing process. At that time, the screening process of publications provided opinions for preliminary duplicate checking and external audit experts, which were all passed, and then the editorial department typesetted according to the situation.
Today, Kang Jingkui can’t remember the specific duplicate checking operation at that time. He recalled to the China Youth Daily and Zhongqing Online reporter, "See if anyone else has sent similar articles before, whether it is more than one manuscript, and also look at the author’s academic background."
"Most of them are based on impression, according to the usual grasp of the manuscript". He said, "At best."
Su Wei, the head of the economics section of Journal of Zhengzhou University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition), also gave a similar response.
"At that time, before the duplicate checking system appeared, there was simply no systematic duplicate checking." He explained that in general, the editorial department will search the full text of the submitted article on Baidu; After that, experts review, relying on experts’ familiarity with the author and the field, and sometimes intuition, to see if the article is inconsistent with the author’s professional title, education and research direction.
"We are also very difficult. If the author copies a whole book, it is difficult for us to know. " He repeatedly stressed, "It was really hard at that time."
"The biggest problem in the field of academic evaluation in China is non-standardization. First, the authors are not standardized, and second, academic journals are not standardized when publishing manuscripts." Chu Zhaohui said.
In this regard, Chu Zhaohui’s suggestion is to strengthen the construction of third-party evaluation institutions outside the school, so that third-party institutions can judge the facts, and then the school administrative department will impose penalties.
Difficult road to safeguarding rights
These mechanisms have not been established yet. As a whistleblower, Yao Hongjun said that he spent most of his time waiting for this report.
Since May 2015, he began to report the materials in his hand. More than a year passed, and Yao Hongjun and others came to the Letter of Notification of Investigation Conclusions made by academic degree evaluation committee Office of China Ocean University.
In December of the same year, Yao Hongjun began to report Hou Huaixia’s academic misconduct to the Shanghai University of Political Science and Law where Hou Huaixia worked. Unexpectedly, things dragged on for more than a year.
"Even according to the regulations, the processing period is at most 90 working days." Yao Hongjun said, in fact, Article 8 of the Detailed Rules for the Implementation of the Construction of the Style of Study of Shanghai University of Political Science and Law also states that after receiving the report, the school should formally organize personnel to conduct an investigation within 30 working days, and the investigation team should complete the stipulation of fact finding within 60 working days.
On June 9, 2017, Shanghai University of Political Science and Law gave the conclusion, which stated: "The establishment and perfection of China’s credit system" and "On the commercial subject nature of sole proprietorship enterprises" published by Hou Huaixia in the name of Shanghai University of Political Science and Law do not constitute academic misconduct. "
On July 5, 2017, Yao Hongjun applied to Shanghai University of Political Science and Law again, asking it to make the accreditation standards public and make a new accreditation.
This time, the school gave a quick answer. Two weeks later, Yao Hongjun received the results, saying, "Re-appraisal is tantamount to repeating procedures and appraisals, wasting resources, and the academic committee of the university will not accept this application for review", but it did not respond to the requirements of the public accreditation standards.
Yao Hongjun, who studies law, can’t recognize such a result, and he still wants an "absolute truth".
According to the Science and Engineering Index released by the National Science Foundation in 2018, China surpassed the United States for the first time in the number of published papers, but the citation rate of American papers was higher. According to the statistics of AEIC Academic Exchange Center, last year, there were 15 publicly discussed plagiarism incidents in Chinese universities, among which there were many first-class universities in China.
This is also one of the reasons why he insisted on reporting. In Yao Hongjun’s view, figuring out the vague areas of Hou Huaixia’s papers is not only related to individuals, but also related to the overall standards of academic evaluation in China.
"In the school of political science and law, especially among doctors of law, all standards and rules, even hidden rules, can be discussed." He said.
(At the request of the interviewee, Li Qi and Su Wei are pseudonyms.)
China Youth Daily Zhongqing Online Reporter Wang Jingshuo Intern Guo Xiaoyang An Fengyi
