Deny plagiarism occurred; shove it under the rug; fail to announce the results of your investigation; wait for some outside agency to deal with it…

But keep in mind the University of Birmingham.

In 2008, the university found Tahir Abbas, director of the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Culture, guilty of plagiarism on multiple counts.

Dr Abbas, a former Home Office researcher, continued working as normal at the university until his departure in June 2009 after further plagiarism allegations.

The matter contributed to the problems highlighted by a review of the department of sociology last month.

The failure of the centre to become a “driver of research”, the department’s poor performance in the research assessment exercise 2008 and “poor staff relations” were cited by a review group headed by Edward Peck, head of the university’s College of Social Sciences, as reasons for its closure.

Those campaigning for sociology to remain at Birmingham say that the department should not be made to pay the price for the university’s mismanagement of personnel issues.

Birmingham originally investigated Dr Abbas for plagiarism in 2007 and suspended him.

An internal tribunal concluded that a paper by Dr Abbas published in the journal Citizenship Studies in 2005 contained sections plagiarising the work of Bhikhu Parekh, centennial professor at the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics.

Taylor & Francis, the journal’s publisher, has confirmed that it is retracting the paper after conducting its own investigation. A retraction statement will be published next month.

The tribunal also found that a book edited by Dr Abbas and published by I.B. Tauris, Immigration and Race Relations: Sociological Theory and John Rex (2007), contained work plagiarised from four other authors.

A book written by Dr Abbas, The Education of British South Asians, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2005, was found to include material plagiarised from five authors.

Despite the findings, Dr Abbas was allowed to return to his department after he pleaded mitigating circumstances relating to his personal life. He was also allowed to continue supervising PhD students and to keep his line-management responsibilities.

On his return to work, Dr Abbas filed a race-related grievance against his head of department, John Holmwood.

The plagiarism tribunal findings were kept confidential and opinion within the department was split, with some staff supporting Dr Abbas and some Professor Holmwood.

Poor staff relations were later identified in Professor Peck’s review as impeding the department’s progress.

Further allegations of plagiarism arose after Dr Abbas’ return to work, and he left Birmingham in June this year…

You think it doesn’t matter if you ignore plagiarists on your faculty?

It matters.