From the Slovenian Press Agency:

Secretary General of the government Milan M. Cvikl is facing allegations from a law expert that he copied an entire section of his book on reforms of EU legislation …

The head of the European law department at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana, Matej Accetto, said in an article published on the web that the core section of the book “Reformed Law of the European Union” is in many ways a Slovenian translation of the Wikipedia entry on the subject.

“Sentence after sentence of Cvikl’s book follows from the Wikipedia entry. Including the last sentence…which is meant as an example of what has been said,” said Acceto.

He believes that “reasonable doubt has been dispelled” that Cvikl used plagiarism in his book and added that the book should never have been published.

In response Cvikl, who is Slovenia’s candidate for a member of the European Court of Auditors, denied Acceto’s allegations…

An engineering professor at the University of Regina has been accused of plagiarizing a student’s work and trying to publish it in an academic journal in a case the university is declining to talk about.

Former student Shahryar Ali Khan, now a petroleum engineer in Calgary, laid a complaint with the university but says officials haven’t told him what, if anything, they’re going to do about it.

Khan said he learned something was wrong in the summer of 2008, when he submitted a paper for publication in the Journal of Canadian Petroleum Technology.

It was based on the research he did for his Master’s thesis at the University of Regina, a document titled “A Simulation Study of Water-Coning Using Downhole Water Sink Technology.”

Khan got a surprising response — the journal staff said his submission closely resembled another paper received six months earlier, one that bore the same title.

The earlier paper, which was never published, listed his academic supervisor — associate professor Ezeddin Shirif — and three other people as authors. …

China today:

Academic corruption is on the rise, while the quality of papers is declining. Paying for papers to be published has become common practice. A great many professors and students are not ashamed of plagiarism on the excuse that [it is] the norm. How absurd that a medical paper has been plagiarized six times by 25 people!

Prague Daily Monitor:

German economist Christian Roehl, one of the authors whose book Czech university professor Martin Svoboda allegedly copied, told Czech Radio (CRo) Wednesday that Svoboda was one of the authors of the book and no plagiarist.

Svoboda was accused of plagiarism and forced to resign from the post of dean of the Faculty of Economics and Administration of Brno’s Masaryk University on Tuesday.

Zdenek Rucka, member of the faculty’s academic senate, said Svoboda published two books as his own works in the past years but they were actually mere translations of the German work Generation Zertifikate – Die Emanzipation der Geldanlage by Roehl and Werner Heussinger.

The book by Roehl and Heussinger was issued in 2004 and Svoboda is mentioned in the acknowledgements. Svoboda published both Czech books a year later and he does not mention Roehl and Heussinger anywhere in them.

Roehl told Czech Radio that Svoboda is one of the authors of the book. The three authors had agreed that while in Germany the book would be issued under Heussinger and Roehl’s name, in the Czech Republic Svoboda would be its official author, Roehl said…

A plagiarist so vile his colleagues persisted in outing him despite their university’s attempts to shut down their complaints has now sued the people who outed him.

A 45-year-old professor at the prestigious Xi’an Jiaotong University in Northwest China’s Shaanxi province was sacked on Sunday after six of his colleagues repeatedly posted letters to the university and on the Internet exposing his academic scandals.

… “The university even questioned our motives,” said [one of the six]. “Some university leaders told us that we could share some awards with Li, if we kept quiet about the scandal. It was such a humiliation!” the 81-year-old academic was quoted by China Central Television (CCTV) as saying on Saturday.

… Using their real names, the six professors then exposed about 30 examples of Li [Liansheng] plagiarizing the work of others online, which attracted more than 60,000 comments from netizens in a single month.

… In response to the allegations, Li sued his former teachers who exposed his plagiarism on the Internet, blaming them for sabotaging his reputation, according to a July 2009 report in the Shanghai Daily.

Li’s lawyer told Xi’an Beilin district people’s court that the six senior professors used insulting phrases such as “academic thief” and “rat on campus” in their posts on a website about Li, the newspaper reported.

His counsel also demanded the six professors make a public apology and each pay compensation between 120,000 and 150,000 yuan ($17,600 to $22,000), said the report…

Madonna Constantine seems to be the model here.

One of the writers whose work Gerald Posner plagiarized showed up in the audience of a talk Posner recently gave at the Miami Beach Botanical Garden.

The plagiaree is not happy about having been plagiarized, and told Posner about it, as you can see in this film clip of the event.

If everyone Posner has plagiarized had showed up, they’d have had to turn away the rest of the audience. But it was apparently just this guy. And the guy’s wife:

[A]fter the reading, [the plagiaree’s wife] asked Posner[:] “Are we still going out for a drink to discuss this?” Posner exploded. His plastic face turned red: “Yeah, I’m a thieving cocksucker.” “Yes, you are a thieving cocksucker,” [she] replied. And then an elderly lady came running towards them: “This is a botanical garden. It’s a peaceful place. Can you please take it some place else?”

Martin Stone, professor of philosophy, is one of the most brazen plagiarists UD‘s covered on this blog.

But this is his only distinction. Otherwise, his plagiarism is much like the other cases of academic plagiarism UD has written about: Because a professor rather than a student did it, his university issued no punishment, but on the contrary allowed him to leave the institution quietly by lying about having fallen ill; and the particular plagiarized material was only one of many acts of plagiarism on his part.

I suppose another small distinction in the Stone case involves his having been a philosopher of religion who pontificated about morality.

The Leuven University student newspaper is not happy about this man, his plagiarism, and the university’s response:

… [The] Institute and the K.U.Leuven together intentionally kept silent relevant information on the functioning of a highly-esteemed member of the academic staff. Though protecting the professor and the reputation of the Institute can be seen as an act of nobility, it is unfair towards the students – as they have the right to know what is going on. Apart from that, it becomes clear once more that the university uses different standards when it comes down to deciding on cases of sentencing plagiarism committed by either students or professors. Also ex-students who were supervised by professor Stone and especially the ones who earned their PhD under his guidance may have been treated unjustly by covering up info of this matter and size.

The member of the Finnish parliament whose work Stone stole found that “tens of pages were identical or nearly identical [to my thesis], although my name was not mentioned at all.”

That was just one of Stone’s publications plagiarized from the work of this man. Stone mined the parliamentarian’s work very extensively. “[N]ot only one, but four articles published by Stone were [in] large part …plain copies of my dissertation.”

“Stone has plagiarized several other researchers, too.”

The Wall Street Journal is annoyed that one of its reporters had his prose stolen by a New York Times reporter.

And so quickly!

Mr Efrati’s Wall Street Journal story, titled “Madoff Sons, Brother, Niece, Being Sued by Trustees for Victims,” was published on Dow Jones Newswires at 12:25 pm on Friday, February 5, and was published on WSJ.com shortly thereafter. At 2:31 pm Mr Kouwe published a related, in fact, a remarkably related story…

Side by side examples follow.

The NYT acknowledges the lifting here.

Remember her? Harvard undergrad who published a chick-lit novel at 19?

UD, who’s been around forever, blogged about her back in 2006.

Everyone got all excited about this woman until much of her novel turned out to have been plagiarized.

Now 17-year-old Helena Hegemann also turns out to have cut and pasted her amazing, scandalous, about-to-be-prize-winning novel.

No one ever seems surprised by these slews of Francoise Sagans. No one thinks it odd that people just learning to insert tampons can pen tomes of astounding maturity and darkness.

Just like BHL (Europe’s hoax-quotient is certainly high lately), Hegemann’s brazening it out, lecturing us on the difference between originality and authenticity, etc., etc.

She’ll be fine. Unlike Gerald Posner, she doesn’t work for a magazine that can fire her. She’s an independent agent. Plus, the whole point of Hegemann is what a bad girl she is. Plagiarism can only help.

… as the Captain and Tenille sing. Once is never enough… whoaaa…

Same thing when it comes to plagiarism, as you know if you read University Diaries, because she never stops telling you. Plagiarized articles are like roaches. Find one, and ten others will come scurrying out of the plagiarist’s past.

So it ever was, so it shall be … and so it is, Dear Reader, with Gerald Posner.

Last week, a reader tipped me to an instance of potential plagiarism by Gerald Posner in the Daily Beast, for which Posner is chief investigative reporter. After I called the plagiarism to the attention of Daily Beast Executive Editor Edward Felsenthal, the site deleted five pilfered sentences and added an editor’s note to explain the deletions and to apologize.

… But this isn’t the only example of Posner pinching copy without attribution. Slate reader Gregory Gelembuik and I have uncovered additional examples of plagiarism by Posner in the Daily Beast from the Texas Lawyer, a Miami Herald blog, a Miami Herald editorial, a Miami Herald article, and a health care journalism blog…

Jack Shafer at Slate has done what Jolisa Gracewood did with Witi Ihimaera’s work — he has simply Googled.

Posner has been suspended.

From Stuff New Zealand:

A second plagiarism row has engulfed book publishers [New Zealand] Penguin, with allegations a book about 19th century Maori land wars was withdrawn and republished because its author, a senior Victoria University historian, plagiarised parts of it.

The case comes less than two months after leading New Zealand writer Witi Ihimaera admitted his latest novel, The Trowenna Sea, contained plagiarised material, and vowed to buy back remaining copies of the book and republish it with full acknowledgments.

In the latest plagiarism row, Dr Danny Keenan – an associate professor of Maori Studies – is alleged to have copied from archaeology expert and historian Nigel Prickett without attribution in his book Wars Without End.

Sections from Prickett’s 2002 book, Landscapes of Conflict: A Field Guide to the New Zealand Land Wars, appear in Wars Without End and are not referenced in the bibliography.

It is understood Prickett instructed lawyers to take Keenan’s publisher, Penguin, to task over the matter. Penguin also published Ihimaera’s book.

Penguin publishing director Geoff Walker refused to comment on the company’s processes to ensure works were properly attributed.

“I can confirm that we withdrew Wars Without End by Danny Keenan… and just republished a revised version.”

He said the revised book contained a “degree of rewriting” and was published earlier this month. The original was published earlier this year…

From Prague Daily Monitor:

Two renowned Czech university teachers and scholars in the field of psychology, Jiri Hoskovec and Jiri Stikar, have confessed to plagiarism they committed two years ago, the daily Pravo reports Thursday.

They apologised on the web page of the Charles University publisher’s for having passed a scientific text written by another author off as their own in their joint book Safe Mobility at the Old Age from 2007, the paper adds.

In their book, which is to be used in university courses as well as by researchers and general public, both authors included almost word-for-word excerpts from Psychology for Drivers written by Karel Havlik without citing the source, Pravo writes…

There won’t be any punishment. The press only responded when Havlik threatened to go to court.

A guy goes into Unity Books and says: “Can I have a copy of Witi’s latest novel signed by all the authors, please?”

When the jokes start up, you’re really in trouble.

… UD was writing a longish post about plagiarism, which should appear at Inside Higher Education any second now.

Ah. Here it is.

And an update on media stuff: Mr UD was indeed interviewed yesterday by the guy from ABC. He told the guy not to listen to Mr UD‘s wife on the subject of laptops in the classroom. Something like that. We’ll see if any of this makes it to the screen.

Tomorrow, the New Zealand Listener – in which reviewer Jolisa Gracewood broke the story two weeks ago with examples of plagiarised content – reveals more unattributed lines in The Trowenna Sea from other people’s work.

It is not clear whether these have been acknowledged by Ihimaera.

The latest Listener quotes Margaret Soltan, a professor of English at George Washington University in Washington DC, who criticises Ihimaera.

But she mostly criticises Auckland University, where Ihimaera is a distinguished professor and lecturer.

She says the university has too-readily accepted the author’s word that the plagiarism was inadvertent.

“Pretending it did not happen is the sort of thing a very provincial university will do,” she says.

I’ll link to The Listener when the issue appears. Not sure if you’ll be able to read the article online.

Oh, and — I told you plagiarists were lifers.