Plagiarism is rampant at Chinese universities as academics are pushed to publish or perish, with their schools often covering up for them, state media said yesterday.
A recent survey of 160 doctorate holders found 60 percent had copied the work of others and the same percentage had paid in order to be published in academic journals, the China Daily reported.
"The situation exists in almost every well-known Chinese university," said He Weifang (
The issue has moved up the agenda at a time when China is trying to make a bigger mark on international science, using publications in academic journals as a measure of success. The problem has now become so serious that 100 professors plan to publish an open letter calling for the establishment of a national supervision mechanism to root out academic plagiarism, the paper said.
The move follows a series of scandals, including accusations that a law professor at Wuhan University copied work "word for word," the China Daily said.
In a similar episode, an associate professor at Tianjin Foreign Studies University was removed from his post in January for plagiarizing 10 articles in a book, it said.
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