The Council of Agriculture (COA) yesterday said it had found solid evidence of plagiarism by Taoyuan Mayor Simon Chang (張善政) in reports he wrote during his time at Acer Inc, and would seek to recover some of the funding it had provided for them.
The plagiarism accusations came to light while Chang, a former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) premier, was campaigning for mayor in the local elections in November last year.
While working as vice president at Acer, Chang applied to serve as principal investigator in a COA research project from 2007 to 2009. The council approved his request and provided funding of NT$57.36 million (US$1.89 million) for the project, which involved 21 reports.
Photo courtesy of Taoyuan City Government via CNA
COA Deputy Minister Chen Junne-jih (陳駿季) yesterday said a task force composed of seven experts had found that six of Chang’s reports were very similar to, and contained verbatim text and accompanying graphs and illustrations from other published reports and online materials.
The amount of funding to be returned would be determined in the coming days, depending on what proportion of the six reports contains a high degree of plagiarism, Chen said.
The task force used plagiarism detection software iThenticate, and then had staff check each section manually, COA officials said.
About 45 percent of five of the reports was plagiarized, while more than 25 percent of one report was plagiarized, they said.
The six reports contravene the Copyright Act (著作權法), and breach the agreement signed with the COA, the officials said.
The task force followed procedures, inviting Chang and Acer Inc to present their viewpoints and defend themselves, Chen said.
Acer only provided a letter of explanation, while Chang refused to attend the task force sessions and did not submit a letter, Chen said.
“We have confidence in the process and the decision by the task force, as three of them are legal experts, while the others are experts in government administration, digital data and intellectual property rights. All of them are familiar with COA projects, and some have been research project leaders on similar government research work,” Chen said.
Asked for comment last night, Chang said: “The election is over now. It is meaningless to rehash this matter. I disagree with the council’s decision.”
In September last year, COA officials already found evidence that Chang and his team had lifted, or copied text and content directly from academic journals in Taiwan, China, the Netherlands and Hong Kong, as well as Business Weekly magazine, news releases by the COA and other government agencies, and a master’s thesis from a university in southern Taiwan.
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