MINISTER DEEPLY CONCERNED ABOUT PLAGIARISM BY ACADEMICS

Jakarta, Feb 19 (ANTARA) - Education Minister Mohammad Nuh has expressed deep concern over acts of plagiarism committed by some university lecturers in the country.

Speaking to newsmen here Friday in response to the plagiarism cases publicly revealed at certain private universities in Bandung and Yogyakarta, he said the culprits need to be severely sanctioned.

"The sanctions can be social and legal, as well as the withdrawal of their academic degrees. The latter must be decided by the respective universities' senates," he said.

Despite the fact that imitating other people's works but then claiming them as their own works was just done by a very small number of Indonesian academics, this condition could not be ignored.

Therefore, the education ministry would tighten its assessment procedures in evaluating the originality of lecturers' scientific works through a peer review mechanism, he said.

Nuh said the main cause of plagiarism at certain universities in the country was related to the culprits' poor personal integrity.

They neglected their personal integrity in their efforts to achieve the highest academic class as full-time professors, he said.

"Other causing factors are related to the weak professorship assessment procedures and to financial consideration because being a professor, a lecturer will get incentives," he said.

To halt the acts of plagiarizing in the future, the universities and research centers' authorities need to open the accesses to digital libraries and use such plagiarism checkers as "scanmyessay.com".

Sharing Nuh's views, Deputy Education Minister Fasli Jalal said his party had actually tightened the ministry's internal reviewing mechanism for professorship applications.

The ministry had also planned to form peer groups consisting of experts to review the originality of the professorship applicants' scientific works, he said.

The ministry also helped strengthen the peer groups at every university, Jalal said.

In 2008, Indonesia had 3,439 full-time professors at state universities and 512 at private universities. The number increased to 3,662 and 573 in 2009.

The plagiarism case has again attracted Indonesian public and media attention this week following a revelation of three separate cases in Bandung and Yogyakarta.

In the West Java city of Bandung, a full-time professor of a prestigious private university was found guilty by the university's senate of having copied an Australian social scientist's work.

In the Central Java city of Yogyakarta, two lecturers of local private universities had claimed other people's scientific works as their own for the sake of their professorship applications.

Due to the importance of this issue, Indonesia's influential Kompas daily had put it in its front pages for its Thursday and Friday issues.