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Literary Review
Plagiarise or perish
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In a rapidly globalising knowledge industry, there is an emerging tendency towards unethical practices which adversely affect scholars from developing countries. P. RADHAKRISHNAN details one such case, in the first of a two-part article.
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PUBLISH or perish" is no more an academic chant in the fast unfolding cyber age, era of globalisation, knowledge revolution, knowledge-driven society, and what have you. Instead, the chant is "plagiarise or perish". Central to this switch is, as mentioned later, a kind of vicarious, exploitative, unethical, "scholarship" becoming part of the rapidly globalising academic environment, emanating from highly visible scholars located in prestigious international academic centres.
The manner in which this chant is being turned into "knowledge" is so uncanny, that intellectuals in developing countries such as India might wonder whether it is worth their while to publish at all, especially in Indian journals, as their material can easily be filched and published by some Western scholar, about which they may not be even aware, and even if they are aware they can do very little by way of redress or corrective action. This does not mean that plagiarism is exclusively Western. But given the kind of advanced information technology and academic facilities in the West, one may hazard a hunch that the West is far ahead of the rest of the world in this brand of "knowledge revolution". The purpose of this write-up is to draw attention to one important instance of plagiarism, where there is certainly an interface between India and the West.
On July 9, 1998, Dr. C. T. Kurien, Editor, Review of Development and Chang (RDC), Chennai, India, sent the following letter to Mr. Tejeshwar Singh, Managing Director, Sage Publications, New Delhi, with copy to me:
I take it that you have had a chance to see copies of Review of Development and Change in which several publications by Sage are reviewed.
One of the books that came to us for review sometime ago is John Robert Shotton's Learning and Freedom (1998). We passed it on to Dr. P. Radhakrishnan for reviewing it. Yesterday he turned the book to me with a letter in which he stated that the first chapter of the book is simply a modification of the paper, "India's Educational Efforts: Rhetoric and Reality" by P. Radhakrishnan and R. Akila which appeared in the Economic and Political Weekly of November 27, 1993. Hence he did not wish to review the book.
I have personally made a comparison of Shotton's Chapter I and the paper by Radhakrishnan and Akila and am convinced that Dr. Radhakrishnan's contention is valid. It is shocking that a scholar from Cambridge University who is also Deputy Director of the Centre for Overseas and Developing Education would descend to this type of "scholarship". I am not concerned with the legal aspects of the problem but as an academic I find what Shotton has done extremely reprehensible. There is not much that I can do about it except to bring it to your notice and to refuse to have the book reviewed in RDC.
I am enclosing a photocopy of the paper by Radhakrishnan and Akila so that you can make your own comparison and be convinced of the validity of Dr. Radhakrishnan's claim.
I followed up Dr. Kurien's letter on July 11, 1998, with a letter to Mr. Tejeshwar Singh:
I draw you attention to a letter dated July 9, 1998, sent to you by Dr. C. T. Kurien, Editor, Review of Development and Change, a copy of which is enclosed herewith. As Dr. Kurien has mentioned in his letter, Chapter 1 of John Robert Shotton's book Learning and Freedom is simply a modification of the paper, "India's Educational Efforts: Rhetoric and Reality" by myself and R. Akila, which appeared in the Economic and Political Weekly of November 27, 1993.
As publisher of the above book I would like to know if you have anything to say about what Shotton has done.
Mr. Tejeshwar Singh sent me the following e-mail on July 14, 1998.
Kindly refer to yours of 11 July. I am naturally shocked to read your letter and that of Professor Kurien. As publishers we have done our best to uphold ethical standards and to follow international practice. Hence, it pains us if one of our books has violated such norms. All I can say is that we did have the book evaluated before accepting it for publication and our reader did not point out this problem. Please, nevertheless, accept our profuse and sincere apologies for this incident.
Naturally, we will forward your letter to the author ... and solicit his response, which we will share with you. In the meantime, if you would like to add anything further to your communication please do not hesitate to get back to me.
In conclusion, let me once again offer my sincere apologies. You are after all, also a valued author of ours and it is particularly upsetting when another author indulges in this sort of behaviour. Kindly share this response with Professor Kurien.
On July 29, 1998, Dr. Kurien, and myself received the following letter from Mr. Tejeshwar Singh.
I was on the verge of forwarding your letter to John Shotton when he unexpectedly turned up in New Delhi on his way to Rajasthan on a field trip.
We showed him your letter and he has given us the enclosed reply to forward to you and to Professor Radhakrishnan. Frankly, I really don't know what to say but as before, you would guide me as to what we should do next in this matter.
Following is the verbatim reproduction of Shotton's reply dated July 24, 1998.
Dear Drs. Radhakrishnan and Akila.
Please let me say at the outset of this letter, that having read through two items of correspondence from Dr. Kurien to Sage and an article from EPW written by yourselves, which Sage sent me, I am completely embarrassed by the situation that has arisen. I am embarrassed for Sage for the position I have put them in, and in relation to yourselves I feel that I have been guilty of the worst academic failing. Thus before I go any further I want to profoundly apologise to you both for some serious oversights on my part, as I have done to Sage and Dr. Kurien. As I suggested, I think this situation has arisen due to some serious oversights on my part which I want to lay out for you. I do this not to find excuses to hide behind, but as a way of putting on record what I believe to have happened — I think I owe all parties that. I want though to stress most of all at this point that I accept complete responsibility for what has happened.
I first came across tables 1-4 and 6 that are in chapter one of Learning and Freedom in the winter of 1993-94. They were part of a presentation by a Dr. Schapiro from the USA at an international conference in Denmark on baseline educational information in southern hemisphere countries. At that stage and until yesterday I had no idea that they were the work of yourselves. I understood them to be the product of a statistical department inside the Government of India. The direct reference given during the presentation as to the source of the information was for the Government of India's Literacy Digest of 1991 although the presenter informed me afterwards that he understood them to have also been quoted in a paper in an Indian Journal. I immediately asked a research assistant of mine in London to undertake a search for the paper. She duly informed me some months later that she had found an article for me, with reference, which I eventually received in 1994.
At this stage I had already approached Sage with a view to providing them with a manuscript on educational innovations in India for consideration for publication. I had only completed a small amount of writing at this point and was not intending to have a chapter on the nature of educational provision in India. Colleagues encouraged me to do so and I eventually went to my files to access as much information as I could. I decided to build such a chapter around the synopsis of your article which my research assistant had provided. My mistake at this point was not to consult the original EPW article and, if I am honest, this was a lazy oversight.
I want to assure you that if I had known that you had produced the tables yourselves I would have referenced them accordingly, in the same way that, had I known that whole sections of the original EPW article had been included in the synopsis I would have either altered the language or more likely used them as quotations.
I fully understand the sentiments expressed by Dr. Kurien in his letter to Sage dated 16 July where he suggests that I have given the impression to readers that I have compiled and interpreted the tables in chapter 1. For this I offer my apologies once more and assure you both that I will do all I can to rectify this situation.
To that end, in the first instance I am in the process of preparing articles for circulation to international journals on aspects of the current initiatives in primary and elementary education that are underway in India. I will quote some of your material and will make a point of highlighting you as the source of the information with reference and apology that I have failed to do this in Learning and Freedom. I think there are also other ways I could make this public, accepting my responsibility for the insult to yourselves, by, for example, producing some articles for the national press in India and abroad which acknowledge your work and my oversights in Learning and Freedom. I would also be happy to make a public apology in the Review of Development and Change if you both thought it appropriate.
With my sincerest apologies once more for this terrible situation.
(To be concluded)
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