A Chinese university said on Thursday that it has begun an investigation into fraud allegations against one of its professors, who has allegedly pulled out over 100 papers from online databases as the scandal kindled the internet.
Liang Ying, 39-year-old professor at Nanjing University's School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, withdrew over 100 of her online papers and admitted to academic misconduct on Tuesday, China Youth Daily reported.
The report said she plagiarized at least 15 of her papers. One of her papers published in 2002 was a shorter version of another paper published in 2001 written by a Xiamen University professor.
Liang later explained to the newspaper that these papers were published before 2005, a time when she claims she did not understand academic criterion.
Nanjing University has already put together a group to look into the case, an administration office employee told Global Times on Thursday on the condition of anonymity.
"Our university has always adopted a zero-tolerance policy on academic fraud," she said, noting that the university will take action in accordance with the regulations of both the Ministry of Educationand Nanjing University.
Liang was selected to a youth program under the Changjiang Scholar Program in 2015, set up by the Ministry of Education to attract outstanding scholars in China.
Academic fraud cases are prevalent in this field because the current evaluation mechanism only places importance on the number of papers, Zhu Lijia, a professor of public management at the Chinese Academy of Governance in Beijing, told the Global Times on Thursday.
Zhu noted that the Chinese academe needs to step forward on transparency, democratization and standardization.
An oversea academic website removed 11 papers of a student at Tsinghua University's Shenzhen graduate school because of academic misconduct, and the university latter stripped the student of his doctorate, stressing that the university never tolerates academic fraud, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Monday.
