As recent headline-grabbing resignations by two federal government ministers attest, the issue of academic plagiarism is a higher-profile matter in Germany, and with bigger political stakes, than almost anywhere else. Both defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, who quit his post in 2011, and Annette Schavan, the minister for education and research who departed from chancellor Angela Merkel’s team in early 2013, were forced out in the wake of claims made by whistleblowers that parts of their doctoral theses had been plagiarised. Unsurprisingly, revelations over these cases and others like them have prompted change in academia — although not necessarily the change you would expect.

Responding to urgent calls from the federal government to address the issue, the German Research Foundation (the Deutsche Forschungs-gemeinschaft, or DFG), a major research-funding organisation and the biggest of its kind in Europe, is altering its guidelines on the reporting of plagiarism — to state that universities should no longer investigate allegations solely on the basis of anonymous tip-offs.

The implications may be far-reaching, and some experts fear the change will restrict exposure of academic misconduct. Without academic researchers identifying the problematic borrowings, it seems clear that zu Guttenberg would not have (very reluctantly) acknowledged that large parts of his 2006 doctoral thesis in law for the University of Bayreuth in Bavaria were taken from uncredited sources. Bayreuth stripped zu Guttenberg of his Ph D in 2011.
Similarly, the rescinding this year of Schavan’s 1980 doctorate from Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf came about because of revelations made via a crowdsourced website, VroniPlag Wiki, which claimed her thesis contained large sections of unoriginal work.

But when in August the DFG published revisions to its “academic code of practice”, in response to urgent calls from the federal and regional governments to tackle the situation, its course of action surprised many. “From now on, we will no longer investigate allegations of plagiarism in doctoral theses on the basis of anonymous tips alone,” says Dorothee Dzwonnek, secretary general of DFG. Expanding on this, the DFG stipulates in its revised guidelines that “in future, so-called ‘whistleblowers’ will no longer be able to precipitate official investigations unless they are prepared to let themselves be named”.

DFG president Peter Strohschneider says he has reservations about people who make anonymous allegations, especially when complaints become public. He feels it is essential to deter those whistleblowers who, he suggests, act out of spiteful motives, purely to harm colleagues’ reputations. Dzwonnek agrees that the DFG must ensure first and foremost that all anonymous complaints are being made by people “acting in good faith”.

In the meantime, the cases of zu Guttenberg and Schavan are only the most high-profile instances of suspect doctoral qualifications brought to light via online scrutiny. VroniPlag Wiki is the successor of an earlier site, GuttenPlag Wiki, which aired many allegations against zu Guttenberg. A crowdsourced resource which examines the extent of plagiarism in German doctoral theses, it includes academics among its contributors. Some contributors are anonymous (such as the user who kick-started the Schavan scandal), but others are open about their involvement. The resource is named after Veronica SaB, the daughter of Edmund Stoiber, former state premier of Bavaria. Indeed, her dissertation was the next one after zu Guttenberg’s to get a public going-over.

Like zu Guttenberg, she obtained a doctorate in law, in her case from the University of Konstanz in southern Germany. And, like zu Guttenberg, she was stripped of her title after an anonymous tip-off prompted the university examinations committee to subject her thesis to a thorough examination — a denouement inconceivable in India where politicians, businessmen and other worthies rewarded with doctorates for faux and fudged theses are dime a dozen.

(Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)