On September 11, 2020 the NAQA’s Ethics Committee reviewed the case of suspected violations of academic integrity in the research publications of Doctor of Economics, Professor Serhiy Shkarlet. This investigation was initiated by the Ukrainian Parlament Member Inna Sovsun, several journalists and representatives of non-government organisations including those representing students. NAQA also received a request from the Secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine to review this case because Serhiy Shkarlet was appointed Interim Acting Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine. He currently still occupies this position.
The members of the NAQA’s Ethics Committee reviewed all received complaints and relevant materials pertaining to this case, and each member was provided with the opportunity to express their own independent professional, expert opinion concerning these materials.
The NAQA also asked for advice on this case from several international experts on academic integrity issues, and provided them with fragments of articles allegedly written by Serhiy Shkarlet (translated into English) with comparisons to previously published texts. While reaching its conclusions, the Ethics Committee considered the comments and conclusions of the following non-Ukrainian experts:
– Dr. Tomáš Foltýnek (President of the Board of the European Academic Integrity Network, lecturer at Mendel University in Brno) – link to report
– Krzysztof Gutowski (publisher at the Publishing House of the Institute of Legal Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences, former expert of Plagiat.pl LLC on publishing and copyright Warsaw, expert on piracy and plagiarism, included in the list of the District Court in Warsaw) – link to report
– Christian Moriarty (professor of ethics and law and a licensed attorney in the United States. He serves on the International Center for Academic Integrity (ICAI) executive board, specializing in policy in anti-cheating and anti-plagiarism).- link to report
As a a consequence of investіgation, discussion of all available materials, including the opinions of international and Ukrainian experts, the NAQA Ethics Committee confirmed the presence of serious violations of academic integrity and plagiarism in four research articles authored by Serhiy Shkarlet.
The full text of the NAQA’s Ethics Committee decision and all associated materials in Ukrainian are available here.