But the supervisor/advisor should do his job right!

Dear Satyabrata,

It is very interesting subject, you started.

I think, that there is a problem with news. It is more "breaking news" if the professor is charged rather than whole team. You need to remember, that during submission of article and publication process, all co-authors sign papers that they see and know the content of the paper. Thus, they are as responsible as the corresponding author, and probably they are considered guilty as professor, but it is not the news for the media. Only the professor case is the news.

Best regards,

Michal W.

You are correct Michal. Yes, in the recent past all over the world I have heard many such news. Prof. taken into custody after allegations of plagiarism. So, I was wondering why not those students too? Cheap cheap !!!!!!

Dear Satyabrata,

Supervisor can't be taken into custody due to the fault of his/her students. Supervisor should be responsible for the methodology and the analysis, but not for the results or conclusions.

But the supervisor/advisor should do his job right!

The professor should check the contents of a paper and give very clear hints. S/he is the scientifivc leader of a new scientist and has to bear the respondability for the scientific behaviour of the young author. No compromises!

You are correct Prof. Judeh. It's really unfortunate when we hear a prof facing all these at the age of 65-70 after retiring from the job for the crime did by their students. Dr. Obeidat, I think your single sentence includes everything. yes supervisors need to check properly for plagiarism before allowing the students to send the paper for peer review. You are correct Prof. Krieger.

Both the supervising professor & the student share the responsibility in many cases. The first ought to have read the article thoroughly before giving the approval for sending the paper & the "adult" student must know that s/he will be held responsible for a wrong deed. It is a bonus for scholars & RG to keep on fighting dishonesty in research & in education. 

I find that @Nizar's response is good. Both the instructor and the student share the responsibility for plagiarism. The attached Harvard resources will help to learn how to avoid the pitfalls of plagiarism. These tips and guidelines can help to produce work with academic integrity.

http://www.extension.harvard.edu/resources/career-academic-resource-center/plagiarism-proper-use-sources

Those who signed the paper are responsible for the deed and the offense will be sentenced or fined differently depending on the countries. One should acknowledge though that plagiarism is a serious offense. We've had various cases of politicians or theologists who were convicted in France and Germany (even for a thesis !) and admitted their deeds, but apart from resigning from their positions nothing much happened to them !

Back to the professor now: did he sign the paper ?, even as the last author, then his/her responsibility is that of an author, i.e. maximum. Did he fail monitoring properly the research ? that's a mistake, a serious one, but not a legal offense. There should be professional consequences but no legal harassment.

But he might not even know that the paper had been submitted ! In the end, if the PhD student benefits of tutorship (in terms of helping him/her pursue his/her research) he/she is not under legal guardianship ! The ultimate responsibility is that of the author(s). And sometimes, papers are submitted a couple of years or more after the research has ended, the supervisor not even knowing. I remember publishing some papers 4 years after my PhD ended, thanking my  ex-supervisor, i.e. Pierre Leymarie, to whom I am still indebted and of whom I acknowledged the help, but he did not know before I submitted these papers and in the end it was my work and my responsibility. If he has come across that paper in the early 90s, which I'm not sure as he retired and followed a new life, I'm sure he has been happy that I finished the work by giving it a better international visibility. A pity I did not chose a journal with good reputation and strong visibility instead of a book chapter for that (but the article is 46 pages long).

Now I would have more RG impact points :-)

Best to you all.

Thank you Profs for your replies. Dear Prof. Ljubomir, Dr. Nizar, Prof. Kamal, and Dr. Patrice, yes it should be a collective responsibility.

It is supposed that professors read the paper. Does it really happen? I doubt a lot...

Dear Nevrus, You are correct. But, the current scenario is something different. They consider profs as accountable. Dear Demetris, Yes, I can strongly say so. Th profs. I had worked with during my undergrad. and MS, they were pretty serious about this. Even, one paper took around 2-2.5 months before sending it for review, as my supervisor asked for several corrections and redrafting that manuscript twice or thrice I guess. So, we can't generalize this idea that profs. never read the paper seriously. 

Here in Greece professors do not read even submitted Theses in order to evaluate them, so they will not read papers...

Dear All,

I think that it is not a problem of reading the papers or thesis by professors. It is about real responsibility from being the supervisor or co-author. ALL supervisors or co-authors TAKE responsibility for all papers/thesis they sign with their names! And it is their mistake when they do not read the papers/thesis. But it is not the excuse for avoiding the responsibility!!!

And again, if all co-authors take responsibility for the paper, all of them should be taken into account when something is wrong with the paper (plagiarism).

Best regards,

Michał W.

Dear Demetris, that happens in the other part of the world too. But, not ALL the profs,right? Dear Michal, You are correct. It's about responsibility and all of the authors are equally responsible for such incidents.