Jurčiukonytė, Agnė

Academic plagiarism is one of the challenges the academic institutions meet in maintaining the high-quality standards of research and higher education. The contradictions between legal and ethical regulation of plagiarism cases indicate the need for more efficient solutions for prevention and resolution of the plagiarism and other acts of research misconduct at academic institutions. This paper presents a case study of the lawsuit where one Lithuanian University was sued for “illegal revocation” of a doctoral degree due to plagiarism. The arguments provided by the parties to the legal process during the court hearings illustrate the prevalence of cynical attitude towards ethical norms and regulations in academia as well as in wider society. The authors suggest that academic institutions should rely more on the multiple benefits provided by ethics tools and that the congruence between legal and ethical norms is essential for building academic integrity.

It is the case study of the academic plagiarism disclosed in one of the Lithuanian Universities. The doctoral student wrote his thesis using the data of other researchers without permission and a due reference to previous works. After he was awarded a doctoral degree, one of the authors noticed the fact and brought it to the notice of the University. Further actions (and inaction) of the University made this story an object of discussions for the mass media, the courts, and wider academic society. This case is analyzed from the perspective of the University conflict management actions by using the organizational documents analysis and interview method. The analysis shows that actions of the University taken in solving this case were inconsistent and contradictory. Application of ethical tools appeared to be a formality. The safety of hierarchical relations and personal interests were placed above the interests of the University, such as high-quality research, transparent distribution of resources among the staff, adherence to the standards of research ethics.

In Lithuania there were only several science scandals during the whole history of Lithuanian science, i.e. there were only several cases to become public. As elsewher e in the world, academic communities are extremely conservative and hermetic ones and as such they tend to solve their own problems and conflicts internally. Whistleblowers or mavericks are ostracized from it. The most famous science scandal in Lithuania i s related with plagiarism case, which started in 2002 and is still not over. As the scandal has moved beyond the walls of a particular university, it involved governmental and legal institutions, wider academic community. The scandal revealed that there we re no measures, procedures, regulations and even moral judgement to address it.

These recommendations are an integral part of the LYMOS project, based on the results and insights of BASNET experts. The recommendations are designed to as - sist higher education and research institutions to put gender equality into practice. For this purpose specific measures applied most successfully in EU and US higher education institutions are overviewed. The overview of gender equality measures is structured according 5 main areas of university activities: organizational man - agement, management of human resources and preparation of future researchers, research, teaching and studies, social structural conditions. These recommendations are aimed to help reach better representation of re - searchers of both genders in science, especially in the fields which traditionally are dominated by certain gender (e.g. men in science and technology or women in hu - manities). While gender equality is a long-term strategic goal, it is important to un - derstand that the proposed gender equality measures are of temporary nature, i.e. applicable for as long as the certain planned gender balance in higher education and research institutions is reached and supported. These recommendations are based on the fundamental assumption that there is no universal model of gender equality policy that the higher education and research institutions could automatically move and use for their organizational structural change. The authors of the recommendations explain the key issues of gender equal - ity in higher education, indicate the difficulties that may be encountered in integrat - ing a gender perspective, describe the necessary steps to ensure effective gender mainstreaming and outline a number of measures that could help to integrate the gender dimension into organizational processes of higher education institutions. ...

The report of institutional assessment expert group aims to provide suggestions on how to improve the Lithuanian higher education institutional assessment system that it would promote gender equality. Gender equality policy in the education, including higher education and evaluation system requires clearly defined objectives and means to implement the gender equality indicators into existing institutional evaluation methodology. Seeking to help formulate these objectives and means the theoretical and practical analysis was conducted. The report gives an overview of theoretical material on gender mainstreaming, introduces gender equality tools applied in European Union higher education policy and practice, discusses some of the country-specific experiences. Based on this analysis the practical guidelines were suggested. The possible gender policy model for Lithuanian higher education system also was projected according to the latest management techniques and methods. The possibilities of ethics infrastructure and management principles to realize gender equality policy were explored. The authors of this report analyzed higher education practices reflecting presumptions of gender inequality (narratives and case studies), highlighted the typical problems and offered some possible solutions. The existing higher education assessment system features indicate possible disadvantages in terms of gender equality, so the authors suggested how to improve the methodology of assessment by introducing new indicators and careful implementation of gender equality policy into the higher education system...