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RePEc plagiarism offender

Identification

Name: Soumitra Kumar Bera
Affiliations at time of decision: Calcutta University, Banras Hindu University, North Eastern Hill University

Facts

Note: some links may turn invalid over time, especially if the committee has requested some works to be pulled.

Forecasting model of small scale industrial sector of West Bengal, posted 14 January 2011, dated 20 November 2010 (local copy) is a complete replica of "Future Prospects of Small Scale Industrial Sector Of Punjab: An Empirical Assessment" by Sanjeev Gupta, published in Communications of the IBIMA, Volume 7, 2009, pages 102-110 (local copy).

Financial crisis: The incrediable hulk in Indian economic growth and external sector, posted 29 December 2010, dated 22 April 2010 (local copy) shares the same abstract as "Financial Crisis: Indian Economic Growth and External Sector" by D. K. Nauriyal and Bimal Sahoo, presented at the International Conference on Economics, Turkish Economic Association, 1-3 September 2010 (program, local copy). The latter was published in "Global economic crisis and impact on Indian economy" ed. by Anil Kumar Thakur and Deepti Taneja, on behalf of the Indian Economic Association (local copy of table of contents). At least the first pages have been deemed to be identical.

Response of offender

Upon being notified of the accusation of plagiarism for the first paper, the accused responded on 10 June 2011:
You just delete all papers . It has done someone else. Someone hacked mpra profile and has done that joke with me. So how to delete my account. I do not enter into the case. Sorry for this.
Upon being notified that this work was listed in the RePEc author profile (where one has to claim works as one's own) and that is was also listed on a CV found in scribd service (local copy), the accused responded on 13 June 2011:
I have done many mistakes and I know I was not the right to ask for the forgiveness. But as a child I ask for the forgiveness and I realised very sorry for telling lie to you. So, Please forgive me and I assure you that I will not do same thing in future.

Committee decision


YES Notification of offender superiors
YES Notification of editor published plagiarising work
YES Request of removal of plagiarising work
YES Notification of afflicted author(s)
YES Notification of afflicted editor
YES Banning of author from RePEc Author Service
YES Publication on RePEc plagiarism page

Further developments

The Department of Economics at North-Eastern Hill University reacted to this case by expelling the accused from its PhD program (details).

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