Japanese university president forced out over self-plagiarism

The president of a Japanese university has resigned after two investigations found he had repeatedly self-plagiarised or double-submitted scientific papers.

Toshiaki Miyazaki was also found guilty by The University of Aizu of filing for federal research funding “without going through the university official procedures…which caused confusion in the operation of the university”, according to a statement issued on 31 July.

Professor Miyazaki, whose research focuses on information networks and processing, quit with immediate effect after the investigation panel recommended that he tender his resignation, the statement added.

His resignation comes almost three years after the Fukushima university received anonymous allegations that Professor Miyazaki had committed plagiarism on at least four occasions. In February 2022, a university investigation upheld the claims, docking him 20 per cent of one month’s salary.

One month later, however, Professor Miyazaki self-reported that another 12 papers were suspected of self-plagiarism, according to Retraction Watch. An investigation into 54 of his papers has now concluded that he self-plagiarised or double-submitted in eight of these outputs, and a dozen in total.

According to the investigation, published by Aizu, one paper published in 2012 included “chapters identical to those in the three previous papers, but these three were not listed in the bibliography”.

Another paper presented to a 2011 conference was “merely…a scaled-down version of [a] previous paper” and “no novelty was found in it”, while another 2011 publication was “merely the combination of what was written in the four previous papers” he had published.

The same research theme discussed in another paper was based on “presentations [that] had been continuously made at international conferences”.

Concluding that Professor Miyazaki had “significantly neglected the basic duty of care expected of a researcher”, the investigation found that he “failed to check the submission rules, which should be checked each time when submitting each paper”, although it was not possible to tell if this breach was “wilful”.

The report also highlighted poor practices regarding authorship of some papers, with Professor Miyazaki stating “that he thought that data and research results of his students enrolled at the university belonged to him as they were under his supervision and not able to discuss with him on an equal footing”. In one case, he submitted work from a student as a single author and listed the student in the acknowledgments section.

According to Aizu, a specialist university for computer science and engineering, the breaches did not “constitute a breach of professional duty amounting to dismissal” but the disciplinary panel “determined as well that no individual or corporate representative’s responsibility for these incidents can be absolved, and recommended that he voluntarily and promptly resign from the position of the chairperson of the board of executives and the university president”.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com