Who and for what can deprive a degree?

The issue of depriving Vladimir Medinsky, Minister of Culture of Russia, became the reason for an active discussion of problems in the field of defending dissertations. And while expert councils were deciding what to do with Medinsky’s dissertation, the public asked themselves the question “Who, how and for what can deprive a scientist of a scientific degree?”

Who can revoke a degree and for what?

In accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation, only the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation can deprive a scientific degree for violation of the requirements for dissertations established by the Law. The main violations include:

• forgery of documents submitted for defense;
• plagiarism in various forms: from borrowing text and research results to ignoring co-authorship in collaborative work;
• Incorrect information about published works.

On August 25, 2017, the draft Resolution “On Amendments to the Regulations on the Awarding of Academic Degrees” was published. The project is currently under public comments .

The greatest discussions in the scientific community were caused by a new version of the problem of plagiarism in defended dissertations. In paragraph 66, the question of the methods and criteria for its detection is posed in a new way.

In the entire civilized world, an evidentiary public accusation of plagiarism, regardless of the statute of limitations, is sufficient to deprive the guilty person of his academic degree, and often of his position. Our legislators have decided to resort to litigation. “I believe that it is necessary to support and adopt those laws that are part of the fight against plagiarism. This bill, in my opinion, creates milder conditions for plagiarism,” said V. E. Fortov in an interview with TASS.

Accusations of plagiarism from the applicant against the holder of a scientific degree of the Ministry of Education and Science will be accepted after a court decision on copyright infringement. To do this, the author whose rights are violated must file a lawsuit. The Public Council and the Council for Science under the Ministry of Education and Science spoke out against this amendment during the discussion of the Project, rightly believing that this amendment would cause significant harm to Russian science. Evaluation of the scientific work of scientists should be carried out by professionals belonging to the scientific community. Everything related to the awarding and deprivation of academic degrees is in the sphere of not private, but public interests, and all related problems should be resolved out of court. Involving the courts in this procedure means shifting the responsibility for combating plagiarism to individuals. The conclusion from this is simple: with the adoption of this amendment, it will become very difficult to deprive a degree for a written off dissertation. Now, if the holder of a scientific degree is accused of plagiarism, then it is enough for him to go to court and receive official confirmation that no lawsuits have been filed in this regard. And the authors of scientific papers have no serious motivation to go to court for the following reasons:

• their authorship has already been recorded in scientific publications;
• litigation requires material and time costs;
• unwillingness to spoil relationships and conflict with colleagues.

True, the authors of this document left a small loophole for those who applied for the deprivation of their degree. As an alternative to a court decision, you can use the opinion of competent specialists. But in practical and organizational terms, this is also not easy to do.

Degree withdrawal procedure

According to the Regulations on awarding academic degrees An application for deprivation of a scientific degree can be submitted by a legal entity or an individual. An application can be submitted to the Ministry of Education and Science within 10 years from the date of awarding the degree. If there are several applicants, then one of them must be authorized to correspond with the Ministry. The application can be delivered to the expedition of the Ministry of Education and Science, sent by registered mail or by e-mail with an electronic signature.

It is necessary to distinguish between an appeal, which is filed for a violation of the dissertation defense procedure, and an application for deprivation of a scientific degree, which indicates that the dissertation does not meet the requirements set forth in the Regulations on Academic Degrees. An application can be submitted only after the release of the Order of the Ministry of Education and Science on awarding the applicant the degree of candidate or doctor of science.

If the application for deprivation of the degree is accepted by the ministry, it is sent to the Dissertation Council, on the decision of which the application for deprivation of the degree was submitted. Next, the procedure for deprivation of a degree looks like this:

1. The application is considered at a meeting of the Dissertation Council in the presence of two-thirds of its members.
2. The decision to withdraw a degree is made by secret ballot by two-thirds of the votes of the members of the Council participating in the meeting. An appeal may be filed within two months from the date of the decision.
3. The decision of the Dissertation Council is sent by the Ministry of Education and Science to the Expert Council for a final decision. The appeal is filed within two months from the date of the decision. The term for making decisions on the appeal shall not exceed three months from the date of its registration. The application and decision of the Dissertation Council, together with the conclusion of the Expert Council, are sent to the Commission for the development of recommendations to the Ministry of Education and Science.
4. After studying all the documents, the Commission holds a meeting to which the “plaintiff” and “respondent” are invited. Following the meeting, the Commission submits recommendations on the application for deprivation of a degree to the Ministry of Education and Science, which, on its basis, makes a decision either to deprive a degree or to refuse to deprive a degree.
5. The decision is posted on the website of the Commission, information is published on the Internet about the supervisor of the person in respect of whom this decision was made, about the members of the commission of the dissertation council who signed the decision to accept this dissertation for defense, about all opponents, including the leading organization.

In total, from 2000 to 2015, about 75,000 dissertations in economics were defended in Russia. Of these, according to Dissernet (a voluntary network community organized by professional scientists in various fields of scientific knowledge, journalists, public figures and volunteers in order to identify gross violations of the rules and regulations for attesting scientists and awarding academic degrees), there were 1700–1800 fake, which is 3.2% of all defended dissertations for this period. Looking at the numbers above, you can get a general idea of ​​the extent of this disaster for science and education.

The practice of recent years has clearly shown the need to create a clear mechanism that will allow depriving all those who defended dissertations with serious violations of their degrees, regardless of their positions and titles.

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