I am not a plagiarist

A report titled “CTRL+C, CTRL+V, Javed Laghari found ‘guilty’” (January 27) followed by an editorial titled “Stolen words” (January 29) appeared in The Express Tribune and claimed that I, a former chairperson of the Higher Education Commission (HEC), has been found ‘guilty’ of plagiarism. The said story and editorial are misleading and pass a unilateral judgment without knowing the complete facts.

In 2003, I helped a faculty member, M Nadeem, in collecting data for a report that he was writing on electronic voting. He subsequently published the report, in 2004, without my knowledge, in a non-recognised journal, of which he was the editor and used my name as co-author. Since it was typical that authors write names of advisers in their papers, and since I was his adviser in his other work, he put my name on the paper as an acknowledgment. No one, including me, could have verified the originality of anyone’s work then, since no anti-plagiarism softwares were available at that time. The paper eventually got listed in my CV — an innocent oversight as there was no vested interest involved because the journal was not of a notable stature even by Pakistani standards.

However, the main author, M Nadeem, held himself fully responsible for writing the paper by mentioning that “Dr Javaid Laghari had no role or contribution in the technical part of the report, who only helped me in collecting election data for Pakistan and I had included his name in the paper just for acknowledgement”. He also added the following disclaimer to the paper: “Above all, any remaining errors, impertinencies and imbecilities are entirely my responsibility.”

After anti-plagiarism softwares became freely available, it came to my attention about six months back that the paper was plagiarised to an extent of 30 per cent. I immediately took it off my CV, wrote to the current editor of the journal to withdraw the paper, located M Nadeem on Facebook, as he was working outside the country, and messaged him seeking a clarification on the paper. He replied by email saying that he had added my name without my permission and that I had no contribution in the paper.

No one is denying that plagiarism was not committed — but is the accused guilty? I had no role in writing the technical part of the paper or any information about it being plagiarised in 2003 as that could not have been detected at the time. I took action as soon as the plagiarism was reported. However, the story and editorial published in The Express Tribune calling me guilty are totally misleading and also contradict the opinion of the HEC Plagiarism Committee. The head of the committee, Dr Iqrar Ahmed, vice-chancellor of the University of Agriculture Faisalabad, is a respected and leading academic. He has termed these allegations a ‘conspiracy’ against me. He also mentioned that the case should not even have been entertained under the current HEC policy, which states: “Old cases before the announcement of plagiarism policy i.e., September 27, 2007 shall not be taken up if the concerned authors are not claiming the credit in any way for the paper alleged to be plagiarised.”

In taking up this case, the HEC is, in fact, violating its own policy. It is obvious that there is a witch-hunt being conducted against me by vested interests to block my efforts to be reappointed as HEC chairperson on merit. Everyone knows of the principled stand I took against fake degree holders and against fake universities, and that I stood for an autonomous and federal HEC. During my tenure, the HEC strengthened academics and quality assurance and as a result, seven universities from Pakistan are now ranked among the top 250 universities of Asia.

I became a fully tenured professor of electrical and computer engineering at SUNY Buffalo, New York, in 1992, 12 years before the paper in question was published and have hundreds of research publications to my credit. Any academic with common sense would know I have nothing to gain from a single non-recognised publication. However, The Express Tribune seems to have clearly played into the hands of vested interests, including fake degree holders and fake universities, which have started a campaign against me by tarnishing my credibility.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 31^st,  2014.

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