VroniPlag Wiki - Case 28, Theology

I can barely keep up here ... Earlier this week, VroniPlag Wiki published case 28,  a dissertation in theology, approved by the University of Tübingen. In this rather bizarre case (but in a way, they are all bizarre in their own ways) the submitter already has a dissertation in medicine. And since he is working on spiritual healing, he just includes that dissertation here, without reference.

VroniPlag Wiki disregarded this in its page count, as there is a slight chance that the advisors accepted this. The medical doctorate is not included on the CV for Tübingen, but the Dr. Dr. is proudly displayed on web pages where the submitter is active.  There are about a quarter of the rest of the pages with plagiarism. A third of these pages include plagiarism on over 75 % of the pages.

Nature wins libel trial

Nature won a long-running libel suit in July brought against them in England by Mohamed El Naschie on account of the following article (which is now back online) by Quirin Schiermeier : Self-publishing editor set to retire: Criticism grows over high number of self-penned articles in physics journal. (Published online 26 November 2008 in Nature 456, 432 (2008) | doi:10.1038/456432a)

Nature has both published a report on the outcome of the suit and an article by the author of the original article describing the process. The main focus of the 2008 article had been about how El Naschie had been self-publishing in an Elsevier journal (Chaos, Solitons and Fractals), of which he was editor-in-chief, at a very unusual rate, and that he was retiring from this position. Schiermeier was looking into how exactly this enormous publishing output was happening.

Schiermeier was also curious to know more about this person, as there were a number of blogs that were criticizing him, for example the El-Naschie Watch, but that were being threatened with litigation. Threats of legal action in science are often in inverse proportion to the scientific value of the contested results.  Schiermeier notes:

Still, unlike other science journalists, such as Simon Singh, who had previously had to go through the libel ordeal on their own, I was in the comparatively comfortable situation that my employers had the resources, the stamina and the willpower to take the case on.

Síle Lane, a campaigns manager at Sense About Science in London, is reported by Nature as noting that "[i]ndividuals who lack the financial support of an institution capable of defending against a libel action will probably look at the amount of time and money it took to defend this case and decide that they shouldn’t speak out."

The judgement ([2012] EWHC 1809 (QB)) is available online at Nature and its 91 pages make a fascinating read. I think it should be required reading for anyone dealing with the scientific publishing process, peer review, impact factors, or junk journals and vanity publishing.

The Honorable Mrs. Justice Sharp, DBE, the judge for this suit, should have been made DBE for her thorough analysis of the situation, but she already is. She looked at the norms of scientific publishing, the peer review system, an the problem of journal self-citation by calling on expert witnesses.

In paragraph 90 we see that El Naschie published 58 papers in 2008 (the year he was being forced to step down as editor). That would be more than one paper a week, and the next most frequent published author at the journal that year had only 9 publications. The next paragraphs contain some fascinating statistics comparing the publication record of other editors-in-chief of top-rate journals. 

In paragraph 114 in response to El Naschie's statement that no peer group existed for assessing his theories, so his only recourse was to self-publish, Sharp states: "We are not living in the age of Galileo. Scientists or those with a keen interest in science as informed amateurs are free to publish and thus disseminate their ideas to the outside world: and in the age of the internet, there are many platforms by which they can do so."

Paragraph 120 details the expert witness of Professor Neil Turok, professor for applied mathematics and theoretical physics. His gruesome task was to actually read and analyze all 58 papers published by El Naschie in 2008 in the journal in question. What an enormous amount of effort!

120.
Through Professor Turok, it is said by the Defendants that on analysis, the 58 papers or articles contained the following defects:
i) A failure to define terminology and concepts, including in particular a failure to present the principles and equations of “E-infinity theory” and the predictions which are said to be deduced from it;
ii) Strongly expressed conclusions, unsupported by any, or any intelligible process of logical reasoning; in particular, the repeated unexplained reliance on numerical coincidences in support of the assertion that the Claimant’s “E-infinity theory” is correct;
iii) Statements which are meaningless or obscure, even to a readers with expertise in the field of theoretical physics;
iv) Statements which are simply wrong;
v) Elementary errors of spelling and grammar;
vi) A lack of any, or any substantial, contribution of new knowledge to the field;
vii) An excessive degree of citation of other articles written or co-written by the Claimant, in particular in order to justify assertions which should have been
supported by self-contained argument or references to the work of independent authors (the articles published by the Claimant in CSF in 2008 contained approximately 301 citations of his own articles in CSF, including citations of “in press” articles: i.e. those articles which were due to be, but which had not at the material time, been formally published);
viii) The use of those articles to advertise other articles by the Claimant.

The judgement then goes on to examine each and every one of these defects. In paragraph 122 already Sharp notes: "But to paraphrase Samuel Johnson, you do not have to be a carpenter to see when the legs of a table are uneven, or even to see that it has no legs at all." On questioning about peer review, Turok states in paragraph 169: "Peer review is essentially what separates theoretical physics from chaos."

It goes on, paragraph after paragraph detailing the bizarreness of the case. This includes the witness Anke Boehm who worked for El Naschie insisting that it was not the policy of the journal to keep reviews and papers once they had been published (paragraph 182) and then speaking of "deleting" the reviews when El Naschie insisted that everything was only done on paper and the he does not use email.  Paragraph 290 notes that El Naschie admitted that some of the people who were speaking for him or working at the journal just did not exist.

The judgment also includes material from Elsevier that makes it clear that even they found the journal problematic (paragraph 228). An internal review of the journal is quoted as stating “Although the journal has a growing impact factor, we are concerned that this is too dependent upon self-citation […] The journal appears to have a high acceptance rate with many accepted papers coming from China." I don't normally praise Elsevier, but I am glad to see that they took the initiative here in terminating the editorship of El Naschie.

I wish to thank Nature for standing up for the name of science reporting and against junk journals! It cost them much time and money, I do hope that they can get the money for the lawyers back from El Naschie, which will probably not be an easy task.

Danish Neuroscientist found guilty of misconduct

It has been a long and complicated story. The newspaper for the University of Copenhagen published "Penkowa for Dummies" in the spring of 2011, which gives a good background to the skirmishes of the past year.

Milena Penkowa, since resigned from her position as professor at the University of Copenhagen, had been the shooting star in research in Denmark. Sure, there had been some dark mutterings about her dissertation, as Nature reported in January 2011 on the basis of a report in Weekendavisen by Poul Pilgaard Johnsen. The thesis was first rejected, then accepted on a second review.

Then some of her research had to be retracted, as it was not replicable. Retraction Watch lists 2 papers out of over 100 that were retracted and two letters of concern that have been published in journals. And some research money had been used to pay for lawyers and restaurant visits. The university promised to start a full-fledged investigation.

The investigation was conducted by a group of foreign experts, Weekendavisen reports in its issue from July 20 (they are, unfortunately, not online). Hans Lassmann from the Medical University in Vienna chaired the committee that examined the 102 publications by Penkowa. 23 of the papers were deemed to be unnecessary to examine more closely. In 26 of the remaining 79 papers the committee determined scientific irregularities. Out of these 26 papers, 16 were determined to be scientific misconduct.

The misconduct has involved, among other things, mismatches between the number of lab animals in the papers and in the animal registers, problems with quantitative data, and problems with pictures (for example just turning the pictures as evidence of new work). The data archives were chaotic and filled with errors.

Berlingske, another Danish paper, reported July 15 by Claes Lautrup on the results of the investigation. Not only Penkowa, but also the University of Copenhagen were found to be guilty of misconduct. Penkowa still claims innocence, but notes that her career is ruined already, there is nothing left for her to give up. The university has refused to comment. By law, the report must be made public and is scheduled for August 7.

The university has started a new program for PhD students that includes mandatory courses in research ethics, good scientific practice, record keeping, and documentation, according to Weekendavisen.

The university must now decide what to do with the 16 articles, whether to contact the journals for retraction. They have already taken Penkowa to court on a case of defrauding university funds, which she blamed on a student. She lost the case and has been fined. She currently is running a company for advising patients with neurological problems and writing a book about dog psychology, Weekendavisen writes. 

There is also a political aspect to the drama, involving the rector of the university and the former federal minister of science, but that is just an added layer of complication to an already tangled web.

(If there are any translation errors in my summary, please let me know! -dww)

Welcome BBC readers!

A warm welcome to readers who followed the link from my BBC article! Make yourselves comfortable, have a look around. I have an archive on the side as well as a tag cloud. If there are any stories you feel are missing - drop me a line and I'll see what I can do! My main focus is reporting on European stories of academic misconduct for an English-speaking audience.

Breaking the Spell of Silence

I have offered Conrad Kunze from the University of Cottbus guest blogging rights. This is his article about deciding to discuss plagiarism at a university that thinks 44 % pages with plagiarism in a dissertation is okay.

Breaking the Spell of Silence – talking about plagiarism 

Dr. Conrad Kunze,
Lecturer at the Chair of Environmental Issues in Social Sciences
Technical University of Cottbus

The most obvious thing about plagiarism in a university should be the public shaming of offenders. And usually there is quite a consensus amongst professors and lecturers when it comes to complaints about students and the need to be harsh with frauds. Who would hesitate to reject a Bachelor's Thesis in which a page copied from Wikipedia is found? Probably no one.

So why not also reject a PhD Thesis if even more than a page is copied? Probably no one? The story looks different, as I learned during the last two weeks.

I did not expect, that it was exceptionally easy to get support from officials for a case that shows a lack of scientific standards at the faculty and university in general. But that a blame game would start, in which I should be the offender was nevertheless a surprise.

It all started with a a few colleges who told me quite politely, but with a raised eyebrow, to stop talking about the case. Then, on a Friday the 13th, the voices criticizing me turned to a hysteric high tone. After a public presentation, two colleagues blamed me for “pulling the commission for scientific standards through the dirt”, for starting a “witch-hunt”, celebrating a “tribunal” and so on. How had it come so far?

A day before I had invited colleges and students to a presentation in which I explained as precisely as possible, why I hold the PhD in question to be a case of plagiarism beyond all doubt (as everyone could see in VroniplagWiki), although some criticism of the university commission that had just come to the opposite result was inevitable. Nevertheless, I tried to give all the rational reasons that had motivated me. I hoped to initiate a sober discussion, based on facts, not accusations.

Two weeks before, I read in a national newspaper about the plagiarism case at my university. The paper made quite a scandal of the commission´s decision not to rate the PhD thesis invalid. The proof is online at Vroniplag Wiki. Page for page and line for line, 52 pages out of a 119 page thesis are shown to be copied from other sources without proper citation.

After a quick click on the Vroniplag Wiki I grew more and more curious and surprised, if that ought to be right, that the PhD was a complete fraud. Knowing from experience that normal questions are usually ignored or brushed away, I wrote an open letter to the university´s president, asking if we should not consider to change the statutes. If that PhD was not a case of plagiarism with 44 % of all pages with incomplete citation, then what was still plagiarism, less than 44 %? Would it not be easier to save precious time and give up all the controls for scientific authenticity?

Of course the question was quite polemic, but it helped to make the problem of a double standard clear. Normal students would have probably failed. The PhD in question was written by Mr. Dähnert, who is a high ranking official at Vattenfall. This is a company that contributes millions of Euro to the university´s research activity every year. Of course that is not a proof, but isn´t it reasonable to be even more careful with such a PhD and treat it with highest scrutiny?

One can only answer "no" with the premise, that high amounts of money do not influence an organization. But experience has shown rather the opposite tendency. Large amounts of money usually have a certain influence, as the receiving organization might try to avoid losing that support.

Withdrawing the PhD would have meant risking a confrontation between the university and a high-ranking official of one of its important economic partners. As experience has shown, some of those who lost their PhD – especially people of public interest – initiated law suits against their universities.

After Thursday night's presentation, quite a number of people congratulated me for going public, wishing good luck for this struggle, although they did so personally or in private e-mails. The opposing side, university officials and those colleges who were part of the commission, criticized me openly in mailing lists.

What had happened? The usual silence that falls on important political questions was broken. I had dared to talk about a case many had thought and blogged about anonymously in the internet. But assembling with like-thinking colleges and students was something very different.

When the local media reported widely the following Friday, the silence was broken. The more brave ones started to talk openly on the topic and the university´s officials faced a pressure to act towards reopening the case.

The struggle against an attitude of “let's close our eyes on this and not think about it any more” is also a struggle for freedom of speech. The atmosphere of fear that surrounds the case was summarized by a college who told me “You are in the position to do this, but I have just started my PhD and a work position, so how could I dare to?"

I do not plan to get a new contract in TU Cottbus anyway, other people do. That is why the lot fell on me to scandalize what in my opinion, after studying the proof on Vroniplag Wiki, deserves to be a scandal.

Last week the commission started re-considering the case, only half-officially and half-heartedly, but at least there is some movement. After all, public pressure had succeeded over the spell of silence, thanks to many people´s efforts and contributions, at Vroniplag Wiki, the local media, colleges and students!

Dutch Researcher Admits Cooking Data

The group blog "The Monkey Cage" reports on a case in the Netherlands (reports in Dutch and English) in which a Belgian marketing professor at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, Dirk Smeesters, admitted that he cooked his data.

His results had seemed too good to be true, so after a whistleblower alerted the university an investigation was launched to replicate the data. When this failed, he was asked to produce the original data. He first cited computer problems and then an office move before finally admitting that he had removed data that didn't fit his theory. The university has requested the retraction of his paper from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, published by the American Psychological Associateion and from the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, published by Elsevier. Both papers are, however, still on sale online.

Interestingly, Smeesters has claimed that this is the "normal" way of working in his field.  If this is indeed the case, there may be more retractions to follow.

ScienceInsider reports that he has now resigned and has further details on the case. RetractionWatch has CV information that has been removed from the university web page.

The German Dissertation Factory

The daily newspaper Main Post reports on the current state of investigations into the German "dissertation factory" at the medical faculty of the University of Würzburg. The university is doing its best, the article says, to dig out under the investigation of 20 dissertations, of which four are found to be plagiarized.

In 2009 the prosecutor's office investigated claims that a Würzburg medical professor who had had over 200 students write their dissertations with him was selling titles. Or rather, he was accepting loans to fund his research. He was fined for taking bribes. In May 2011 an anonymous dossier turned up with many names and dates - but there was no way to prove that money had been exchanged here for titles, so the case was officially closed, the professor is now retired. The person who arranged for the prospective doctoral students to be accepted and took a 1000 € fee for this was, however, fined.

The university was somewhat skittish about the situation and started an investigation into the matter. 20 of the theses were of a very questionable nature - I have seen some of the theses, for example one by a dentist writing a short dissertation (27 pages) in the field of the history of medicine by transcribing fifteenth century texts about the pharmaceutical use of some flowers. Not analyzing anything, not translating, just transcribing. The university has determined that four of the theses are plagiarisms to boot, and has decided to rescind the doctorates. The persons in question are, as seems usual in Germany, taking the university to court in the hopes of keeping their titles because the university has made some procedural error.

When the newspaper tried to contact one of the dentists involved a lawyer answered forbidding any reporting that might point to his client - who is apparently a friend of a former governor of a German state.

I wish the university a strong case in court - and hope that they set up procedures for not accepting theses like this ever again.

Update: Just including a link to an in-depth article at Zeit online about this case from 2012.

German Professor retracts two papers from Research Policy

I have been alerted to the following two retractions at Research Policy:

• Ulrich Lichtenthaler, The role of corporate technology strategy and patent portfolios in low-, medium- and high-technology firms, Res. Policy, 38 (2009) 559–569, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2008.10.009 (Retraction notice)
• Ulrich Lichtenthaler, Determinants of proactive and reactive technology licensing: A contingency perspective, Res. Policy, 39 (2010) 55–66, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2009.11.011 (Retraction notice)

Retraction Watch has the report that the author has voluntarily retracted a third paper:

• Ulrich Lichtenthaler and Holger Ernst, Technology licensing strategies: the interaction of process and content characteristics, Strategic Organization,  Vol 7(2): 183–221, DOI: 10.1177/1476127009102672

Retraction Watch also gives a link to a Handelsblatt biography of Lichtenthaler (in German). Lichtenthaler is currently a professor at the University of Mannheim. The question arises as to whether these papers were instrumental in his obtaining the professorship, and how the university needs to react in the face of the retractions.

One paper was retracted because it was apparently a multiple publication (self-plagiarism), the others for statistical issues. Germany has no national policy on retractions, and even though some universities have ethical codices, there is often no clear road to follow when something like this comes up. With the amount of ethical problems being uncovered in Germany recently, one would think that there would be a national committee investigating. If there is, I am unaware of it.

Update August 16, 2012:  Retractionwatch has documented a fourth retraction by Lichtenthaler, this time from Strategic Management Journal.

VroniPlag Wiki - Case 27 again from Münster

VroniPlag Wiki has published the 27th case on its home page, again a doctoral dissertation from the University of Münster in law. This author of this dissertation, as was the author of the 26th case, was a co-author of the law textbook that VroniPlag Wiki put up as the 25th case. The text parallels in case 27 are different from the ones in case 26. Where the latter had a lot of identical text, the former often has what is termed a "pawn sacrifice". The source is given, but the extent of the text that was taken is not made clear.

Münster was also the university where a duplicate dissertation in the medical faculty was discovered by chance by someone researching an article for the Wikipedia. They also granted a dissertation in medicine on the basis of a four page article co-authored by the doctoral advisor.

It seems that the law and medicine faculties there might need a refresher course on good scientific practice. I hope that the university makes it very clear what steps they are taking to insure that future dissertations do not include plagiarisms.

Just Technical Weaknesses

VroniPlag Wiki case #16 has been decided by the BTU Cottbus (previously reported here) to only contain "technical weaknesses", although VroniPlag Wiki has found massive text parallels on 44% of the pages. The university issued a statement that the committee only found technical weaknesses, but that they will not publish their results because of "data privacy concerns". I suggest having a look at my favorite pages and forming your own opinion: 028 - 034 and 035 - 048 - 103. There are more pages. Many more.
 
In the wake of this, there is outrage at the University of Cottbus. Teachers are asking how they can fail their students for plagiarism if this amount of blatant plagiarism is acceptable in a dissertation. A teacher published an open letter and gave a lecture about the case in Cottbus this evening. The person who did the research for the thesis (and is not named) has also come forward. VroniPlag Wiki has posted these documents (including a link to the audio file for this evening's lecture) and a discussion about them in the forums area.

Perhaps it helps to understand the university's decision to know that the person granted the doctoral degree in 1999 is CEO of the Vattenfall Carbon Storage division. Vattenfall is one of the largest companies in the region and the company that gives the university about 1/3 of its research budget.

It will be interesting to see if the protest continues, or if it dies down because the semester break is rapidly approaching.

Update: 14.7.2012 - fixed the company division Dähnert works for

New Fake Data Record Holder

A reader alerted me to the new fake data record holder from Japan, displacing the current German record holder, Joachim Boldt, with only 88 retractions to his name, according to Retraction Watch. Both Retraction Watch and ars technica report on the Japanese anesthesiologist Dr. Yoshitaka Fujii from the medical school of Toho University. Fujii has published 212 papers, but the data to back up the papers can only be found for 3. Currently, 172 papers have been found to contain fabricated data. He also apparently forged signatures of supposed co-authors.

J. B. Carlisle published a statistical paper in Anesthesia in May 2012 ( DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2044.2012.07128.x) entitled "The analysis of 168 randomised controlled trials to test data integrity":

"The published distributions of 28/33 variables (85%) were inconsistent with the expected distributions, such that the likelihood of their occurring ranged from 1 in 25 to less than 1 in 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 (1 in 10³³), equivalent to p values of 0.04 to < 1 × 10⁻³³, respectively."

Highly unlikely, that. The university then started an investigation into this research, which was published in over 20 journals. They have just published their report. A comment on Retraction Watch hits the nail on the head: "Anesthesiologists need to WAKE UP to fraud".

Laudatio Zedler Award for VroniPlag wiki

VroniPlag Wiki was given the Zedler Prize for free knowledge 2012 as the knowledge project of the year 2011. The laudatio has been published online, I've tried to translate it with some of the VroniPlag Wiki activists so that it can be understood world wide. A major problem was the use of the metaphor  "raised visor", that was used throughout the laudatio. "Open and above board" would probably be a better translation, or "with all the cards on the table", but it does not fit with many of the allusions in the text, so we have stayed with "raised visor":

Laudatio by John Weitzmann to the winning project VroniPlag Wiki

A laudatio, according to Wikpedia, is a speech in honor of a person. In that respect, the article needs some rework, since we are obviously dealing with a project here, not a person. Furthermore, the following quotation does not at first quite seem to fit a laudatio:

"A senior expert compares the motivation of these youngish plagiarism hunters to the 'idealism of senior citizens reporting parking offenders to the authorities' — instead of letting the authorities handle it themselves."

That was written in August of last year by journalist and critic of VroniPlag Hermann Horstkotte in an article written for ZEIT online. So, for a change, let's approach the matter from the viewpoint of the critics. They mainly criticize the fact that the accusations documented there are partially made anonymously. Such "accusers", they say, discredit themselves in some way. Some say that one can only criticize with a "raised visor", anything else is cowardish and somehow shameful. That's why first the question needs to be answered: When or from what point on is it legitimate to criticize somebody publically, or state accusations? As long as they are acting in private, that is not necessarily the case. But how about the moment, for example, where the criticized themselves enter the public stage? At least from the moment of the publication of a scientific thesis, one must face criticism and reviews, even in a very formalized manner. And that publication is obligatory for a reason. It constitutes the counter piece to the right to publicly use a particular title hereinafter. A "secret doctoral title" does not make much sense, it would contradict the meaning of the word "title". 

Fair enough. Now what about the non-openness, the "not open visor", that has been used as an excuse for some of the more fierce criticism of VroniPlag? An open visor can help to infer from the person and the qualification of the critic how well-founded the criticism is, that is clear. And it intends to deter abusive criticism, that lacks any real basis. One must stand accountable for such accusations. But it is also clear that the "open visor" is not an end to itself. When the criticism is made available so that it is comprehensible for anyone, when the scientific errors are clearly identified and documented, are these reproaches any less substantial, only because the persons who found them are not all known? The jury thinks: no. Is plagiarism no longer plagiarism because we don't know the middle name and address of the person that discovered it? Is it not sufficient that in a group only part of the contributors are known by their real existence? Is it not understandable that particularly academics who do not have a tenured position, but who want to protect their academic profession as a whole against negative developments, prefer to do this as a virtual incarnation of themselves, unknown to the general public? Is that not better than to remain silent? The jury was of the opinion: oh yes, that is better. All the more so with the participation of a proven plagiarism hunter who has long been working in this field, namely Ms. Weber-Wulff, which makes the criticism of VroniPlag appear rather threadbare, almost helpless. 

The critics of VroniPlag complain further, that the ambitions of the collaborators on VroniPlag are not clear — or worse — that political motivations against certain parties are discernable. The fact is that a remarkable number of politicians of the FDP and the CDU have come under the suspicion of plagiarism. But it is also true that the self-cleansing powers of VroniPlag are immense. Participants in the project were excluded from working on the project when they refused to submit to the conventions of the project and indeed appeared to be politically motivated. It is also a fact that VroniPlag also investigates theses from persons who are not politicians. In the meantime there are more and more people from business or medicine that have entered the sights of the plagiarism hunters. Thus leaving the second question that the jury had to deal with — is the unknown motivation of the Vroniplagger, some of whom remain anonymous, more important than the blatant errors of the people seeking degrees? The jury was unanimous: no. It is not the messenger of the bad news that needs being punished. It is not the persons that found the plagiarism that produced these plagiarisms. The jury had a catalogue of criteria that formed the basis of the evaluation for selecting the winning project: 

* Does the project reach the goal of creating free knowledge? 

* Is the content really freely available and sustainable? 

* Is the project dedicated to a topic that Wikimedia projects cannot approach?

* Does it achieve appreciable publicity? 

* Is it possible for newcomers to freely and as simply as possible participate in the project?

* etc. 

VroniPlag belonged to those projects that only had very minor shortcomings with respect to all these requirements. In the end it was clear for the jury that VroniPlag out of all of the projects deserving a prize — and all of the here nominated projects are really good —made the most sustainable impression in the year 2011. It was the one that was most present in the public perception, it was devoted to an important topic and approaches that topic —despite its critics — in an adequate and fair manner.

In this spirit, the Zedler Prize for Free Knowledge in the category "External Knowledge Project of the Year 2011" goes to the project "VroniPlag". Congratulations!

Update 2012-07-07: A few more typos fixed, a missing sentence added.

SignPost: Uncovering Scientific Plagiarism

My article that I wrote together with another activist in English for The SignPost on our activities at GuttenPlag Wiki and VroniPlag Wiki has been published. Nothing new for regular readers, but it is, I hope, a good summary of what has happened.

VroniPlag Wiki wins Zedler Award

Just a short note, I've just got home from the Zedler Prize Award ceremony. The Zedler Prize is for open knowledge, VroniPlag Wiki was nominated for the category "External Knowledge Project of the Year". The laudatio was great, as soon as I get it, I will translate it for my readers here.