[INDOLOGY] Indology and plagiarism: specify stance in order to fortify "brand name" (and conclude lengthy threads)

[Audrey Truschke]

Dear Colleagues,

I am responding to this thread as the INDOLOGY committee member on duty
this week.

The INDOLOGY governing committee moderate discussion on the list, not other
scholarly activities. Accordingly, alleged plagiarism in scholarship
concerning South Asia is certainly a welcome topic of civil discussion on
INDOLOGY. But the governing committee does not claim authority to
adjudicate or discipline anything that happens off list.

Audrey Truschke

Audrey Truschke
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Religious Studies
Stanford University
e- <audrey.truschke at gmail.com>mail <audrey.truschke at gmail.com> | website
<http://www.stanford.edu/~truschke/>

On Thu, Jul 30, 2015 at 1:08 PM, Jan E.M. Houben <jemhouben at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Indology and plagiarism
>
> Apart from borderline cases there are also cases of undeniable massive
> plagiarism.
> One case was discussed long ago by Roy Andrew Miller (JAOS 115.2 [1995]:
> 343-344), and
> a new episode in the same case history was discussed eight years later,
> now twelve years
> ago, by me (AS/EA 57.1 [2003] p 163, author's copy academia.edu/7196478/
> p 55).
> From a quick online search I infer that the publication based on massive
> plagiarizing is apparently still for sale and present in university
> libraries.
> Some similarities with the current case under discussion, except, I hope,
> quantitatively:
> R Diekstra, till 1997 prof of psychology at Univ of Leiden: those who
> discovered textual borrowings which were not or very incompletely
> acknowledged were aggressively attacked by adherents of their favourite
> public intellectual Diekstra, his sources were (page after page) from
> sources relatively unknown to his target public (dutch readers on
> psychotherapy), he claimed to be working in haste for a higher aim (helping
> those needing psychotherapy).
> http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9704/fn9704.html
>
> This could be a suitable occasion for the Indology List, since 2001 the
> ONLY ONLINE
> FORUM IN THE WORLD specializing in academic exchange for bona fide
> scholars, "east"
> and "west", in Indology and classical South Asia studies, to give a
> stronger profile
> to Indology's "brand name".
>
> Would there be any harm if the current dvārapālas of the Indology List
> specify
> "Indology"'s position on plagiarism in the Guidelines, for instance that
> the hypothetic case of plagiarizing (at least if it is massive?) leads to
> cancellation of full membership (should have been self-evident but perhaps
> it is not), and that emphatic encouragement and condoning of plagiarism
> leads to first a warning next to suspension of full membership?
> Pro-plagiarists and pro-plagiarism
> leniency may feel irritated through such explicit stance but 95% others
> would either welcome it or consider it self-evident.
>
> This move could liberate bandwidth of the List for more useful and
> interesting topics and
> issues.
>
> Jan Houben
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *Jan E.M. HOUBEN*
>
> Directeur d’Études
>
> Sources et histoire de la tradition sanskrite
>
> *École Pratique des Hautes Études*
>
> *Sciences historiques et philologiques *
>
> 54, rue Saint-Jacques
>
> CS 20525 – 75005 Paris
>
> johannes.houben at ephe.sorbonne.fr
>
> https://ephe-sorbonne.academia.edu/JanEMHouben
>
> www.ephe.fr
>
>
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