A request to determine non-academic behavior against the former director of the Official Gazette, and today the director of Telekom Srpska, Jelena Trivan, was submitted by a group of professors from several faculties a year ago. One of them, a professor at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, Oliver Tošković, explains to Danas why they decided to take that step and what is disputed in her doctoral dissertation.
- We received the first information that there is an indication that the doctorate was plagiarized from media, after which it was announced that the procedure for reviewing the dissertation had been initiated. Then we received information that the procedure was suspended because Bosko Obradovic (leader Dveri prim.aut.) submitted incomplete documentation. The Faculty of Philology approached Obradović with a request to submit complete documentation, which he did not do. Then we got together because we had a lot of evidence supporting the suspicion that it was plagiarism and we sent a new request to the Faculty of Philology - says Tošković.
He says that the signatories of the request cannot claim whether Jelena Trivan's doctorate is plagiarized or not, but that the material they collected, printed and submitted with the request indicates that there are serious indications that her doctoral dissertation is not an original scientific work.
Tošković says that there are whole chapters, parts or paragraphs in the dissertation that are borrowed from other sources.
- There are parts that, for example, were taken from Wikipedia, it was literally copy-pasted. There are parts taken from some music encyclopedias. Two other people's works were taken over and published as chapters in Jelena Trivan's dissertation. One of those papers on multiculturalism was published in the Proceedings of Matica Srpska and was taken from A to Z. Therefore, it is not a matter of paraphrasing or taking sentences, but the work has been taken over and published from the first to the last letter. The second paper, which is also completely downloaded from a student website with term papers. The entire seminar paper on the globalization of business was included in the doctorate - says Tošković.
He points out that they also found two or three works published in a foreign language, from which passages were translated and taken over. Everything indicates that Trivan copied a huge part of the dissertation, says our interlocutor.
- Almost all of these works were published long before Jelena Trivan submitted her dissertation. For example, the work from the Anthology of Matica Srpska was published in 2010, and she defended her doctoral dissertation in 2013 - says Tošković.
Referring to the earlier statement of the former director of the Official Gazette that her education is not questionable, Tošković says that she "agrees that her education up to the level of a doctoral dissertation is not questionable."
- She graduated from university and worked as a teacher. The same as Siniša Mali, who graduated from the Faculty of Economics. To be honest, I'm sorry that such people who have made a certain effort, who are obviously educated, end up stepping on all this. And if Trivan really rewrote her dissertation, in the way she seems to have done, she brought her own education into question - points out Tošković.
He also referred to Jelena Trivan's statement CINS-, on the occasion of that research portal finding out that the Expert Commission of the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade will investigate whether she plagiarized her doctorate.
Trivan told CINS that "it has become a favorite tool of political calculations that destroys Belgrade University, while private faculties protect their interests."
- I think that we are protecting ourselves with such actions, because we are defending our honor and our educational level. Pushing plagiarism under the carpet and justifying plagiarism is not defending one's honor, on the contrary, it is spitting on education and one's own university. Our duty as teachers, as professors and researchers is to clear up such cases and to stand in the way of that, no matter how many such cases there are and no matter who has a doctorate. They received the title of doctor of science at this university, and if they received it dishonestly, it must be taken away from them - Tošković is clear.
Text taken from the site Today: Copied other people's sentences, paragraphs and entire papers: What is controversial in Jelena Trivan's doctoral dissertation? - Society - Dnevni list Danas
