Prominent Sources[]
- Steurer et al. (2008) is the source for about three pages that have been taken via copy-paste, but is not mentioned in the thesis anywhere.
- Several Wikipedia articles have been used as sources, but none has been referenced in the thesis:
- Wikipedia - Konrad Adenauer (2007): About two pages
- Wikipedia - Ordoliberalism (2007): About half a page
- Wikipedia - Freiburg School (2007): Two sentences
- Wikipedia - Social Market Economy (2007): About half a page
- Wikipedia - Adam Smith (2007): One paragraph
- Wikipedia - Corporate social responsibility (2007): Two passages
- Wikipedia - Charles Spearman (2007): One footnote
- Mackey et al. (2007) is mentioned in the dissertation several times, but it does not become clear to the reader that the pages 56-63 have been copied from this source with only marginal modifications.
Prominent Fragments[]
- Fragment 079 01: A figure has been taken from Steurer et al. (2008) and given the attribution "author’s illustration".
- Fragment 024 04: A page has been taken literally from the Wikipedia without mentioning the source.
- Fragment 078 01: Copy-Paste artifacts show that an entire page has been copied from a digital version of the source.
- Fragment 058 01: Copying text across the turn of a page leads to the insertion of a part of a footnote into the main body of the text and a confusion of its meaning.
Other observations[]
- On page 26, line 24, a long, literal citation of the European commission document COM(2001) 366 final starts, which ends on the bottom of page 33. The source is given and one could argue that the paragraph numbers indicate that all this text is in fact taken from that source literally, so these pages have not been documented as plagiarism, but the question arises as to what purpose such a long citation serves. It spans ca. 10% of the thesis and there is no discussion of the material cited.
- On page 13, line 11, a long, literal citation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church starts (see [1], [2]), which ends on the bottom of page 21. The source is given and one could argue that paragraph numbers in the text indicate that the text has been copied verbatim, although the introductory phrase "The Catechism leads to these conclusions:" on page 13 and the footnote 10 could also be interpreted as presenting a paraphrasing summary of the numerous paragraphs in the Catechism, which is not the case. Those pages have not been documented as plagiarism, but the question arises as to what purpose such a long citation serves. It spans more than 10% of the thesis and there is no discussion of the material cited.
- Some text appears twice in the thesis:
- Page 12, lines 9-26, are identical to page 46, lines 12-30.
- Page 58, lines 38-47 are identical to page 69, lines 12-20; see also Fragment 069 12
- Two reviews by the thesis examiners are available online, two excerpts are documented here:
- Review 1 (17.11.2008): "Author considers that CSR is suitable way how to change current managerial thinking which describe from different point of views, e. g. historical progress in religious aspect."
- Review 2 (17.11.2008): "The dissertation is written very cultivate, digest at the high academic level."
- The Tomas Bata University appears to have been taking active measures to reduce plagiarism in student theses. [3]
- The following pages have been excluded from the analysis:
- 14-21: literal quote from the Catechism of the Catholic Church
- 27-33: literal quote from the European Comission publication COM(2001) 366 final
- 85-87: List of figures, List of Abbreviations, Present stage of the research
Statistics[]
- Currently there are 34 reviewed fragments documented that are considered to be violations of citation rules. For 18 of them there is no reference given to the source used („Verschleierungen“ and „Komplettplagiate“). For 16 fragments the source is given, but the extent of the used text is not made clear („Bauernopfer“).
- The publication has 65 pages that have been analyzed. On a total of 27 of these pages violations of citation rules have been documented. This represents a percentage of 41.5%. The 65 analyzed pages break down with respect to the amount of text parallels encountered as follows:
- From these statistics an extrapolation of the amount of text of the publication under investigation that has been documented as problematic can be estimated (conservatively) as about 24% of the main part of the publication.
- In all, text was taken from 16 sources.
Illustration[]
The following chart illustrates the amount and the distribution of the text parallel findings. The colours show the type of plagiarism diagnosed:
- grau="Komplettplagiat" (copy & paste): the source of the text parallel is not given, the copy is verbatim.
- rot="Verschleierung" (disguised plagiarism): the source of the text parallel is not given, the copied text will be somewhat modified.
- gelb="Bauernopfer" (pawn sacrifice): the source of the text parallel is mentioned, but the extent and/or the closeness of the copy to the source is not made clear by the reference.
- CC = Catechism of the Catholic Church (verbatim, not counted in total)
- GP = EU Green Paper (verbatim, not counted in total)