Some of the reports submitted under a research project headed by Kuomintang Taoyuan mayoral candidate Simon Chang (張善政) while working at Acer were found to have “repeated” existing academic materials, the Council of Agriculture (COA) said Friday.
Among the 21 sub-reports Acer submitted to the council between 2007 and 2009 when Chang was a vice president of the technology company, six were found to have been “highly repetitive,” said COA deputy chief Chen Junne-jih (陳駿季) at a press conference.
The findings did not necessarily mean that Chang was guilty of plagiarism, Chen said, amid accusations that some of the material in the NT$57.36 million (US$1.87 million) Acer project was plagiarized from other sources, charges that Chang has denied.
“We are just letting people know the results of our review,” Chen said.
Chen said the COA used plagiarism checker “iThenticate,” which is widely used by academic institutions such as National Taiwan University, to examine the reports submitted for the project, which studied the digitization of Taiwan’s agricultural sector.
The six sub-reports failed the test under the setting that pointed out any passage with 40 English words or 50 Chinese words identical to existing papers in the database, Chen said.
More than 40 percent of the content in five out of the six reports repeated content from elsewhere and one had over 27 percent of repeated content, he said, adding that some of the passages were not attributed in the reports.
The COA has sent its review to both Acer and Chang and expected written responses from them by Sept. 30, Chen said.
In response, Chang’s campaign office said that while it has not received the request, “we remain calm and open, and will cooperate with the COA for necessary clarifications.”
Acer said it will hold an internal meeting before responding.
According to Acer, the project it undertook included more than just research on digital development in the agricultural sector in Taiwan and abroad and the gathering of information on actual practices and results overseas.
It also involved the introduction of new technologies, such as RFID (radio frequency identification) and WSN (wireless sensor networks), to different agricultural sites to test whether they were feasible in practice.
The accusations have been driven by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), after its now-former candidate for Taoyuan mayor Lin Chih-chien (林智堅) was ensnared in an academic plagiarism controversy of his own.
Lin was found guilty of plagiarizing his master’s thesis by a review board at National Taiwan University on Aug. 9, and subsequently dropped out of the Taoyuan mayoral race. He was also determined by Chung Hua University on Aug. 24 for plagiarizing another master’s thesis.
A DPP legislator who strongly defended Lin, Cheng Yun-peng (鄭運鵬), was named to take over for Lin in the Taoyuan race.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel