Deputy Minister of Education Andriy Vitrenko is accused of plagiarism and falsification of scientific works

Deputy Minister of Education Andriy Vitrenko is accused of plagiarism and falsification of scientific works

Deputy Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine Andriy Vitrenko is accused of plagiarism in his six scientific papers.

Activists from the public initiative "Dissergate" discovered translated publications of Russian scientists in his works and sometimes falsification of information.

The corresponding analysis was published on the resource "Errors and Falsifications in Scientific Works".

In 2020, Andriy Vitrenko, along with other Ukrainian scientists, prepared a scientific article that was published in the international journal International Journal of Management, an Indian publisher.

Experts found that part of the text of the publication repeats the content of a Russian management theory textbook published in 2009. However, the authors of this work were not mentioned in the bibliography of their article by the Ukrainian scientists.

The Deputy Minister, in collaboration with Ukrainian scientists, also published another article in the International Journal of Advanced Research in Engineering and Technology, published in India.

The authors of the analysis note that a significant part of the publication is an English translation of the dissertation of Russian author Tatyana Tsukanova. In particular, the diagrams in the Ukrainian authors’ article almost completely coincide with those in the Russian author’s work.

However, the schematic images in the work by Andriy Vitrenko and his colleagues have been modified - some rows have been rearranged compared to the work of Tatyana Tsukanova.

The work also found copied tables, in which Ukrainian authors only changed the indication of the country. Thus, information about business performance results in Russia was transformed into data about Ukraine.

The authors of the analysis of Andriy Vitrenko’s works believe that such "borrowing" contains not only academic dishonesty but also falsification.

Andriy Vitrenko published several more articles in a Romanian journal. These also showed significant similarities with the works of Russian authors, where the Deputy Minister likely overlooked replacing mentions of Russia with Ukraine at least once.

Dishonest use of works by Russian authors was also found in the official’s works published in Ukrainian.