Teacher A, who works at a university of applied sciences, requested a statement from TENK and put forth the allegation that senior teacher B and lecturer C of the same institution may be guilty of plagiarism in their poster presentation.
In the RCR investigation carried out at the university of applied sciences and that preceded the request for a statement, it transpired that the posters had been worked on in cooperation using the organisation’s new poster layout for the same conference. B and C had worked on their joint poster on the layout of A’s poster and the text field that included the introductory sentence on A’s poster was accidentally left on the joint poster. B and C immediately remedied the matter during the conference.
According to TENK, it was undeniable that text from A’s poster appeared on B and C’s poster without any citation.
TENK concurred in its statement with the evaluation given by the university of applied sciences on the occurrence: there were no signs of plagiarism. Since the posters dealt with different subjects, the wrong introductory sentence showed that there was no attempt to consciously deceive the scientific community.