Fudan University has publicly shamed nine teachers and students for their involvement in three separate cases of plagiarism, a first in the school's history.

The Scholarly Standard Committee released a circular detailing their misdeeds and punishment on the university's website. The unprecedented move triggered heated discussion on campus.

Three professors, four lecturers, one doctorate student and a post-graduate student were named and publicly reprimanded.

One instance of plagiarism came to light after the book "Academic & Technical Writing for Graduate Students" was published last year by the Fudan University Press. The book's authors - Lu Xiaoyong, a professor at the university's Foreign Language and Literature College, and four other young teachers with whom he worked - were found to have copied long passages from books that had been published aboard.

And Liu Hongjian, a postdoctoral student at the Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital at Fudan University, was found to have used fake pictures and plagiarized in an article that he co-authored with his tutor, Chi Lufang.

Chi said he was unaware that any plagiarism had taken place, but was still asked to submit a letter criticizing himself for the lapse in supervision. He is also barred from recruiting students for two years.

In a third case, Ye Wei, a post-graduate student applying for a doctorate degree at the university's School of Information Science and Engineering, was found have copied the work of others in two papers. His tutor, Gu Ning, was also held responsible for dereliction, according to the announcement.

Ye was expelled, and Gu received a two-year recruitment ban. He was also asked to resign from his post as deputy director of the school.

"The purpose of releasing the announcement publicly is to emphasize our high academic standards. Self-disciplinary action is an important way to prevent academic misconduct," the circular said.

The Internet has made it hard for plagiarists to hide their misconduct as two of the cases were uncovered by netizens, it said.

"It is good to see that concrete action has been taken," a student at Fudan University who declined to give his name said.

"Academic misconduct at universities and research institutes should be consciously resisted, and this time Fudan University has sounded the alarm against plagiarists," Zhuang Jun, a doctoral candidate at Shanghai Jiaotong University, said.

(China Daily December 25, 2007)