Help with plagarised masters thesis

[Fabula]

My girlfriend has essentially completed her Phd, which has built on her masters work(2005), and has just been waiting for her supervisor to get the tribunal panel thing arranged.
A few days ago, another student of her supervisors emailed her to say something like: "thanks for the help you've given me with my masters. Sorry I've not been able to send you my thesis while doing it, but here it is now that I've been awarded it". She had helped advise him, helping him find sources and explain concepts to him etc.

My girlfriend then starts to read his thesis, and starts getting very, very annoyed (in tears). Large parts of his thesis are word for word identical, other sections changed slightly. Structure is very similar, down to identical headings, copy and pasted tables including the same bold words etc. Quotes that my girlfriend has spent days reading entire books to find the perfect quote have been copied exactly and put in the same place. Ideas that my girlfriend has come up with have been copied with slight rewording, and she has not been referenced. And more and more and more...

To my untrained eye, maybe 60% of his work seems derived from hers, probably 15% exact copy, another 15% reworded slightly, and the rest clearly derived and without references.

She is devastated that someone can get a masters, that she worked incredibly hard for, by copying work and seemingly getting away with it, given that he has already been awarded his masters.

She wants to get her Phd completed, which requires her supervisor to get it arranged. The same supervisor that has signed off this twit's work as being original. The supervisor that is very well known in her field, so annoying her will have academic repercussions for the whole of her career.


This guy should not be able to get away with this. But what can be done? Any advice appreciated.

Thanks

Edit
Just remembered more complications. Her PHD (~450pages) expands significantly on her masters(~180), so has similar structure and some sections more or less the same. The people her supervisor will be able to get in to assess her will probably be that same experts in their field that will have a few weeks ago assessed this twit. So will probably accuse her of plagarising his work. And she won't be able to deal with that.

[tiggerai]

There must be another reporting level above the supervisor that she can go to?

e,g if you have grievance with your line manager you can go to the boss etc.

I would take it straight to the top tbh.

[TooNice]

How did he end up being in a position to cut and paste? It should not happen if you are only guiding someone along.

[Steve]

How did he end up being in a position to cut and paste?

That would be the first question I would ask too, given the evidence.

[ikonia]

Is the information that has been "copied" freely available ?

if so it seems that both him and your girl friend have copied and pasted from the same sources (tut tut).

If not - how the hell has he got a copy of your girlfriends work to copy and paste from ? more so in a digital format,

How is your girlfriend reading his Thesis ? how has he got his in first if its copied and pasted from your girlfriends ?


lots not adding up here.

[IBM]

If this guy has been copying from your girlfriend's Masters thesis, then just go tell the person doing the marking what's going on, and what concerns you have for the submission of the Phd work.

Since your girlfriends Masters is a previously submitted academic work, it'll be easy to get this guy's qualification overturned, and you'll be free to submit.

Even if this isn't the case, and he's been copying entirely from your girlfriend's latest work for the PhD (in which case, what the hell was she doing giving someone a copy of an unfinished academic paper?) the best recourse is to go straight to the person marking it and explain what's going on. This will have happened before, and there will be procedures in place for handling it.

[usxhe190]

everyone, i think the guy copied her gf's masters not the PhD thesis...

but just to confirm - so did the guy copy your gf's masters thesis?

if so, that is pretty simple to fix - just send your masters to the supervisor with his/her work and people will see the similarities

[Rishi]

Board of Examiners, the Dean basically the persons hand you shake when you graduate, go speak to them.

Go with concrete evidence and point out the facts.

Yet they may turn round and say how did he gain your work? Plagirism is always been taught to me as a two way thing.

[Kumagoro]

I take it that its like usx said he used her masters dissertation rather than her
PhD thesis.

What has your gf got to gain from upsetting her supervisor? she has more to loose I
think.

[Fabula]

He copied her masters thesis, which is available in the university department for all to see.

Her supervisor has also been emailed electronic versions of the texts (masters and Phd) in the past to check. As is normal for that sort of thing.

Going over the supervisors head to raise the matter would be fine, except that this would bring a pile of trouble for the supervisor. Who has yet to set up the conditions for my girlfriend to finish her Phd. My girlfriend doesn't want to lose all the work she has put into the Phd, nor have to look around to find someone else in the field to set up the Phd for her, at some other university she doesn't know, when the only suitable people are friends with the original supervisor. And all this is caused by this one twit plagarising her work. She has done all the work, and now seems to be stuffed, while he has done little work and ended up with a decent qualification.

[Fraz]

Inform the university. They will definitely take this very seriously. My university runs a plagiarism detector over all submitted work these days. I found this out after I put all of my undergrad work on the net, and I had people emailing me from all over the place telling me to take it down as it was proving too much of a temptation to their students.

Tsk! Kids, these days eh? Some of them had literally just copied the whole thing with just a name change at the top!

[Brucelles]

Hmm! It reads as though the plagiarist had a copy of the gf's master's thesis and some verbal input from her PhD thesis. It shouldn't be too difficult to point to the similarities between her original and his copy before she has to submit the PhD thesis. (Edit <=== of course it does. Just explained this while I was typing)

It's probably to late to rescind the thief's masters, but it won't help his career if this comes out. I'm assuming that the main issue is the reception of the PhD and she should make it clear that she's not seeking to have him punished (He will get a ton of shirt anyway, universities are really, really tough on plagiarism these days.) In that way she can basically clear the decks for her own thesis without (hopefully) getting in the middle of a pissing match.

The proper procedure is something your gf knows. Go to her supervising tutor and explain the situation, then follow instructions. She did nothing wrong, and shouldn't have to worry about this.

I wish her luck. It's a bugger to have this sort of thing happen after all the hard work required by a PhD thesis.

[Fraz]

Going over the supervisors head to raise the matter would be fine, except that this would bring a pile of trouble for the supervisor. Who has yet to set up the conditions for my girlfriend to finish her Phd. My girlfriend doesn't want to lose all the work she has put into the Phd, nor have to look around to find someone else in the field to set up the Phd for her, at some other university she doesn't know, when the only suitable people are friends with the original supervisor. And all this is caused by this one twit plagarising her work. She has done all the work, and now seems to be stuffed, while he has done little work and ended up with a decent qualification.

Why can't she just tell her supervisor? It's obviously her work - there should be nothing that can dispute that as it came much earlier than this copied stuff. This should be for her supervisor to sort out - it's HIS/HER FAULT FOR NOT SPOTTING IT. She should just concentrate on preparing for her viva... in fact, why doesn't she just not worry about it until after her viva?

[Knoxville]

Perhaps it would be best to go to the supervisor and give them the opportunity to sort this out quietly? The supervisors reputation seems to be the one most at stake here for signing off the work, if presented with the evidence in the right way I can't see her taking it out on your girlfriend after all this isn't her fault, going above her head however seems at least from where I'm sitting to be a good way to end up on her bad side.

[ikonia]

ahhh that makes sense, he's copied the already submitted and marked masters thesis, not the phd work.
well, she sounds upset, simpley grass him up. Its up the marker to decide if its copying or quoting.

[Brucelles]

So we all agree. Follow the proper procedures and there shouldn't be a problem. But she should not do it in a hissy fit, just calmly and keeping her eye on the prize; the PhD.

It may be unfair, but it can't matter if the thief gets awarded "Professor of the Universe", so long as nothing interferes with the PhD.

BTW. I think it may be a good idea to present the situation to the supervising tutor without mentioning the word "plagiarism" as far as possible. Just "I am worried that the panel may misinterpret any similarities" or words to that effect. It's usually a good idea to make it obvious that you don't want any unnecessary trouble.