Journal retracts a 24-year-old sociology paper for plagiarism–of a 1975 article

The South African Review of Sociology has retracted a 1989 paper by an author who must have figured the source — a 1975 article — was sufficiently well removed from institutional memory to catch anyone’s eye.

Evidently that was a safe bet for a generation. But we’re guessing the Internet permitted the detective work that eventually brought the theft to light.

The article was titled (oddly), “Doing the Knowledge in Literature and Sociology,” and its author was P.N.G. Beard, who since 2008 has been group chief education officer at Educor, “the largest provider of private education in Southern Africa.” Beard seems to have written an academic text or two, with titles including  “Problems of Pedagogics: Pedagogics and the Study of Education in South Africa,” and  “The Child Is Father of the Man: Inaugural Lecture.”

Here’s the retraction notice:

The Editorial Board of the journal South African Review of Sociology

(formerly published as the South African Journal of Sociology) apologises for the paper ‘Doing the Knowledge in Literature and Sociology’ produced by P. N. G. Beard and published in the South African Journal of Sociology, 1989, 20(3): 152 158, which upon a thorough investigation has been determined to contain sections which are identical to the paper ‘Literature and Sociological Theory’ written by Richard Winter and published in Cambridge Journal of Education, 1975, 5(1): 30 39 (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0305764750050104).

As a result the paper produced by P. N. G. Beard and published in the South African Journal of Sociology has been retracted and should not be cited.

Marlize Rabe, Grace Khunou, Kammila Naidoo and Tina Uys as the Editorial Collective of South African Review of Sociology, Journal of the South African Sociological Association