The University of Zurich in Switzerland has announced that it will open an investigation into an adjunct professor alleged to have taken images and other material from a popular blog on medieval manuscripts and published them in her book without attribution.
The news, first reported by kath.ch, follows an eyebrow-raising exchange between the researcher who discovered his work had been used without citation and someone claiming to be the professor’s secretary, who told him, “nobody cares about your blog!”
The professor, Carla Rossi, is also director of the Research Centre for European Philological Tradition, abbreviated as RECEPTIO. The center operates an academic press that published Rossi’s 2022 work, The Book of Hours of Louis de Roucy: a.k.a. The Courtanvaux-Elmhirst Hours, Digitally Restored Through the Wayback Recovery Method.
The book describes a manuscript that Rossi purported to have digitally reconstructed.
Peter Kidd, an independent scholar who blogs at Medieval Manuscripts Provenance, wrote a post on Christmas Eve detailing instances in which Rossi appeared to use text and images from his earlier blogging about the manuscript without attribution.
When he attempted to contact Rossi, Kidd heard back from someone representing herself as Rossi’s secretary who first denied that the book’s images had been taken from Kidd’s blog, then told him:
I regret to inform you that blogs are not scientific texts, published by academic publishers, so their value is nil!
The exchange also included:
I forward these delusional e-mails of yours to the lawyer who will, if appropriate, reply to you.
Kidd followed up with several posts scrutinizing RECEPTIO’s website, which seemed to present stock photos for its staff and offices, and commenting on documents Rossi posted to Academia.edu (and now seems to have removed) responding to his posts.
The publisher added this to the book’s download page:
Today, 27 December 2022, a criminal complaint was filed with the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) for defamation, slander, incitement to violence and stalking against the blogger who set up a disgusting defamation campaign. The police will contact the blog operators as soon as possible and submit an application for international cooperation in criminal matters. Regarding the ridiculous accusations of plagiarism, let the readers of this edition judge[.]
Kidd told us he didn’t have any comment to add beyond his blogs, which are quite detailed.
In a statement to the news website kath.ch published December 27, the University of Zurich said it would investigate the allegations:
Miss Dr. Carla Rossi is an adjunct professor at the Romanic Department (RoSe) at the University of Zurich (UZH). Until recently, she was employed as a research associate in a research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. There is currently no employment relationship between her and UZH.
UZH is aware of the allegation made by Mr. Peter Kidd against Ms. Rossi that she used information from his blog in her book entitled “The Book of Hours of Louis de Roucy” without citing the blog as a source. In accordance with the Integrity Ordinance, UZH will initiate an independent investigation. This is independent of a current employment. Ms. Rossi is presumed innocent until the investigation is completed.
Rossi has not responded to our request for comment on the investigation or Kidd’s blog posts.
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Just a couple of comments about titles:
1. Interesting that UZH doesn’t call Rossi a professor
2. Frau Dr. is better translated as Dr. And Frau as Mrs. I assume the second use of Frau rather than Frau Dr. is normal in German, whereas in English we would use Dr. throughout.
3. German titles are tricky: one German friend of mine was snubbed by his professor for greeting him as Herr Professor, not Herr Dr Professor. Most German professors I’ve met are nowhere near as anal, though.
The correct order is Herr Prof Dr… :-)))
I’m going to repeat the main link as it seems a bit buried in the article: https://mssprovenance.blogspot.com/2022/12/nobody-cares-about-your-blog.html
This gives the background. The site now has seven follow-up posts with various details.
“I regret to inform you that blogs are not scientific texts, published by academic publishers, so their value is nil!”
A clear sign that someone doesn’t have the first begin of a clue what science is, and is treating it as a religion.
Of course, there are academic publishers and ‘academic publishers’.
I know.
I have worked for both kinds.
She clearly stole the information. I hope UZH will cut any ties with her. Additionally, I’d hope there will be an investigation on how she got her PhD in first instanceo. Such plagiarism at that level usually does not come alone suddenly.