Plagiarism scandal engulfs high-profile academic in Latvia

Two years after it was quietly retracted “due to plagiarism,” a paper by a prominent researcher in Latvia has set the country’s media ablaze, drawing comments from, among others, the minister of education and science and the rector of a leading university. 

The plagiarized paper came to public attention in March when the Latvian magazine Ir published serious allegations against Maris Klavins, a professor and former dean at the University of Latvia. The allegations concern “possible fraud” in an EU-funded project headed by Klavins and include not only plagiarism but data falsification, budget irregularities and suspicious cash payments.

According to Ir, the Latvian police have opened a criminal investigation into the case. Klavins told the magazine he has not been charged in the matter. 

In an email to Retraction Watch, Klavins called the allegations “lies” and said the “person responsible” for “my defamation and persecution” was his former PhD student Dmitrijs Porsnovs.

“Presently this case is under investigation within a legal process,” Klavins added. “Considering this, I cannot give comments on the case.”

According to the article in Ir, Porsnovs discovered in 2021 that parts of an internal report he had written about the processing of algae for energy production had been published earlier that year by Klavins and others in the journal Agronomy Research – without listing him as an author or citing his work. Porsnovs, who is now a graduate student at the University of Stavanger in Norway, did not respond to requests for comments.

The magazine article includes examples of similar text and identical data in Porsnovs’ report and Klavins’ paper, titled “Algae processing for energy production: development of waste pyrolysis technology.” Ir also notes that an ethics committee at the University of Latvia found “elements containing plagiarism” in the work of Klavins and his coauthors, according to a Google translation.

The university did not respond to requests for comments.

Porsnovs reportedly complained to the journal, which pulled the paper “due to plagiarism” on June 20, 2021, according to a note on the retracted article. 

Ir also published anonymous allegations from another former student of Klavins accusing the professor of stealing student work on a previous occasion.

Klavins, who is currently a guest editor of a special issue of the journal Energies, has made perplexing statements to the media. He reportedly told Ir that the paper in Agronomy Research had “never been published,” but also claimed that he retracted it himself because it turned out to contain “erroneous data.”

Later, Klavins asserted that the right to use the text in Porsnovs’ report “belongs to Linnaeus University in Sweden, on whose behalf the study was conducted,” according to a Google translation of an article published April 5 by TVNET GRUPA.

A press officer at the university said she was not familiar with the case and referred us to acting university director Thorbjörn Nilsson, who could not be reached.

Porsnovs reportedly harbored suspicions toward the EU-funded research project from the beginning. He has alleged that two of Klavins’ coauthors on the now-retracted paper were “fictitiously employed” and that one of them gave part of his salary to Klavins.

“I have seen with my own eyes several cases of transfer of cash,” Porsnovs wrote last year in a letter to an ethics committee for the University of Latvia, according to Ir. 

Porsnovs is currently involved in extensive litigation with the University of Latvia, the magazine said.

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