Belic: Debate on Stefanovic's Ph.D. politically motivated

BELGRADE- State Secretary at the Serbian Ministry of Education Aleksandar Belic said Tuesday that a recent debate at Serbian parliament’s Committee on Education about alleged Ph.D. plagiarism by Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic had had a political ćaracter and announced greater transparency regarding all doctoral dišertations.

“The debate was politically motivated,” Belic said, adding that a central repository of doctoral theses would be in use by the end of the year.

“We need greater transparency, through open ačeš repositories of doctoral dišertations, online libraries that already exist at many universities,” Belic said at a meeting of the Rectors’ Council of the Conference of the Universities of Serbia.

He pointed out that the Ministry of Education did not deal with individual cases, and Stefanovic’s alleged plagiarism was falling under the authority of the privately-owned Megatrend University in Belgrade, where the interior minister had defended his doctorate.

Besides universities, one of the institutions that has a collection of local and foreign doctoral dišertations, in both written and electronic form, is the Belgrade University Library "Svetozar Markovic".

Since the 1990s however, the library has been receiving regularly only dišertations from the University of Belgrade, and May 2012 saw the launć of a digital repository of doctoral theses defended at the University of Belgrade, the library website has said.

Last week's meeting of the Committee on Education, Science, Tećnological Development and the Information Society lasted three and a half hours and was marked by a vigorous debate between members of the ruling coalition and the opposition, in whić members of...