One of the founders of the dissertation community, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Professor Andrei Rostovtsev commented on the information about the plagiarism revealed in the scientific work of the acting governor of St. Petersburg Alexander Beglov, who holds a doctorate in economics. According to him, borrowing was revealed only in five scientific articles of Beglov, published in 2011 in the journal “Economic Sciences”. In the doctoral dissertation itself, plagiarism was not found, although Rostovtsev hinted that the scientific work could not have been written by Beglov.

“There is no plagiarism in his dissertation. But this is normal, because in such cases the text of the theses is written by some people, and other people are concerned about the publication. And they have little connection with each other, only with the topic, ”Andrei Rostovtsev told the Daily Storm.

According to Rostovtsev, the Higher Attestation Commission does not react in any way to the information about plagiarism in Beglov’s articles, since it didn’t react to more serious violations.

At the same time, Andrei Rostovtsev reported that Beglov’s Ph.D. thesis was not checked for plagiarism, since it was written a long time ago: “We have“ limits of visibility ”: there are nothing to compare too ancient dissertations - the sources left public space. This border for us lies somewhere in the early 2000s. There are no texts from which they were written off, they are not digitized, and they should be looked for in libraries. ”

Another founder of the dissertation community, Sergey Parkhomenko, previously posted information about plagiarism found in published articles by the acting governor of St. Petersburg Alexander Beglov on his Facebook page. According to Parkhomenko, Beglov used for publication of scientific articles the work of Rostov-on-Don scientist Vladimir Truth "Cossacks of Russia in the period of revolutions of 1917 and at the initial stage of the Civil War" and an excerpt from the book of the same scientist "Dear glory and losses. Cossack troops during wars and revolutions ".

The Disnetnet network community brings together experts and journalists who are involved in identifying violations and fraud, including plagiarism, in the scientific and educational fields. The community pays special attention to the actions of “political and public figures who tried to improve their reputation and gain additional respect for their fellow citizens by defending dissertations and obtaining official diplomas of candidate and doctoral degrees.”

In 2013, “Dissernet” discovered plagiarism in the doctoral dissertation of Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky “Problems of objectivity in covering Russian history in the second half of the XV – XVII centuries.” In the spring of 2016, two doctors of historical sciences and one researcher with the degree of Ph.D. submitted to the Ministry of Education and Science a statement in which they analyzed in detail the work of Medinsky and demanded that it be recognized as unscientific, as well as deprive the Minister of Culture of an academic degree. In the fall of 2017, the Higher Attestation Commission decided to leave Medinsky’s degree and declared all claims to his dissertation insolvent.