High School Student Child as Co-author? Court Rules "Professor's Research Restrictions Justified"

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Daehyun] A professor who was banned from participating in national research and development projects for three years for unjustly listing his minor child as a co-author on a paper filed an appeal but lost in the first trial.

According to the legal community on the 21st, the Seoul Administrative Court Administrative Division 4 (Chief Judge Kim Jeongjung) recently ruled against plaintiff Professor A in the first trial of the lawsuit filed against the Minister of Health and Welfare, requesting the cancellation of the research participation restriction.

Previously, in June 2010, Professor A submitted a paper to an academic journal as a result of a research project, listing his high school-aged child as the third author. It was investigated that Professor A's child participated twice in an internship program conducted by the research institute and was directly involved in the research for about six days.

In December 2017, the Ministry of Education launched an investigation into suspicions of "spec inflation." After confirming Professor A's misconduct, the Ministry requested the university to which he belonged to "verify whether the authorship was unjust."

The university's Research Ethics Committee stated at the end of 2019 that "there is a lack of objective and concrete evidence that Professor A's child substantially contributed to the research." The Korea Health Industry Development Institute sanctioned Professor A by banning him from participating in national research and development projects for three years and also reclaimed 5.04 million won in research funds paid to the hospital that led the research.

Displeased with this, Professor A filed an administrative lawsuit. During the trial, he argued that "his child made a significant contribution to the paper's writing, so the authorship listing was not unjust."

The first trial court did not accept Professor A's claim, stating that "it is difficult to see that (the child) substantially contributed to the research." The court cited the ambiguous relevance between the internship program and the research, as well as the excessively short duration of the activities. Furthermore, it was considered that even this participation was only to assist the practitioners involved in the research.

The court also dismissed Professor A's claim to cancel the research fund reclamation order. The court judged that since the reclamation was directed at the hospital as the principal research institution, Professor A did not have the standing to contest it through litigation.

Professor A appealed the first trial ruling.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.