The Ethics Committee of Montenegro, acting upon the proposal of the Centre for Civic Education (CCE), adopted a decision determining that Assoc. Prof. Dr. Aleksandar Stamatović violated academic integrity by publishing an identical scientific paper in two different journals.
In March 2025, the CCE submitted to the Ethics Board of the University of Montenegro (UoM) a proposal to determine the violation of academic integrity by Stamatović, who is employed at the Faculty of Philosophy of UoM as a full professor. The case concerns the same article that Stamatović published in two scientific journals – Bulgarian Historical Review and Transylvanian Review.
The CCE believes that such behaviour damages the reputation of the UoM and complicates the position of its academic staff, who will face a much more difficult path to publishing their work and will be under increased scrutiny from relevant scientific databases that are crucial for the credibility and advancement of researchers.
Unfortunately, the Ethics Board of UoM, which had previously protected Stamatović on several occasions, declared itself incompetent in this particular case, reasoning that the disputed papers were published outside Montenegro (in Romaniaand Bulgaria). The case was then, ex officio, forwarded to the Ethics Committee of Montenegro.
After seven months, the Ethics Committee determined that this was a violation of academic integrity – plagiarism, in the form of self-plagiarism, although it stated “without personal gain.”
Stamatović also violated the ethical rules of the journals in which the papers were published, which comply with the standards of the Web of Science database and explicitly prohibit double publication of the same results, even in a modified form.
The CCE regrets that, despite clear evidence, the bodies responsible for ethical issues at the UoM continue to avoid making principled decisions that would have a preventive effect, and instead continuously relativize cases of academic dishonesty.
This case once again confirms the need for the consistent application of academic ethics and responsibility standards, which are the foundation of the credibility and development of the scientific community in Montenegro.
Snežana Kaluđerović, Senior Legal Advisor