Dissernet

Dissernet (Russian: Диссернет) is a volunteer community network whose goal is to expose plagiarism in Russia. The core activity of the community is conducting examinations of doctoral and habilitation (higher doctorate) theses defended in Russian scientific and educational institutions since the end of the 1990s, and making the results of such examinations known to as many people as possible. The community is composed of professional scientists working in various fields of science both in Russia and abroad, and also journalists, civil activists and volunteers. The community was established in January 2013. The full Dissernet site, dissernet.org, as well as its reduced version, dissernet.ru, were opened on 23 September 2013. By 2016, the project identified around 5,600 suspected plagiarists—focusing on officials in government and academia, and other members of the country's elite—and released reports on around 1,300 of them. Russian media regularly report on Dissernet's findings, and the site has been credited with raising attention for the issue of academic fraud in the country. In a 2016 exposé, Dissernet showed that one in nine members of the State Duma had obtained academic degrees with theses that were substantially plagiarized and likely ghostwritten. By 2025, the total number of people with different types of academic misconduct exceeded 40,000; among them there are about 14,000 people who plagiarized their dissertations, and approximately the same numbers of people with academic misconduct in their publications and those who participated in defenses of plagiarized dissertations as scientific advisers or reviewers (for detail, use filters on the Dissernet site). 1,700 people have had their academic degree officially revoked.