“NO CHOICE” BUT TO CUT CORNERS?
Academics and experts CNA interviewed said the Copenhagen case should serve as a catalyst for broader reforms.
Ida Bagus said Indonesian academics face intense pressure to publish while receiving limited financial support for research.
“University lecturers are expected to produce internationally recognised research every six months, but financial support is extremely limited. Government grants are rare, highly competitive and burdened by complicated bureaucracy,” he said.
According to Ida Bagus, such pressures can encourage some researchers to take unethical shortcuts.
“The gap between expectations and available resources makes some academics feel they have no choice but to cut corners,” he said.
He also cited longstanding practices surrounding authorship in Indonesia’s academic community.
“Many senior academics or professors ask to have their names included on papers despite contributing nothing to the research. That’s already unethical, but it’s been normalised (in Indonesia). Ethical boundaries have become blurred,” he said.
JPPI’s Ubaid agreed the latest case goes beyond personal misconduct. He and other researchers told CNA it reflects structural flaws within Indonesia’s academic system, where quantitative performance indicators often outweigh research quality and integrity.
“This is clearly a systemic disease, not merely personal misconduct,” he argued.
“It is the result of the industrialisation of academic titles. Lecturers are forced to become ‘credit-point labourers’, chasing promotions and incentives within an irrational academic ecosystem.”
Oversight mechanisms also need to be strengthened, Ubaid said.
“Our academic system has become trapped in administrative fetishism. Oversight focuses on stamps, receipts and compliance with templates rather than verifying whether the research itself was actually conducted,” he argued.
The Copenhagen case appears to have exposed failures in institutional supervision by assuming the alleged fraudsters were genuinely affiliated with academic institutions, said Lilis Mulyani, chair of the Indonesian Young Academy of Sciences (ALMI) for 2024–2026.
Abstracts submitted to ISPPD-14 listed their affiliation with the AI-Biomedicine Research Group, IMCDS Biomed Research Foundation. BRIN has since said the institution does not exist.
Lilis said researchers wishing to attend overseas conferences normally undergo multiple layers of internal review before receiving approval.
Typically, institutions require permission from their supervisors, submission of the research to be presented, and feedback from senior researchers or research groups. Many researchers also conduct rehearsal presentations before travelling abroad, said Lilis.
She noted a study on research integrity risk in 2025 – by Lokman Meho, a professor at the American University of Beirut – that listed several of Indonesia’s top universities in the most serious category for “systemic” risks and “extreme anomalies”.
Yogyakarta State University was among those in the “red flag” category of Meho’s Research Integrity Risk Index. The “red flag” was a tier above “high risk” – for universities deemed to have “significant deviation from global norms”. This was followed by the “watch list”, “normal variation” and “low risk” tiers.
There has been a growing number of Indonesian scientific papers being retracted, added Lilis. “In 2025 alone, more than 229 Indonesian scientific publications were retracted because of serious problems,” she said.
“This is deeply worrying because it damages not only individual researchers but also the reputation of our institutions and the country.”
Lilis noted sanctions for academic misconduct in Indonesia have so far been largely administrative, including revoking of professorships, dismissal of lecturers or excluding individuals from academic communities.
“To my knowledge, we’ve never seen criminal or civil penalties imposed in cases like these,” she said.
BRIN rejected claims of systemic regulatory failure and Agus disagreed with suggestions that the Denmark case was the result of Indonesia’s research regulations.
“I don’t believe this case is a systemic consequence of our existing regulations,” he said.