Two university lecturers have been fired after being found guilty of buying or taking someone else's research papers, said the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research, and Innovation (MHESI) on Wednesday.
Supachai Pathumnakul, MHESI deputy permanent secretary, said 109 academics from 33 universities were investigated for research fraud. The probe into 74 of them has been wrapped up.
Of the 74, 60 have been cleared of any wrongdoing and the remaining 14 from eight universities were found to have produced research papers containing abnormalities in their bibliographies.
Two of the 14 academics, one from Chiang Mai University (CMU) and the other from Chulabhorn Royal Academy, were found to have committed serious offences and were dismissed from their positions.
The irregularities were noticed after excessive numbers of research papers were published by individual researchers over the past two to three years.
The researchers also came up with studies outside their areas of expertise or co-authored papers without having taken part in the research.
Also, some papers had been bought or were passed off as the academics' own work and subsequently published in internationally accredited journals.
It was reported the CMU lecturer had bought an academic paper and then spent another 30,000 baht in publishing costs and authored a number of other works in fields outside the person's areas of expertise.
Mr Supachai said the ministry put 109 academics from 33 institutes under close scrutiny after being alerted to the problem.
It also helped the respective universities in the investigation.
The investigation was based on four main criteria: the number of published research studies in recent years, the research and the researcher's specialities, the background of the researcher, and any abnormality in their previously published works.
Mr Supachai said the probe suffered a delay as it involved addressing issues in specialised academic areas.