Two professors in Chinese universities have been punished for plagiarizing works of others, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) has announced on its website.

Professor Ai Yong, of the elite Wuhan University in central China, was formally criticized by the foundation, which also cancelled his research program on laser communications and revoked his funding.

The foundation found that Ai had revised one of his undergraduate's research reviews into a dissertation and had it published in 2005, with Ai listed as the second author.

Without conducting any research of his own, his article mainly derived from an essay published in the Proceedings of the International Society for Optical Engineering in 2003, said the notice.

In the second case, Professor Zhang Lianshun, of the Tianjin-based Civil Aviation University of China, published an article that was a synthesis of two essays by other people.

Zhang claimed in the article that he was a member of a scientific research project on thermal spraying and welding funded by the NSFC. The claim, however, was a fabrication, according to the foundation.

The NSFC has openly criticized Zhang and asked him to deliver an apology statement to China Physics Letters, a journal run by the China Physics Society under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Both Ai and Zhang were banned from applying for NSFC research funds for three years.

Zhang's "misconduct" was "a deviation from ethics in the science field", and "it not only hurt the authors of the original essays but also besmirched the NSFC's reputation", the notice read.

(Xinhua News Agency June 22, 2007)