Photo of Zhai Tianlin taken in December, 2018. Photo: VCG

Central China's Hunan University has set up a special group to investigate an academic plagiarism case and the results will be announced in due time, said the university's official Weibo account on Thursday.

The university said that it gives zero tolerance to academic misconduct, and once the case is verified, it would be dealt with in accordance with the law.

 The university's latest move is an official response to a netizen, allegedly a teacher from Yunnan University of Finance and Economics, who revealed that her academic papers had been plagiarized by Hunan University student Liu Mengjie in her master's thesis. 

What frustrated the netizen most is that the "stolen part" was derived from her confidential project document to China's National Natural Science Foundation in 2017. 

The netizen posted some evidence on the Weibo account. Based on the posts, more than 15,000 words are suspected of being copied. 

"Due to Liu's plagiarism, my doctoral dissertation on the basis of the project will be negatively influenced, and my academic reputation is likely to decline as well," the netizen said.

The netizen said that she had received a call from Hunan University before, and was told Liu's tutor happened to be an expert at China's National Natural Science Foundation. 

She said that she has asked the university to investigate the case immediately, but received no reply one week after the incident.

"Online public opinion has played a significant role in pushing the case into the spotlight," an education critic told the Global Times on Friday.

"China's academic integrity is once again in the spotlight in the aftermath of Chinese actor Zhai Tianlin's high-profile academic misconduct case, as public outrage on academic scandals has reached a peak this year," the critic added.