Kara Richardson has now updated her NDPR review of the The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy (2 vols.) so that its readers are aware the hardback (box-set) edition contains plagiarized pieces by Martin Stone. She also has the happy news that future editions will contain brand new articles by Rudolf Schuessler and Maarten Hoenen.

What happened in the earlier version of her review goes to the heart of the matter. For it shows that even specialists can be unaware of plagiarism--not everybody is addicted to blogs, after all! I

In Leuven, a student newspaper made the matter public, pressuring the dean of the faculty into a statement in which the general attitude of the university was summarized in two sentences: "The whole case was handled discreetly but with due decisiveness. We do not organize any witch hunts here and we do not use public shaming as a punishment." So KU Leuven acknowledged the problem publicly only after the press had been informed. Under the new rules in Germany, this form of whistle blowing, if done by an academic, would be a sanctionable offense. Keeping an investigation of academic misconduct off the public radar -- or simply covering  it up --  wouldn't be.

At KCL in 2010, “a spokeswoman said the college had established a panel of senior staff to investigate allegations of plagiarism against a former member of staff from the department of theology. 'This investigation is ongoing and we cannot say more until it is completed,' she added.” (Times Higher Education, 2010). This is exactly how German universities would process accusations of academic misconduct in the future. In the UK, the investigation is apparently still ongoing three years later: to this day, I am not aware that KCL has released any statement acknowledging Stone's plagiarism or taking any final position on his employment.  Neither did the KCL philosophy department. But they should have. In 2010, the anonymous KCL spokeswoman characterised Stone as a 'staff member of the theology department'. This was at best misleading: Stone must have been in some way affiliated with the KCL department of philosophy, too. Before the scandal broke, KCL philosophers did not hesitate to include Stone's contributions in their report for the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) ([PDF], [Website URL]). If Google is right, this is the only remaining reference to Stone on the KCL website. All other links to Stone have been purged, even though the department website contains a rubric for 'former
faculty'. Apparently, KCL has succeeded in what Leuven had set out to achieve: to handle Stone's plagiarism 'discreetly, but with due decisiveness' and, we should add, without any lasting damage to its reputation.