Gripla - 20.12.2005, Page 262
GRIPLA
President Summers replied in a letter of February 16, 2005, referring to a
letter of formal complaint from Hrafn Sveinbjarnarson, received in December
2004:
Upon receipt of this letter the GSAS began a formal investigation
which is currently ongoing. Once a decision has been made, the School
will be in touch with Mr. Sveinbjarnarson.
My BA-thesis, the first study made on the history of music education in the
Latin Schools in Iceland, was only the beginning of a planned work which I
have been developing since 1997.
In 1999 Árni Heimir Ingólfsson handed in a dissertation proposal in
Harvard where my BA-thesis was mentioned, without my knowledge and
permission. This he did knowing that I was rewriting and expanding my BA-
thesis. When I knew that he was using my BA-thesis in his dissertation I wrote
him a letter, January 13, 2003, reminding him that he had neither asked for nor
received my permission to use my unpublished research, and such permission
would not be granted. In a responding letter of January 22, 2003, he admitted
that he was using my thesis in his doctoral dissertation in Harvard.
My name occurs once in the Harvard dissertation, along with the title of
my unpublished BA-thesis, in the bibliography, under the headings “Published
Material” and “Books and Articles” (p. 375). The BA-thesis is neither pub-
lished material, a book nor an article. In substantial parts of this Harvard dis-
sertation in the field of Music, the subject, ideas and references of my BA-
thesis in the field of History are used. My research is copied, directly and
indirectly, and presented by Árni Heimir Ingólfsson in his own name in a
published work. The Harvard dissertation was for sale on the Internet, at
ProQuest Digital Dissertations, at least for several months.
I wish to emphasize that in 1997, when I gave Árni Heimir Ingólfsson a
copy of my BA-thesis, as my friend and schoolmate since early age, he was
going to study the 20th century Icelandic composer Jón Leifs.
It must be added that Njáll Sigur›sson was another avid reader of my BA-
thesis in the University library (access restricted) and had my written
permission to quote my thesis, in a limited way, in a book chapter he was pre-
paring.
Árni Heimir Ingólfsson has continued plagiarizing my work, this time in
Gripla. This is why I have requested that Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi
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