The cloister of the University of Salamanca this Thursday was awaited with a certain expectation. The rector of the University of Salamanca, Juan Manuel Corchado, was to give explanations after the external report requested by the Research Ethics Committee concluded that Corchado had an “editorial network” and a “factory of publication”, the Springer publishing house withdrew 75 articles. in which Corchado had participated and the Board of Directors of the Conference of Rectors (CRUE) sent a statement in which it rejected “any unethical conduct”, without however expressly referring to Juan Manuel Corchado.
However, the faculty did not follow the planned agenda and the vote was brought forward. The session was also not broadcast live – as on other occasions –, nor even the rector’s report, although this had been planned, which the rector justified by the data protection law.
Corchado assured that it allowed a streaming within the university space. At the end of the faculty, the general secretary of the USAL, Alfredo Ávila de la Torre, asked for “a certain caution” when speaking about the lack of transparency, since they consider that the faculty should be open, but only to the university. level and not to tourists or via YouTube.
“Any tourist who visits this historic building cannot enter the cloister because they are not from the university community. We cannot make a leap in transparency and the tourist cannot enter the room and he can see it on YouTube. We must establish a transparency control regime adapted to needs,” said the USAL Secretary General, who encouraged work on a new public system with “all the guarantees”.
It is not retransmitted to avoid “illegality”
“We don’t have the technology to disseminate this as required by law. Yesterday we received several questions about this, we asked questions to the legal services and the committee decided that, in order not to commit illegality,” said Corchado, who refused to assess whether when the cloister was broadcast on previous occasions, it had violated a law The spokesperson for the government of Castilla y León, Carlos Fernández Carriedo, stressed that the USAL is “very important” and spoke of “university autonomy”.
Some professors critical of Corchado’s work also wanted to know exactly the rector’s organizational chart; not only its vice-rectors, but also the rector’s delegates, managers, commissioners and service directors.
The rector of the USAL assured that the supplements received are “a paltry sum” for the responsibility they imply and ruled out that they influence the Budget, whose chapter of personnel expenses will exceed by three million euros the budget limit, according to Corchado’s calculations.
The director of the University of Salamanca has chosen to have teams capable of responding to daily work and also planning the future of the university. However, it has not provided data on the number of employees it needs or the remuneration it charges, which will be done “when possible”, because it wants to publish it in an “orderly” manner. and not “by patching”. “Corchado took office at the end of May.
“We have asked for a list, searched on the web or in the news, what we find out about the appointments, but we want something complete with the names, the reductions in hours and the remunerations,” affirmed Susana Pérez.
“Nature”, CRUE and other companies left “with a story”
The rector of the USAL criticized the fact that the CRUE did not consult him or “many” rectors “friends” before this statement, just like the editor of the journal Science or other scientific societies, to whom he left “a story”. » and that, he emphasizes, they issued opinions “without knowing the subject”.
Corchado’s story has at times been contradictory. He initially declared that the editorial team had not “contacted” him to clarify shortly after: “In Nature They write to me on a Friday afternoon, I spend the weekend explaining it to them and they don’t even read it”, criticized the rector of the University of Salamanca, who “understands” the “pressures” that Springer has could have suffered.
The rector of USAL stressed that he was “calm” because he dedicated his life “to public service” despite the “media campaign” with “false purposes” and the threats – even death – of which he was the victim. . This is how Juan Manuel Corchado spoke before the highest representative body of the University Community, which experienced a moment of tension after the intervention of certain members critical of him.
“Tired of putting up with nonsense”
“Whoever wants to take this out of context, let him do so. “I’m tired of putting up with this and listening to nonsense,” protested Corchado, who insisted on downplaying the significance of the latest events. Regarding the deletion of documents uploaded to the USAL institutional repository (GREDOS), Corchado assured that he was “the biggest defender” of this repository and that, especially during the pandemic, he asked his team to upload “everything that could” (books, articles, presentations, etc.) in the repository because “it had almost no impact”.
Given his possible nomination for rector, Corchado decided – according to his account – to give the instruction to remove the 200 items. “Without further delay, I picked up the phone and told them: ‘take them away because they are no longer useful’. And there is nothing more to say,” he concluded.
Asked about Corchado’s affiliations with the universities of Osaka or Malaysia, the rector asked about the authority of Susana Pérez, a professor in the Department of Applied Physics who considered running against Corchado in the elections, because she “few articles” in his career. and sign articles “always in the middle.” “It is very easy to criticize and focus on what others criticize in the newspapers,” criticized Corchado, who assured that he would now not speak to any journalist about his self-quotation scandal.
“Whoever wants something, go to court. And whoever doesn’t want it, maybe we’ll see each other again in court,” said Corchado, who assured that after ordering the deletion of his articles in the GREDOS system, he received calls from “four or five “And one of them, who is always there talking about me, insisted. He said to me: ‘Tell me what you want and I’ll tell you what I want.’
Corchado’s intervention ended with applause from the faculty after the rector declared that he held his head “very high” for his “prestige” and criticized those who try to “take where there is no doesn’t have any.” Some of the critical faculty representatives asked Corchado for “due respect” after the rector addressed some faculty members and alluded to their number of publications. Light applause marked the end of the conference which took place at the Auditorium of the University of Salamanca.
