Plagiarized paper?

As an Indonesian living in an increasingly global world, I applaud my country's initiative in allowing international conferences to be staged here.

One such conference, entitled Communications, Culture, and Development, sponsored by Asian Mass Media Communications Research and Information, headquartered in Singapore, is scheduled for June 22 to June 24, 1995, at the Hotel Indonesia, Jakarta.

As I am very interested in the conference, I obtained a copy of its program. I noticed that on Friday, June 23, between 14.00 and 15.30 hours, a session will be presented entitled Virtual Classroom: Distance Learning in the Information Age, presented by Mr David Murphy, from the Open Learning Institute of Hong Kong.

Most interesting, I thought.

However, as it happens, I have just acquired a copy of a text by the title In Search of the Virtual Class: Education in an Information Society by John Tiffin and Lalita Rajasingham.

This book, published by Routledge, in London, and New York, hits the market this month, and has been internationally acclaimed.

I understand that the conference to be held at the Hotel Indonesia will not publish the proceedings. This makes me rather suspicious.

As an amateur, albeit an interested and (I hope) enlightened one, I smell a rat! Is the above mentioned paper a reproduction of the salient features already contained within the said book, which is an excellent exposition of the subject?

If not, will the author of the paper do us a favor by adequately and honestly sourcing his paper? Or will we, Indonesians, be presented with a plagiarized version of the said publication by John Tiffin and Lalita Rajasingham?

I don't think we Indonesians need to have the wool pulled over our eyes.

MS SOETAMI KOESTOMO

Bogor, West Java