A Harvard sophomore has been investigated by three campus publications following allegations of plagiarism-investigations that have led to her being forced from the staffs of both of Harvard's newspapers.

Allegations of plagiarism against Irina Serbanescu '03 began 10 days ago when a reader notified the Harvard Independent that the lead paragraph of the an article in its April 5 issue exactly matched a portion of an opinion piece published in Forbes in 1999.

Serbanescu's article, the first article of the issue dated April 5, began with a 147-word quote from Forbes magazine with no attribution.

By that night, the Indy had pulled the disputed article from their website and replaced it with an editor's note which explained that the story had been retracted "due to questions of integrity [and that t]he matter is currently under investigation."

According to Indy editors, they fired Serbanescu after a meeting the next day. Serbanescu, however, said she intended to resign from the publication before the meeting.

"We verified that the duplication was accurate, and it was," said Indy Managing Editor Alexander P. Nyren '02. "It's unclear why this happened, and it was clearly unacceptable."

Serbanescu said her first draft of the article had quotation marks around the offending passage, although it did not include a citation of Forbes.

"It was never meant to be included in that form," Serbanescu said.