Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration
In 2011, Nikiforov defended his thesis in Economics. According to an examination by Dissernet, this doctoral thesis contains at least 97 pages with undocumented plagiarism from six other works and data fabrication. On 22 June 2016, the dissertation council of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration confirmed the existence of plagiarism in Nikiforov's thesis, but refused to recommend stripping Nikiforov of his degree.