Well spotted! I missed that idiocy. Where was it published? Even the Journal of Irreproducible Results has editorial standards...
I agree it doesn't reflect well on the journal that published this total dross. I guess they liked the 3D coloured graph or something.
It is always implicit in the system unless you have a perfect voltage source with zero internal resistance that only simulators can provide. In the real world you have to keep the inrush current within bounds or components become distressed and/or explode losing their magic smoke.
The point is that the circuit is amenable to trivial analysis by senior high school physics or applied mathematics of 2nd order ODEs.
In the real world the capacitor and the real voltage source have to be protected from each other when switching and there might well be a place for a network of R + L paralleled with R/a + aL or something like that to limit the inrush current but maintain a faster charge later.
I can't see any point at all in putting a resistor in parallel with the capacitor though (apart from to model leakage losses).