Academic misconduct and academic integrity are issues of importance to Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Phraseologies and practices may conflate unintentional mistakes with attempts to gain illegitimate advantage, with some groups potentially at higher risk. HEIs across the United Kingdom (UK) responded to a Freedom of Information Act (FOI)…

This paper presents the first systematic investigation into the search engine optimization practices of major contract cheating websites in the United States. From a business perspective, visibility in organic search engine results is considered one of the top client recruitment tools. The current understanding of student recruitment strategies by…

Scientific and technological advancements over the last three decades have failed to reduce the widespread prevalence of academic dishonesty in higher education, in large part because institutional barriers prevent faculty from adopting existing tools to curb cheating. We conducted a systematic literature review of research on cheating and found…

Purpose: To improve the academic integrity of online examinations, digital proctoring systems have recently been implemented in higher education institutions (HEIs). The paper aims to understand how digital proctoring has been practised in higher education (HE) and proposes future research directions for studying digital proctoring in HE.…

The shift to online instruction in higher education related to the COVID-19 pandemic has raised worldwide concerns about an increase in academic misconduct (cheating and plagiarism). However, data to document any increase is sparse. For this study, we collected survey data from 484 students in 11 universities in the USA, and 410 students in five…

Given the prevalence of misconduct in research and among students in higher education, there is a need to create solutions for how best to prevent such behaviour in academia. This paper proceeds on the assumption that one way forward is to prepare students in higher education at an early stage and to encourage a smoother transition from academic…

For over half a century there have been concerns about increases in the occurrence of academic misconduct by higher education students and this is now claimed to have reached crisis proportions (e.g. Mostrous & Kenber, 2016a). This study explores the extent to which multi-national faculty judge the effectiveness of higher education…

This paper argues that legislative intervention rather than deontological rules could be an adequate tool to address academic integrity concerns, particularly in civil law jurisdictions, which is the case in the majority of European countries. The recently enacted Montenegrin law on academic integrity offers a promising foundation for developing…

Background: Academic integrity (AI) is of increasing importance in higher education. At the same time, students are becoming more consumer-oriented and more inclined to appeal against, or complain about, a penalty imposed for a breach of AI. This combination of factors places pressure on institutions of higher education to handle alleged breaches…

We examined 45 academic integrity policy documents from 24 publicly-funded universities in Canada's four western provinces using a qualitative research design. We extracted data related to 5 core elements of exemplary academic integrity policy (i.e., access, detail, responsibility, approach, support). Most documents pointed to punitive approaches…

In 1993, McCabe and Treviño published a seminal paper in which they proposed that honor codes reduced academic misconduct among college students. I review the research on honor codes that has emerged in the last 30 years. The extant body of literature demonstrates the efficacy of honor codes in creating and maintaining a culture of academic…

Academic integrity policies and processes vary from institution to institution and between countries. The last 30 years has seen increased attention on policies that provide a process focused on educating students and reintegrating those who cheat into their institutions rather than punitive and permanent sanctions, such as expulsion.

Academic integrity lies "at the core of the reputation of Australia's world class higher education sector" (Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), 2020). This pilot study analyses the dominant approach (punitive or educative) of academic integrity policies by selected institutions within the Australian state of Victoria…

Contract cheating is a challenging problem facing higher and further education providers (HE and FE) worldwide. In the UK, contract cheating has been identified as a growing problem by the HEA and, more recently, the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education and the Department for Education. The high rate of contact cheating among students…

This study presents a corpus analysis of academic integrity policies from Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) worldwide, exploring how they address the issues posed by technological threats, such as Automated Paraphrasing Tools and generative-artificial intelligence tools, such as ChatGPT. The analysis of 142 policies conducted in November and…