In the media

Global research retractions surpassed 10,000 in 2023, with Ethiopia showing an alarming 12% + rate. This challenges research integrity and public trust. Issues include misconduct, weak oversight, and publication pressure. Strengthening ethical standards, implementing transparent review processes, establishing national monitoring bodies, and prioritizing research quality over quantity are crucial for a credible scientific environment.

A recent Institute for East European Studies study highlights the significant threat hijacked journals pose to scientific integrity. The research reveals that papers in these journals exhibit extremely high levels of plagiarism, with 66% of the sample containing plagiarized content. Most of these papers come from authors in developing countries, suggesting that weaker ethical norms and research practices contribute to the problem.

In the book "Corruption in Higher Education: Global Challenges and Responses," 34 experts shed light on various corruption issues in higher education: contract cheating and outsourcing assignments; ambivalent hiring processes; fake universities that take various forms, from profit-driven schemes to students buying degrees without fulfilling obligations; corruption research involves scholars, administrators, and agencies, united against academic corruption. Future steps include integrity theory development, examining secondary education's impact, leveraging technology, avoiding social group stigmatization, and fostering global cooperation.

In Russia and Ukraine, discussion of sexual abuse is not welcomed. Nevertheless, faculty and staff are involved in exploiting and abusing students in many different ways like offering positive grades in examinations in exchange for sex. It is not only students who suffer from sexual harassment but also faculty and staff recruitment. Promotion is influenced by bribes or sexual favours as well.

The Institute of Business Economics’ rector and deputy are charged with fraud, forging of documents and their sale, commercial bribery, and mediation. One of the Institute applicants said that the admissions office offered her to pay 450 thousand rubles ($7,054) for three years of study. The fact that the university was deprived of its license two years earlier did not prevent the rector from concluding contracts with candidates for paid higher education.

The Higher Attestation Commission (VAK) refused to hear the results on academic integrity violations in academic dissertations from the Commission to Combat the Falsification of Scholarly Research, which operates within the Russian Academy of Science (RAN). The head of VAK refused to review a plagiarized dissertation and to let RAN academics into the hearing room. Moreover, VAK excluded academics who have attempted to take a stand against falsified dissertations.

In December 2015, a prominent member of Russia’s ruling party was accused of plagiarising a large portion of his economic dissertation. But the strangest thing about the alleged plagiarism is not the accused’s lack of defence—it's that the Russian public didn't really seem to care. In fact, the Chairman of the State is one of more than 1,000 high achieving Russians who have been caught plagiarising. The accused include politicians, judges, prosecutors, police officials and even heads of universities.

The president of the Far Eastern Federal University has been arrested in what could be one of the largest corruption scandals in Russian higher education in the past quarter century. The university, located in Russia’s port city of Vladivostok employs over 3,000 faculty, enrols 33,000 students and has nine branch campuses in the region. The university is the flagship of higher education in the Far East and was intended to become a world-class research university.