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Plagiarism has been taboo for some and an open secret for others in Algeria, but is today a scandal that no one can deny – even though Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research officials are trying to minimise the problem. Some flagrant examples of plagiarism have emerged into the public sphere, and they appear to be the tip of the iceberg. The ministry of higher education and scientific research, has adopted series of measures to curb this phenomenon, including instructing all universities to set up databases on their websites in which all works and theses produced by students, lecturers and researchers are reported.

In considering what universities are for, too little attention has been paid to the ethical role played by all who participate in them. The focus on the learning of useful skills often obscures the ethical dimension of university life. Universities are places where truth claims, propositions, theories, understandings and explanations, for all kinds of things and events, are subject to critical scrutiny. It is this critical dimension that distinguishes universities from schools and training. The ethical duty of universities is to question truth claims, to seek explanations, to find good understandings, and not to propound one or another doctrine without question.

Higher education institutions play a deciding factor in the development of future leadership and national social cohesion. And here higher education leaders play a critical role. They speak publicly about the ethics of their institution; they explain the details of how their institution manages ethical transgressions on the part of administrators, faculty and students; and they are the first to admit when there has been a failure. Leaders of ethical institutions today can be held to account in a way that is unprecedented.

A developmental university must have well-crafted research ethical standards anchored in principles of democracy, social justice and human rights. Research ethical standards are important as they provide guidelines for researchers to ensure that specific values like integrity, transparency, respect, objectivity and accountability are strictly observed; they generate confidence in and support for research among both domestic and international research communities; and they help establish trust between researchers and research participants.

The acting rector of National Aviation University of Ukraine, was detained on 26 August on charges of taking a €100,000 (US$112,000) bribe for a job appointment. The accused was reportedly detained by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau detectives and Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s office and Security Service officers. The following day, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau reported on its website that during the search in his apartment, detectives found the cash, and also confiscated nine gold bars. In response, the acting rector claims he was set up.

The Senior Staff Association of Nigeria Universities (SSANU) has accused Pro-Chancellors and Vice Chancellors of Nigerian universities of corruption and running the nation’s ivory tower aground through fraudulent activities, diversion of funds and awarding shady contracts. Rising from its National Executive Council meeting, the Union asked the President to beam his anti-corruption searchlight on the Vice Chancellors and the governing council of the universities if the anti-corruption battle is to succeed.

Students have “no understanding” of what plagiarism is and why they must avoid it, according to new research. An education research fellow at the University of Otago, finds that universities might need to consider their plagiarism policies and how they might “influence or confuse students in counterproductive ways”. The qualitative study, published in the journal Higher Education, found that although “aware of plagiarism as a concept” and believing that those who “intentionally cheat are cheating everybody”, students were ignorant of the potential implications of unintentional plagiarism.

The Association of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities or AVCNU has proposed reforms to deal with the increasing number of individuals being promoted to professorships without apparently following due process.
At its recent annual conference, AVCNU took a unanimous decision to put forward a reform proposal to the National Universities Commission to arrest the trend, which is threatening the integrity of some institutions.
Some of the irregularities with regard to promotion have been leaked to the media, resulting in embarrassment for the affected universities. Since the story appeared, individuals have been emboldened to speak out about how other academics have become professors in questionable situations.

Cheating by students who use essay mills is “virtually undetectable”, according to a study that found that many ghost-written papers would receive good marks if they were submitted. An associate lecturer in history at the University of New South Wales, conducted an experiment in which she ordered essays from 13 ghostwriting websites and then had them graded by leading academics who believed that they were looking at genuine student submissions. The results were “alarming”, with the quality of purchased essays being “higher than expected”; The use of essay mills might therefore be “much, much higher” than previously thought.

Most scientists and medical researchers behave ethically. However, in recent years, the number of high-profile scandals in which researchers have been exposed as having falsified their data raises the issue of how we should deal with research fraud. There is little scholarship on this subject that crosses disciplines and engages with the broader phenomenon of unethical behaviour within the domain of research. This is partly because disciplines tend to operate in silos and because universities, in which researchers are often employed, tend to minimise adverse publicity.