According to the most recent report of Accredibase, the UK-based background screening company Verifile Limited, there was a staggering 48% increase in the number of known degree or diploma mills operating worldwide last year. It identified more than 2,500 bogus institutions across all regions, but primarily in North America and Europe.

Paper mills and cheat sites are losing ground to social and user-generated Web sites as sources of material for student papers, and Wikipedia rules above all others as a source for plagiarism. A third of matched content derives from online sites where people contribute and share content, while only 15 percent of content matches have ties to sites specifically promoting "academic dishonesty".

Turnitin News recently conducted a study that examined which Internet sites students used in their written work. They classified 110 million content matches in 40 million student papers that were submitted to Turnitin over a ten-month period.

New international guidelines and a voluntary code on research integrity are being drawn up as a result of consultations at the Second World Conference on Scientific Integrity held in Singapore in July. The initiative is intended to combat rising incidences of scientific fraud, plagiarism and other research falsification and serve as a "guide for professionally responsible research practices throughout the world".

Universities face constant scrutiny about their plagiarism management strategies, policies and procedures. A resounding theme, usually media inspired, is that plagiarism is rife, unstoppable and university processes are ineffectual in its wake. However, revisiting the origins of plagiarism and exploring its legal evolution reveals that legal discourse is the foundation for many plagiarism management policies and processes around the world. Interestingly, criminal justice aims are also reflected in university plagiarism management strategies.

The so called –double, multiple, tri-national, joint, integrated, collaborative, combined current, consecutive, overlapping, conjoint, parallel, simultaneous programs have an important role in the institutions' internationalization strategy. These degrees can be understood as a natural extension of mobility and exchange, but also can be perceive as a troublesome development leading to a double counting of academic work and the thin edge of academic fraud.

The growing demand for college degrees, the globalization of the education market, and the Internet are combining to create a more favorable climate for diploma mills around the world, says Stamenka Uvalic-Trumbic, chief of the section for reform, innovation, and quality assurance in higher education at the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).