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The University Grants Commission (UGC) implemented new regulations in order to prevent plagiarism and academic misconduct by students. They required every institution to establish a mechanism to enhance awareness about responsible conduct of research and academic activities, promotion of academic integrity and deterrence from plagiarism. The ministry of human resource development told a meeting of vice-chancellors that plagiarism software would be provided free to all institutions. However, similarity-detection is only possible if the original material is available online. And plagiarism is not just about text similarity, but also recycling of copied figures, tables, and photographs.

Kazakhstan’s anti-corruption strategies are showing early signs of progress, a top official at the country’s Agency for Civil Service Affairs and Fighting Corruption said. Among the cited projects was Sanaly Urpak (Conscious Generation), established in Almaty, which seeks to minimise corruption in the education system. The project has developed an optimal solution for curbing corruption at the secondary and higher education level, as well as disseminating the academic honesty principle. University academic integrity and cohesion ratings will be issued annually based on project estimates.

India’s tough new anti-plagiarism law drawn up by the higher education regulatory body, the University Grants Commission or UGC, which sets out graded punishments depending on the seriousness of the misdemeanour, has been widely welcomed by academics – but many said there needs to be even stronger deterrence to curb copycat tendencies among students and lecturers. The UGC announced the Promotion of Academic Integrity and Prevention of Plagiarism in Higher Education Institutions Regulations 2018 late last month.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has released the Draft UGC (Promotion of Academic Integrity and Prevention of Plagiarism in Higher Education Institutions) Regulations, 2017. As the name suggests, the aim of the draft is to create academic awareness about responsible conduct of research and prevention of misconduct including plagiarism in academic writing. The draft also seeks to establish institutional mechanism for promotion of academic integrity and develop systems to detect and prevent plagiarism.

Taiwan’s Ministry of Science and Technology has said it will set up an Office of Research Integrity to hold researchers to ethical academic standards in the wake of a major academic fraud scandal at the country’s top institution, National Taiwan University or NTU, which has severely damaged its research reputation. The office will create a database of different types of breaches of academic standards, including fraud and plagiarism. Taiwan’s Ministry of Education also announced an amendment to its regulations, forcing academics accused of academic fraud to relinquish honorary and monetary awards granted by the ministry, and return funds already granted.

Japan’s Ministry of Education is in the hot seat over revelations that it lobbied universities to hire its retiring officials, a practice known as amakudari (descent from heaven) which is officially banned in Japan. In late 2016, damning evidence emerged that the ministry attempted to conceal its involvement in the case of a retiring ministry official landing a job at Waseda University by distributing answers to anticipated questions so that everyone involved could coordinate a story of denial.

To ensure the healthy development of academia, there has to be fundamental changes made to China’s academic incentive system with a move away from the current method of judging researchers through the number of publications they have in ranked journals. This method leads some to chase after numbers while ignoring academic integrity. With deep roots in Chinese cultural traditions and a fertile soil that nourishes corruption, China’s battle against research misconduct is doomed to be arduous.

Australia's most powerful universities have fallen into line over university admissions standards, recommending wholesale changes in the wake of a Fairfax Media investigation that brought the sector's integrity into question. Up to 99% of applicants for some NSW university degrees have been admitted despite failing to meet the minimum ATAR score advertised for the course.

The recent rise of East Asian universities has greatly impressed the academic world. However, a number of terms have been used to describe the academic culture in East Asian universities, such as integrity, ethics, misconduct and even corruption. Academic culture has been cited as a significant impediment for East Asian higher education to reach a leading status in the world. The toxic academic culture is another expression of East Asia’s greatest challenge: universities have not yet figured out how to combine the 'standard norms' of Western higher education with traditional values.

On Tuesday, the Culture and Education Minister said that the government was aiming to achieve higher standards of integrity with the implementation of the national exams (UN) starting in 2016. To that end, the Culture and Education Ministry has produced a barometer, namely the UN Integrity Index (IIUN), which measured the percentage of student answer sheets that showed no sign of cheating.