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The world's largest multi-disciplinary research integrity survey is at risk of failing to achieve its objectives with two-thirds of the institutions invited to collaborate having declined to participate because of the sensitivity of the subject and fear of negative publicity. As a result, the researchers who conducted the Dutch National Research Integrity Survey found themselves alone in scraping up many e-mail addresses and soliciting responses. They gathered feedback from less than 15% of the 40,000 targeted participants.

There have been several cases of ethical violations in India in recent years. A well-known newspaper reported that a series of articles belonging to prestigious research institutions have been published by Indian scientists. They were flagged on a research discussion platform for including images that had been altered and copied from other sources. However, some improvement in ethics has been noted. The government's Chief Scientific Adviser issued the Draft National University Ethics Policy in July 2019, which addresses issues such as plagiarism, data manipulation, and harassment. In December 2019, the UGC made a two-credit course on ethics mandatory as part of undergraduate courses in India.

The Department of Justice arrested Texas A&M University (TAMU) engineering professor who allegedly conducted research for NASA hiding his affiliation and collaboration with a Chinese university and a Chinese-owned company for several years. He willingly accepted US funding and defrauded his university disregarding rules under NASA during his contract at TAMU.

Universities are being urged to block websites that sell essays, identify cheating "hot spots" and consider publishing data on breaches of academic integrity. As universities grapple with a rise in contract cheating – which involves students outsourcing assessments – Australia's higher education watchdog has unveiled new guidelines to tackle the issue. A recent survey by a University of South Australia associate professor who helped create the guidelines, found that 6 per cent of Australian students engaged in cheating.

Have you heard of 'predatory' publishers or journals? Such publishers or journals charge authors for publishing articles without having been peer-reviewed. Their number is growing. A list of potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers and journals can be found at Scholarly Open Access