Plans for a national body to tackle research fraud have been published by doctors and scientists concerned that foul play is undermining the good name of science. The Committee on Publication Ethics (Cope) agreed at a meeting in October that concerted action was needed.

A plagiarism scandal is putting at risk Australia's $2 billion education export industry. In fact, a plagiarism cover-up scandal involving 15 of the students' Malaysian classmates is threatening to damage Newcastle University's international reputation and its lucrative relationship with Asia.

The ministry of Higher education and research entrusted to the national Centre of scientific research (CNRS) a mission on scientific integrity. Scientific fraud is varied: biased manufacturing or forgery of results, biased interpretation or selection of data, alteration of curves or images, plagiarism, theft of ideas, financial profit-sharing's ... The increasing pressure which practices on the researchers (among which the career and the credits depend strictly on the quantity of articles and on produced results) tend to multiply the fraudulent practices.

This was the second annual Strategic Leaders Global Summit sponsored by the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS). Last year's meeting in Banff in Canada resulted in the "Banff Principles" to broadly guide international collaboration in graduate education; this year's summit focused on "best practices" specific to promoting scholarly integrity. Leaders in higher education agreed on issues and actions that have to lead to strengthen scholarly integrity because of the growing globalization of graduate education and research, and discussed on "best practices" to promote scholarly integrity.

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".