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KU Leuven is currently investigating some 20 papers from the period 1999 to 2013 that would contain fraudulent images. Two papers have recently been withdrawn, one has been officially corrected. The investigation of the Committee for Academic Integrity is in a final phase. The articles that are under discussion come from the biomedical sciences. Three Leuven professors are a co-author of several indicated papers. In many cases, this was done in collaboration with colleagues from foreign institutions.

The public has been raging in social networks throughout the weekend over the court ruling lifting a post-suspension from the head of a Kyiv-based medical university. Such cases are not uncommon in Ukraine when courts take the side of rectors, deans and professors who were not just involved in scandals and fights with government officials, but were caught red-handed in blatant corruption acts. Severe punishment for such an offense, including between five and ten years of imprisonment, does not seem to discourage bribe-takers, who all too often let off with no consequences.

A survey of British institutions reveals that few have taken concrete steps to stop the much-criticized misuse of research metrics in the evaluation of academics’ work. The results offer an early insight into global efforts to clamp down on such practices.
DORA calls for panels responsible for academic promotion and hiring to stop misusing metrics such as the journal impact factor — which measures the average number of citations accumulated by papers in a given journal over two years — as a way to assess individual researchers. It urges panels to assess the content of papers and quality of research instead.

Sexual harassment in universities is to be investigated by the National Union of Students, which is conducting the UK’s first survey of staff sexual misconduct in higher education. Students will be asked whether they have experienced or witnessed sexual misconduct by staff and about their experience of reporting this behaviour to their institution. The research project is being carried out by the NUS women’s campaign. Researchers will consider professional boundaries and examine what types of behaviour students are comfortable dealing with from higher education staff.

On September 24, 2017 the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant reported on an investigation into self-plagiarism (zelfplagiaat) that was conducted by a Nijmengen research group. The sociologist of science and his PhD student analysed 922 publications by Dutch researchers from recent years. In economics, 14 % of the papers contained text from previous publications of the author(s), in psychology the figure was 5 %. They even found a duplicate article republished with just one small change, and two highly similar articles by the same author in the same issue of a journal. They also found that authors who publish more papers are more likely to reuse text.

The Swedish organization in charge of reviewing research has judged that scandal-hit surgeon was guilty of scientific misconduct for misleadingly describing synthetic trachea operations as successful in a series of research articles. In 2014, four doctors at Stockholm's Karolinska University Hospital reported him to the then president of the Karolinska Institute (KI) for allegedly distorting the facts about his operations with artificial tracheas when presenting them in scientific journals. The articles were subsequently reviewed in 2015 by Uppsala University surgical sciences professor, who concluded that Macchiarini was guilty of research misconduct, but KI's overall assessment was to clear him and the co-authors.

Ways in which students cheat are either ingenious or surprisingly obvious. Why do students cheat, and risk having to retake a module, having their degree classification lowered, or even being kicked out of university? There are many reasons – including financial pressure, poor organisational skills and panic – sometimes among young people who should never have gone to university in the first place or, at the very least, who should have had more support structures in place when they started.