Kenya’s Commission for University Education has issued stringent new guidelines for the appointment and promotion of academic staff in a system that gives heavy emphasis to publication in reputable, peer-reviewed journals and discourages publication in so-called predatory journals. While the move is intended to raise academic standards, it has also raised concerns about the hurdles to publication facing many Kenyan academics.

Months after an academic librarian deleted lists of “predatory” journals and publishers from his blog, a website with derogatory comments about his academic qualifications and mental health remains online. A communications librarian at the University of Colorado at Denver, for years maintained lists of scholarly journals and publishers he deemed “predatory. The lists, while controversial, were a resource for many scholars wondering if the invitation to publish a paper or present at a conference sitting in their inbox was legitimate.

The authors who accused a website of selling their dissertations against their consent cannot demand the removal of the thesis from the platform as the sale does not constitute copyright infringement, intellectual property experts said. Many of the graduates, who said their dissertations are being sold without consent, added that the website is infringing their intellectual property rights and causing psychological and economic damages. However, unless the authors can prove that these copies are pirated, they cannot demand the shop owners to stop selling the copies.

The research ethics of China’s scientists has come under the spotlight after a major international publisher retracted 107 medical research papers by Chinese authors – the single largest number of retractions ever recorded – after discovering irregularities in the peer review process. The Springer Nature publishing company said the papers were published in the journal Tumor Biology between 2012 and 2016. “After a thorough investigation we have strong reason to believe that the peer review process was compromised,” the publisher said. The latest move by Springer constitutes the single largest withdrawal of academic papers, according to the Retraction Watch website which monitors academic fraud.

Technology, greed, a lack of clear rules and norms, hyper-competitiveness and a certain amount of corruption have resulted in confusion and anarchy in the world of scientific communication. Not too long ago, scientific publication was largely in the hands of university publishers and non-profit scientific societies, most of which were controlled by the academic community. The issues involved are complex – how to manage technology, accommodate the expansion of scientific production, rationalise peer review, break the monopoly of the multinationals and, of great importance, instil a sense of ethics and realistic expectations into the academic community itself.

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.

Dozens of academic titles have offered a sham scientist a place on their editorial board, according to an investigation by researchers, published in Nature. The authors of the paper conceived a sting operation and submitted a fake application for an editor position to 360 journals, including both legitimate titles and suspected predatory journals. Forty-eight titles accepted. The authors were increasingly disturbed by the number of invitations they received to become editors or to review for journals completely outside their field and they decided to examine the problem empirically.

The ministry of higher education and scientific research has sent a written notice to all university presidents, criticising them for non-compliance with a July 2016 ministerial decree which criminalised plagiarism, and urging them to deal with all irregularities in accordance with the rules. The instruction raises the possibility of past abuses which may have been overlooked by vice-chancellors, including the inappropriate appointment of individuals to examinations and theses adjudication boards. The letter constitutes an unprecedented move against a scourge that academics suggest is becoming “common practice” in universities.

The Department of Education is planning to introduce laws to prosecute “essay mill” companies who offer to write students’ assignments in exchange for money. The move is a response to mounting concern over the practice which allows students to circumvent their college’s plagiarism detection systems. The use of these services is not easily detected as software used by universities only detects where students have copied from previously published academic texts. He said the new guidelines would be developed in consultation with providers, students and other relevant parties, and would be informed by recent UK research and experience.

One of the most prolific scientists in an emerging area of cancer research involving what is sometimes called the “dark matter” of the human genome has parlayed his decades-long pursuit of cancer remedies into a research empire: He has received more than $86 million in federal grants as a principal investigator and, by his own count, more than 60 awards. However, over the last several years a tide of allegations have been made concerning data falsification and other scientific misconduct. Concerns about falsified data in the scientific literature run far deeper as cases of fraud can reverberate through whole fields of research.