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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.

Contributors offer their thoughts on the universities watchdog calling for a crackdown on essay plagiarism sites. They offer various solutions to this increasingly common issue, including making the offer of such services illegal, reducing the number of assessment tasks students are required to complete, putting the focus on classroom exams rather than essays, and enabling teachers to have a more accurate knowledge of student’s capabilities so that they are able to spot work that is not of that student’s usual standard.

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.

More than 100 Greek university students have been caught in a mass cheating scandal. The group at the University of Patras, most of them first-year students, submitted the same paperwork in four separate coursework exercises, the head of the business management department said. The university banned the 106 students from sitting the rest of their exams in September. According to an associate professor, of all the possible sanctions, this is the mildest. Greek universities are ranked among the lowest in the European Union, plagued by student protests, staffing nepotism and poor infrastructure.

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.

The scale of student misconduct in Ukraine has been exposed by a survey of undergraduates that found nearly half have paid bribes and almost all admitted to plagiarism and cheating on exams. Of 600 students surveyed at public universities in Lviv -- a city in the west of Ukraine seen as relatively uncorrupt -- 48 percent had paid bribes. Bribery was far more common for compulsory modules like physical education and workplace safety, and professional programs like business, law and medicine, it found.

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.

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.