The number of suspected cheating and plagiarism cases is on the rise in Finland, the National Advisory Board on Research Ethics in Finland has found.
The number of requests from universities asking for the board to investigate suspected fraud has risen to 13 in 2011 from seven in 2011.
In 2011, three of the cases were seen as violating ethical standards, two with plagiarism and one in misinterpretation of research findings.
Sanna Kaisa Spoof, general secretary of the board, says the trend can be seen on both national and international level. “The reason for this lies both in increased academic competition and in the development of better plagiarism detection,” she says.
The advisory board is currently revising its ethical guidelines that were last updated in 2002.