Academic Ghostwriting Essay

INTRODUCTION
Academic dishonesty is a concern at all levels of education. Fundamentally when evaluating academic writing for integrity two attribution problems occur frequently. The first, plagiarism, is more well known, has been comprehensively addressed in literature, and has more established solutions. The second, academic ghostwriting, has received less attention and has not yet been systematically addressed. In fact the there are very few published research papers on the practice, and those that do exist many date from the past decade. On the face of it the two problems appear very similar, as both involve issues with the attribution of the work of others, but in practice they are quite different. In plagiarism one is taking the existing work of another person, using it without their permission, and passing it off as their own. In academic ghostwriting the individual is coordinating with someone else to complete the assignment and passing the off as their own. Walker and Townley perhaps best characterize the practice and its distinction from plagiarism as a “misattribution rather than lack of attribution”. Most recent efforts to combat academic ghostwriting apply the techniques developed for plagiarism. While these may work well for prevention and deterrence they do not translate well to the task of detecting academic ghostwriting. Moreover, attempts to focus on detection have largely …show more content…
We begin by establishing a few definitions and motivations, focusing on both why students resort to employing ghostwriters and why universities attempt to counteract the practice. This is followed by a review of related research into ghostwriting, where we address some of the current shortcomings. Then we introduce the topic of author profiling as a promising mechanism for detecting academic ghostwriting, and finally end with a discussion of necessary