The problem of academic dishonesty is a key challenge in many rankings-chasing Asian universities.
Practices of stealing works of students and junior colleagues are often embedded in power hierarchies of Asian cultures, where the culture of stealing is normalized into notions of academic position.
Consider for instance a full professor that owns a laboratory and critical equipment infrastructure in the laboratory. He then expects every Assistant Professor using the equipment to include him as an author.
Consider another instance of an Associate Professor in Quantum Physics collaborating on a project with an Assistant Professor [based on an idea developed by the Assistant Professor] take the key ideas framing the project and apply them to a different context to publish a first-authored journal article where she claims ownership of the key ideas.
Consider another instance of an Assistant Professor in Biomedicine working on a collaborative grant with a Full Professor and doing most of the writing. The Full Professor then takes those ideas and publishes a paper with his graduate students, without including the Assistant Professor and without attributing the ideas to the Assistant Professor. It turns out much of what the Assistant Professor wrote found its way into the paper.
Consider an Associate Professor in Public Health plagiarizing the work of a collaborator on a grant to publish a paper on the basis of the collaborator's work without citing the collaborator. Now consider that the same Associate Professor including the Assistant Deans and Dean of the College on the plagiarized paper.
Consider a Dean of Humanities including himself as a co-author on a plagiarized paper.
Consider an Associate Professor applying for a grant based on the thesis of a student without citing the thesis or referring to the work of the student.
Consider a Director of Research included as a co-author on a series of publications where the data were doctored up. When the Director of Research is pressed for a response, she states that she did not have anything to do with the papers (although listed as a co-author). This Director is also ironically in-charge of implementing research ethics at the University.
Consider a Professor of Digital Cultures plagiarizing the work of her doctoral student, even as she fails the doctoral student in her dissertation.
These behaviors of stealing are often normalized in Asian cultures because of Asian norms of academic relationships that are steeped in power inequalities and power hierarchies. Stealing from a junior academic is legitimized as an opportunity for the junior academic to pay her/his dues.
Asian professors often feel emboldened to exploit junior colleagues and graduate students because power inequities are normalized in academic relationships, with cultural expectations of power defining the terrains of the relationship.
The cultures of Asian hierarchy translate into students and Assistant Professors often having no access to structures for reporting an incidence of plagiarism.
Tight knit Asian cultures often come together around power to protect power; this translates into Deans, Vice Provosts and the Provost often working together to protect each other and protect another of their senior colleagues.
Reputation and image must be protected and face must be saved; abusive behaviors of senior faculty are protected under the norms of face-saving.
Structures of research ethics and integrity don't mean much as powerful university managers and Professors close in on rank to protect one of their own.
Situated at the bottom of the power hierarchy, students and Assistant Professors are often left without any accessible channels for justice. If a student complains, she is made to pay the price for having broken the unstated normative code of power. Consider the number of instances of doctoral students who had to quit their dissertation work mid-way because they complained about the dissertation advisor stealing their work. Consider MA students being denied their degree for questioning the University. Consider students being threatened by University managers to withdraw their complaint if they would like to receive their degree.
The abuse of Assistant Professors and students is exacerbated by the rankings games that push Professors to place their work in globally recognized journals.
As Asian universities climb in global rankings, their research practices ought to be held accountable to global standards of research ethics. Global professional bodies ought to do more detailed work of evaluation to hold Asian universities accountable.