[15] By 1970 most universities in the United States had established honor codes for their student body and faculty members, although this concept is less prevalent elsewhere in the world.
Improvements in information technology have created challenges within academic integrity, especially with respect to increased plagiarism and use of poor-quality sources found on the internet.
[24] The popularization of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) apps in education prompted global reconsiderations of policies and procedures relating to plagiarism and other breaches of academic integrity.
Conversely, critics have drawn attention to the fact that "teaching and learning are interrupted because faculty, in an effort to control plagiarism and protect notions of intellectual capital, are forced to engage with the students as detectives rather than as teachers, advisors, or mentors.
The focus on controlling plagiarism among students is critiqued as unnecessarily legalistic and the rules more rigid than those necessarily accorded to intellectual property law (Marsh, 2004)".
[36]: 5 Similarly, contributions made from a societal perspective question or critique previously unexamined assumptions of the "inherent goodness, universality, and absoluteness of independence, originality, and authorship (Valentine, 2006).
Authors who write about the societal dimension such as Ede and Lundsford (2001) do not suggest the elimination of notions of individual authorship and the unconditional acceptance of copying and collaboration in its place.
Postsecondary education institutions are urged to step back from the mindless or fear-based ready adoption of the "turnitin culture" (Maruca, 2005) to allow for such question asking in the spirit of enhancing academic integrity and the teaching and learning environment.
Six core elements of academic integrity polices have been identified as: access, approach, responsibility, detail, support, and equity.
Policies should be accessible to administrators, staff, and students and should outline the responsibilities for reporting, investigation, and academic misconduct case management.
Experts from Latin America,[44][45] Africa,[46][47] Asia,[48][49] and the Middle East[50] [51] are making important contributions to the global discourse on academic integrity.