Ghostwriters guaranteeing grades? The quality of online ghostwriting services available to tertiary students in Australia
Abstract
Ghostwriting is difficult to detect, it has the potential to be high quality, and universities do not currently have adequate policies in place to police it. Determining the quality of the ghostwriting services available to tertiary students is of vital importance because underestimating the potential for students to use these services to pass their courses affects universities’ ability to detect their use and counteract their prevalence. This study examines the service being advertised to students by the 30 top-ranked ghostwriting websites. The study examines the quality of the service being offered by purchasing 2 essays from 13 of these businesses, 1 undergraduate and 1 postgraduate. These essays were graded by three academics who believed they were grading real student papers. The results of the study are alarming because they imply that had these essays been submitted to a university, the majority of them would have passed without any plagiarism detected.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In research by Lines (2016), 26 assignments were purchased, none of which was identified as suspect by markers (they were not briefed to look for it specifically) and only 3 of which were flagged on Turnitin.
“In research by Lines (2016), p. 26 assignments were purchased, none of which was identified as suspect by markers (they were not briefed to look for it specifically) and only 3 of which were flagged on Turnitin.”
From Chatting and cheating: Ensuring academic integrity in the era of ChatGPT (2024) · cites this paper as Lines (2016)
Cites
In their own words: a qualitative study of the reasons Australian university students plagiarize
Devlin, M., & Gray, K. (2007) · Higher Education Research & Development · doi:10.1080/07294360701310805 · Cited by 268 · see citing works
Cheating goes hi-tech: online term paper mills
Campbell, C. R., Swift, C. O., & Denton, L. (2000) · Journal of Management Education · doi:10.1177/105256290002400605 · Cited by 43 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Chatting and Cheating. Ensuring academic integrity in the era of ChatGPT
Cotton, D., Cotton, P., & Shipway, J. R. (2023) · doi:10.35542/osf.io/mrz8h · Cited by 3,079 · see citing works
Chatting and cheating: Ensuring academic integrity in the era of ChatGPT
Cotton, D. R. E., Cotton, P. A., & Shipway, J. R. (2024) · Innovations in Education and Teaching International · doi:10.1080/14703297.2023.2190148 · Cited by 3,087 · see citing works
Contract cheating: a survey of australian university students
Bretag, T., Harper, R., Burton, M., Ellis, C., Newton, P., Rozenberg, P., Saddiqui, S., & van Haeringen, K. (2019) · Studies in Higher Education · doi:10.1080/03075079.2018.1462788 · Cited by 476 · see citing works
Contract cheating and assessment design: exploring the relationship
Bretag, T., Harper, R., Burton, M., Ellis, C., Newton, P., van Haeringen, K., Saddiqui, S., & Rozenberg, P. (2019) · Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education · doi:10.1080/02602938.2018.1527892 · Cited by 201 · see citing works
Draxler, F., Werner, A., Lehmann, F., Hoppe, M., Schmidt, A., Buschek, D., & Welsch, R. (2024) · ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction · doi:10.1145/3637875 · Cited by 186 · see citing works
Reducing plagiarism through academic misconduct education
Perkins, M., Gezgin, U. B., & Roe, J. (2020) · International Journal for Educational Integrity · doi:10.1007/s40979-020-00052-8 · Cited by 134 · see citing works
Rogerson, A. M. (2017) · International Journal for Educational Integrity · doi:10.1007/s40979-017-0021-6 · Cited by 93 · see citing works
- Authors
- Lines, L.
- Affiliations
- UNSW Canberra (AU)
- Corresponding author
- Lines, Lisa
- Venue
- Teaching in Higher Education
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2016-06-19
- Volume
- 21
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 889-914
- ISSN
- 1356-2517 (ISSN-L)
- 1470-1294
- OpenAlex
- W2464925945
- Cited by
- 100
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 13 · 2023: 18 · 2022: 14 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 11 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 9 · 2017: 9
- FWCI
- 20.44
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Teaching in Higher Education (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- University of New South Wales at Australian Defence Force Academy
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Academic integrity and plagiarism
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Doctoral Education Challenges and Solutions
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Spam and Phishing Detection
- Keywords
- academic integrity, plagiarism, academic dishonesty, essay quality, academic misconduct detection, tertiary students
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
