Academic Fraud in the Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) for Faculty Promotion and Tenure

Since its emergence in 2022 through OpenAI, generative artificial Intelligence (GenAI) has represented a major technological breakthrough with the potential to revolutionize higher education systems. However, in addition to being a potentially helpful work tool, GenAI can also enable academic fraud. The purpose of this manuscript is to propose the foundations of a legal framework for addressing academic fraud in university faculty promotion and tenure that is facilitated by the use of GenAI. This manuscript begins with an introduction outlining how current GenAI capabilities could be used to engage in academic fraud. The manuscript then examines the underlying ethical systems in higher education that underpin decisions to utilize GenAI broadly, as well as more specifically in the creative process of scholarship. This discussion is followed by a section that explains the incentives to engage in academic fraud caused by national policies and university systems governing the promotion and tenure of faculty members in the United States (U.S.) and Spain/Europe. The legal framework at the end of this manuscript provides policymakers in government and university administration with interrelated concepts to guide the drafting of new policies that would govern the use of GenAI in academic scholarship. As stated in the concluding section, the authors have designed an empirical study to test the response to their proposed legal framework among faculty researchers, considering their systems of ethics and incentives that undergird temptations to engage in academic fraud. The authors present this manuscript as a primer for that future study.