🐈
» Groups » Writers & Translators » Forum » Re: "Academic" Writers...
Page options
datasciencewonk
Community Member

"Academic" Writers...

So, I came across an FL who appears to specialize in writing others' academic papers for them. 

 

In my mind, as a former teacher/college instructor, anytime someone writes your school papers it's academic fraud.

 

When does "academic writing" not fall into that classification?

 

I ask because I may be overgeneralizing and automatically conflating ALL academic writing with fraud. Other writers and teachers might see a differentiation that I'm not considering. 

 

 

 

 

ACCEPTED SOLUTION

I will chime in, here.  As you may note, academic fraud is a real bête noire for me.

 

However, here are at least two examples of legitimate academic writing:

 

(1) Along the lines of what Douglas Michael has noted:  writing for an academic journal (scientific, medical).  This is acceptable, as long as it is clear that the work in question has been ghostwritten, and is not claimed as the direct intellectual output of the official "author."

 

(2) Writing for purposes of describing academic pursuits--for example, writing curricula, lesson plans, rubrics, etc. Again, this is acceptable only insofar as one is not doing this so that a teacher or administrator can claim this as his or her original work.

View solution in original post

29 REPLIES 29
mtngigi
Community Member


@Kat C wrote:

So, I came across an FL who appears to specialize in writing others' academic papers for them. 

 

In my mind, as a former teacher/college instructor, anytime someone writes your school papers it's academic fraud.

 

When does "academic writing" not fall into that classification?

 

I ask because I may be overgeneralizing and automatically conflating ALL academic writing with fraud. Other writers and teachers might see a differentiation that I'm not considering.


Hopefully someone from Upwork will answer that question. Even though I'm not in that category ... it makes me wonder (and it makes me mad). Maybe it doesn't matter to Upwork, because after all, they're profiting from it.


@Virginia F wrote:

Hopefully someone from Upwork will answer that question. Even though I'm not in that category ... it makes me wonder (and it makes me mad). Maybe it doesn't matter to Upwork, because after all, they're profiting from it.


Ach! God forbid Upwork should try to answer that question! I'll start with an example from my job history.

 

I was hired to write what was essentially a promotional piece for a medical device. It was not a sales brochure for patients. It was aimed at the medical professionals who would help fit the device and educate patients on its use, who were themselves clinicians. They might also advise the physician prescriber on the device's suitability for a specific patient. Consequently, the piece also had to pass scrutiny by those prescribers. The writing required analysis of the client's market research, and familiarity with not just the device, but with the condition it was intended to treat and with competing treatment options, including their comparative benefits and drawbacks. All such information required citations of peer-reviewed or other professional literature.

 

No academic institution was harmed—or indeed, remotely involved—in the production or consumption of this piece. Yet it required research, analysis, and verification comparable to that required by an academic paper. From the client's point of view, it required an academic(-style) writer.

I remark in passing that ghostwriting occurs in the field of professional clinical research. Controversies over it usually focus on whether given articles, including their analyses, are written by the funders of the research, e.g. pharmaceutical companies using the peer-review process for marketing purposes.

Two writers I know, persons of stringent ethics and exemplary integrity, have had long-term collaborations with researchers who are brilliant in their field. One researcher was simply too busy to write. The other research team couldn't string two clauses into a sentence to save their lives.

 

Best,

Michael

I will chime in, here.  As you may note, academic fraud is a real bête noire for me.

 

However, here are at least two examples of legitimate academic writing:

 

(1) Along the lines of what Douglas Michael has noted:  writing for an academic journal (scientific, medical).  This is acceptable, as long as it is clear that the work in question has been ghostwritten, and is not claimed as the direct intellectual output of the official "author."

 

(2) Writing for purposes of describing academic pursuits--for example, writing curricula, lesson plans, rubrics, etc. Again, this is acceptable only insofar as one is not doing this so that a teacher or administrator can claim this as his or her original work.

There is an enormous difference in writing a dissertation for some panicked/lazy student who shouldn't even have a first degree and collaborating with a genuine academic who needs help with research, writing and editing.

 

There is also (generally) an enormous difference in rates and delivery time. The panicked student wants a 30,OOO word dissertation, researched, written and proofread in ten days (max.) for a fee of about $30, and it always seems to come with the rider, "I will provide the reading matter".

 

(And slightly off topic, there is also the post grad. who has written their 30,000-word dissertation and wants it proofread, correctly formatted, and all the references cross-checked for $30 with a three-day turnaround. It always amazes me that someone who has spent some time on their thesis should have such little respect for their work when it comes to getting it professionally (operative word) proofread.)

datasciencewonk
Community Member

Thank you, one and all, for further defining (and refining) the difference between legitimate academic writing versus academic fraud. 

 

I wish I could mark all of the responses thus far as the solution. 

 

 

I've found that a number of people use the term 'academic writing' to mean they want all sources correctly referenced and cited within the piece.

 

I've written history pieces like that.


@Kim F wrote:

I've found that a number of people use the term 'academic writing' to mean they want all sources correctly referenced and cited within the piece.

 

I've written history pieces like that.


 Hi Kim!

 

I'd refer to that as academic editing -- and is one the primary functions I offer as an academic editor.

 

Indeed, I removed academic writing from my profile some time ago as I was tired of being besieged with outright and covert demands to write others Uni papers for them. 

 

However, it still occurs with great frequency. 

No, I don't mean checking they're correctly formatted, all present and correct - I mean supplying them in the first place in a piece of original writing 🙂 

Supplying quotes for the original author to embed themselves isn't "writing" to me. You're merely researching.

 

But, if you refer to what both Janean and Douglas Michael wrote, depending on the schematics of who is writing an academic paper for a journal, it isn't considered academic fraud (again referring to the prior posts on the matter).

 

Meanwhile, I clearly delineate that if you're embedding the quotes in a Uni paper for a student -- meaning you're writing portions of their paper --  I'd consider that academic fraud and report it. 

 

But, what I MEAN by editing is formatting the quotes and creating the citation to match a style guide. Again, I do that frequently for clients. 

 

 

> Supplying quotes for the original author to embed themselves isn't "writing" to me. You're merely researching.

 

That wasn't what I said. OK - I'll bow out. I have a book to 'merely' research.

 

However, despite your disbelief, I do write original work and I do include sources and references. Hence why I said 'original' writing. (I actually have quite good credentials in a couple of niche areas.) And some people class that as academic writing.

 

The only time I've written a paper for a uni student was when I was that uni student. 


@Kim F wrote:

> Supplying quotes for the original author to embed themselves isn't "writing" to me. You're merely researching.

 

That wasn't what I said. OK - I'll bow out. I have a book to 'merely' research.

 

However, despite your disbelief, I do write original work and I do include sources and references. Hence why I said 'original' writing. (I actually have quite good credentials in a couple of niche areas.) And some people class that as academic writing.

 

The only time I've written a paper for a uni student was when I was that uni student. 


 Kim,

 

I was specifically speaking about academic writing such as Uni papers for other people to turn into their Profs at school -- meaning the academic writer is writing the paper FOR that student. Not books, not editing, etc.

 

Many laypeople classify things on basic features of writing (such as researching...which all good writers should do). It doesn't make that classification correct. The same goes for editing. Neither does a misclassification prohibit anyone from doing the work per se. 

 

No one is questioning your credentials (that's your underlying schema and no one else's in this thread).

 

 

njdeyo
Community Member

Hi, Kim. I include "academic writing" among my skills but never (ever) do student work. In my case, it refers more to the style of writing used, which I provide to professionals who are interested in what's going on in their field.

r_dahling
Community Member

You're not the only one Kat - I was the Academic Writing Coordinator at a University in Beijing for six years and I had to design assignments that couldn't be simply handed off to ghost-writers on sites like this - and of course, whenever I had concerns that students weren't doing their own writing, I'd call them in and have a discussion with them about their papers.

 

Of course, I also had students of mine who went on to become ghost-writers for Chinese students studying abroad (and at entirely abysmal rates as well), but the papers produced were probably flagged by the institutions in question (the Chinese companies hiring the writers were not going to fork out the money to get a subscription to Turnitin or other anti-plagiarism software commonly used by Unis).

 

At any rate, yes, it bothers me greatly to see people doing this and for sites like Upwork and Freelancer.com to allow these; there ARE ways to adjust the system for this when signing up for a project, but its unlikely that adjustments will be made. It's bad enough that Undergraduate degrees are being devalued because Chinese Universities give everyone a free ride and pass everyone that gets through 4 years automatically; we don't need it devalued further by lazy students with more money than intelligence, diligence/dicipline, and integrity.

Since you're new on Upwork...I'm curious to see if you receive a slew of "academic" writing invites couched in the form of "coaching" (meaning they SAY they want coaching from you, but that's not the intent).

 

Not that you'll take them. Whenever I've had academic writing or anything to do with mentioning "academic" on my profile, the "academic writing" jobs came out of the woodwork. Frustrating. 

Not at this point Kat, no. In fact, I've only been approached by one or two persons without bidding, and one of them "hired" me for a job without giving me a project (which I didn't do) and the other one wanted me to write a review for a product on Amazon.ca - which I refused to do and then reported the product and seller to Amazon Customer Service (does that make me a bad person? Smiley Very Happy). I generally report projects that cross the line into the realm of plagiarism/collusion or violate website ToS when I see them here though.

 

I'm also on Freelancer.com and I find they have more issues with this than Upwork at this point.

 

This is an interesting discussion.  I too am new to Upwork and I list “Academic Writing” in my profile because I think of it as covering a host of skills like research, writing, proofreading/editing, guidance for study design, etc. It may not be the best descriptor of the service I can offer, but it is what clients search on.  My first job came about because of that listed skill and it had nothing to do with “academic” writing. The job was/is for writing biographies on a website.  I have to other interviews in-progress that have little to do with “academic” writing, but they are writing jobs with an academic process.  I feel like they want an “academic” to do their writing.

 

I have no desire to write dissertations for grad students (one was enough!) and no desire to write anyone else’s graded research papers.    

 

I’m curious where you would classify things like IRB protocol writing for studies, writing consent forms for academic studies, surveys for academic studies, recruitment statements for academic studies, etc.  I would never hire someone to do this for me, but I have been hired within the university to perform these tasks for groups who do not usually work with human subjects. I’ve also been hired within the university to write the human subjects portion of grant proposals.  So again, maybe it is not” academic writing,” but a person with an academic background looking for help may not know what else to call it.  I’m not even sure what I would call it. 

 

I’ve had only one invite to write an academic paper and that was like “write 10 pages in 24 hours on a topic you know nothing about for pennies.” 

 

Right now I have a bigger problem with graduate students (I assume) who are farming out their statistical analyses for their dissertations/thesis.  I feel that this is also crossing the line.  It’s one thing to ask for advice on which analysis to run or ask how to perform the analysis in SPSS, but there many postings for running all of the analyses in the study.  By the time you are to that point, you should know how to do that.  And you should WANT to handle your own data. 

 

Michelle


Michelle S wrote:  

 

I’m curious where you would classify things like IRB protocol writing for studies, writing consent forms for academic studies, surveys for academic studies, recruitment statements for academic studies, etc.  I would never hire someone to do this for me, but I have been hired within the university to perform these tasks for groups who do not usually work with human subjects. I’ve also been hired within the university to write the human subjects portion of grant proposals....

While on the one hand I would be concerned about a human-subjects researcher who accepted second-hand information on the IRB protocol of their governing institution, I would feel as comfortable writing these as I would being hired to do the same by that institution. In your case, that would seem to be an acceptable degree of comfort, accompanied by your university's "blessing" on ethical issues. In my case, despite being NIH-certified in the ethics of human-subject research, I would not be comfortable; I simply lack the experience and competence to be sure I'd be doing flawless work in a sensitive area. 

 

Right now I have a bigger problem with graduate students (I assume) who are farming out their statistical analyses for their dissertations/thesis.  I feel that this is also crossing the line.  It’s one thing to ask for advice on which analysis to run or ask how to perform the analysis in SPSS, but there many postings for running all of the analyses in the study.  By the time you are to that point, you should know how to do that.  And you should WANT to handle your own data. 

 

Again, this is outside my area of competence, though I occasionally help interpret clinical research statistics. While I can imagine a professional research team depending on particular expertise to run the stats analysis, I would expect them to be enough in command of their data to be able to question and verify any analysis. As for students: Yes, how they get to the point of being confident in having another party do their analysis is by doing it themselves, and taking the lumps when they get it wrong. And I can't imagine how any student can believe it to be responsible (or in any way desirable) to farm out a literature review.


 

Thanks for the thoughtful reply!

 

I would also not feel comfortable writing for NIH studies...those are WAY outside of my area of expertise.  However, I would feel comfortable helping someone from a computer science discipline through the process of understanding human-subject testing for interfaces or other things computer science-y folk do. In fact if I was hired to help with research I would feel obligated to make sure that the researchers were aware "rules" of using people in their reserach (because some are not aware).  However,  I'm not the PI on the study and I would assume they would still have to jump through all the hoops required by their university (CITI human subjects training, full IRB review if there were children or deception involved, etc.).  I am not the reviewer so it is up to the researcher's university to review the study and it is up to the researcher to adhere to the protocol or answer to the university’s board of ethics.  If it is an army grant, the army also has its own IRB you also have to answer to.  But I see your point, and maybe it IS different to be hired as part of a research team as a freelancer on this board than it is to be hired as the human subjects expert on a local research team.

 

That said, this is probably far outside the question and intent of the original poster. 

 

-Michelle


@Michelle S wrote:

 

That said, this is probably far outside the question and intent of the original poster. 

 

-Michelle


Quite possibly, although I think such questions and discussions may clarify for any eavesdroppers that those of us who call ourselves academic writers are far from unfamiliar with the ethical landmines that surround the field, and that we have both established canons and our own values to guide us in traversing them.


@Michelle S wrote:

Thanks for the thoughtful reply!

 

I would also not feel comfortable writing for NIH studies...those are WAY outside of my area of expertise.  However, I would feel comfortable helping someone from a computer science discipline through the process of understanding human-subject testing for interfaces or other things computer science-y folk do. In fact if I was hired to help with research I would feel obligated to make sure that the researchers were aware "rules" of using people in their reserach (because some are not aware).  However,  I'm not the PI on the study and I would assume they would still have to jump through all the hoops required by their university (CITI human subjects training, full IRB review if there were children or deception involved, etc.).  I am not the reviewer so it is up to the researcher's university to review the study and it is up to the researcher to adhere to the protocol or answer to the university’s board of ethics.  If it is an army grant, the army also has its own IRB you also have to answer to.  But I see your point, and maybe it IS different to be hired as part of a research team as a freelancer on this board than it is to be hired as the human subjects expert on a local research team.

 

That said, this is probably far outside the question and intent of the original poster. 

 

-Michelle



Nope. I find that absolutely relevant to understanding the classification of legit academic writing versus plagiarism. 

 

 

katsza
Community Member

I am new to the online 'freelance site' world. I have had employment referred to me or fallen into my lap, but am now going to have a go at increasing my experience and earning potential. I started with Fiverr through a friend's recommendation, filled out info for 5 "gigs", one for assisting with research in anthropology, listed exactly what would be included & stipulated I would not write a client's paper, article etc. for them. The first request I received? A quote on writing a 15 page ethnography for someone who had not done ANY of the leg work. Arrrgh, so very frustrating. I am hoping Upwork can help me realize my goals. So far the experience seems a bit more professional.

Keep well,

Kathy

ahlgrimm-joerg
Community Member

Not certain if anybody is still interested in this thread, but I give it a go anyway.

 

'Academic Writing' and 'Scientific Writing' are different categories. Well, you possibly could say, 'Academic Writing' is the (very little) sister of 'Scientific Writing'.

 

'Academic Writing' is institutional itself, always related to respective educational facilities, and mostly for curricula purposes. In this sense, 'Academic Writing' for others is not immoral, but a fraud by everybody involved (client and ghostwriter).

 

An 'Academic Writer' on the other side, is someone with a regarding education and experience in the field (e.g. publishing scientific articles on the results of research from university projects). There is nothing wrong with hiring an 'Academic Writer' for writing tasks of any kind, in fact, tangible competencies in this field will likely mean higher quality and profound writing skills.

 

From the point of the freelancer, I suggest including 'Academic Writing' to your skills when having experience with research papers outside of the common course scheme.

 

I hope this made sense. Let me know what you think.

Have a great time freelancing!!!

 

Best,

Joerg


@Joerg A wrote:

Not certain if anybody is still interested in this thread, but I give it a go anyway.

 

'Academic Writing' and 'Scientific Writing' are different categories. Well, you possibly could say, 'Academic Writing' is the (very little) sister of 'Scientific Writing'.

 

'Academic Writing' is institutional itself, always related to respective educational facilities, and mostly for curricula purposes. In this sense, 'Academic Writing' for others is not immoral, but a fraud by everybody involved (client and ghostwriter).

 

An 'Academic Writer' on the other side, is someone with a regarding education and experience in the field (e.g. publishing scientific articles on the results of research from university projects). There is nothing wrong with hiring an 'Academic Writer' for writing tasks of any kind, in fact, tangible competencies in this field will likely mean higher quality and profound writing skills.

 

From the point of the freelancer, I suggest including 'Academic Writing' to your skills when having experience with research papers outside of the common course scheme.

 

I hope this made sense. Let me know what you think.

Have a great time freelancing!!!

 

Best,

Joerg


The trouble is, that "academic writing" (which also covers scientific writing) has come to convey a second meaning in the internet world and will hide the true purpose of many "clients" who are looking to have their course work to be written for them. (Much like "eroticism", that is often used as a term to whitewash outright pornography.)

 

I came across an "academic writing" job today that I reported and I think has been removed, but among the topics of the work to be done was this:

 

 "What do you most value? What do you want your students to value most? What ethical principles will guide you?"

 

I felt like crying.

🙂 Good to know, that future education is safe...

Joerg, based solely on your last line - I like you.  🙂

I'm opening this thread again - one of many on the same topic. 

 

When is Upwork going to to do something about blatant academic fraud - particularly those essay mills who come to Upwork to find freelancers whose ethics are non-existent?

 

In the last couple of days in my job feed, I have seen the same job posted for a course work asssignment, which to my certain knowledge has been flagged at least twice  and certainly by me. This job and the client's other job also for course work was awarded. 

 

I was thanked for flagging and told that "action has been taken" which is patently untrue. 

 

This is the time of year when academic cheating is rampant and Upwork should be a little more vigilant. It is so shaming to think that I am part of a set-up that keeps turning a blind eye to people who not only subscribe to this sort of fraud, but who have no notion of the difference between wrong and right.  

 

Hi Nichola,

Just to confirm that not all taken actions are public. Thank you for flagging this type of jobs, we appreciate your help. 

~ Goran
Upwork


@Goran V wrote:

Hi Nichola,

Just to confirm that not all taken actions are public. Thank you for flagging this type of jobs, we appreciate your help. 

 

___________________________________________________________


 Goran,

I haven't the faintest idea what this is supposed to mean. The job in question is  blatant academic fraud. There is the slightest difference between the first time  this was posted  and the second. The first time, the "client" posted a pdf of what was clearly a course assignment. The second time that pdf (of which I have a copy) was not present. 

 

If you had "appreciated my help", you would also have helped everyone who works on this platform understand what this means: 

  • Seeking, offering, or endorsing any services that violate the academic policies of any educational institution;

Hi Nichola, 


I'm sorry if Goran's response may have confused you. He means that not all actions taken on a job post, or client can be shared to the Community, especially if these actions are based on a ToS violation. 

I wanted to check if you are still seeing the job posts you have mentioned on your reply? If so, will you please send the links to me via a private message so that I can reconfirm if actions have been taken on them. 

Thank you!


~ Avery
Upwork