Perceptions, Prevalence, and Institutional Responses to Fraudulent Practices in Scholarly Communication Among Researchers in Nigeria

Scholarly communication depends on trust, originality, and ethical accountability. However, fraudulent practices, including plagiarism, predatory publishing, inappropriate authorship, citation manipulation, and data falsification, pose systemic threats to research credibility, particularly in developing research environments with limited oversight capacity. Grounded in Ethical Climate Theory and Institutional Theory, this study adopted an explanatory mixed-methods design combining quantitative surveys and qualitative thematic analysis. Data were collected through a semi-structured online questionnaire. Predatory publishing, plagiarism, inappropriate authorship, and citation manipulation emerged as the most dominant and prevalent forms of fraud. Key structural drivers include publication pressure, weak enforcement, inadequate ethics training, and cultural normalization of unethical behaviors. The study confirms a significant association between academic rank and fraudulent engagement, discipline and prevalence and gender and engagement. Findings suggest that fraudulent practices are structurally embedded within academic evaluation systems, and that technological detection tools alone are insufficient without systemic reforms addressing incentive structures and institutional culture.