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This study examined the causes of cheating and plagiarism in higher education from a global perspective and developed strategies for reducing these behaviours.

The study followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis reporting guidelines to select 26 research articles published between 2016 and 2024.

Cheating and plagiarism are caused by laziness, time constraints, lack of confidence, difficult exams, excessive assignments, fear of poor grades, and motivation to achieve higher grades. However, students are often unaware of the effects these behaviours can have on their academic and professional careers. Therefore, in addition to regularly updating academic honour codes following national laws and regulations, higher education institutions need to introduce training programmes and workshops to raise students’ awareness of the negative consequences of cheating and plagiarism, enhance their writing skills, and promote positive attitudes.

The study findings may assist policymakers and stakeholders in higher education institutions in deciding whether to implement academic integrity education programmes and modify honour codes following government laws and regulations. Additionally, this study contributes to the existing literature on cheating and plagiarism and will help higher education institutions address the root causes of these behaviours.

This study contributes valuable insights to the literature on cheating and plagiarism.

This study aimed to review the different types of academic integrity violations reported in the literature between 2013 and 2023. Moreover, this study investigated the causes of these violations and recommends approaches and measures that can be implemented to minimise academic integrity violations in the era of artificial intelligence (AI).

We reviewed 27 articles published between 2013 and 2023 from the Scopus database. We followed the reporting guidelines of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses to select, filter, and report relevant studies that met the research objectives.

The study revealed that various individual, institutional, social, cultural, and technological factors contribute to academic integrity violations. To minimise this issue, higher education institutions should offer brief academic integrity tutorial courses to all first-year students to enhance their knowledge of academic integrity. Moreover, academic honour codes should be regularly reviewed and updated, and technological tools should be implemented to detect AI-generated third-party assignments submitted by students. Furthermore, higher education institutions should frequently conduct training and workshops to educate students on the consequences of violating academic integrity.

This study contributes to existing literature. It highlights the wider societal implications of academic integrity violations such as their influence on workforce readiness and ethical standards in professional environments.