Our Story

The IPPHEAE project (Impact of Policies for Plagiarism in Higher Education across Europe) led by Coventry University, namely by dr Irene Glendinning, aimed to map plagiarism at higher education institutions in the European Union.
It identified huge gaps in institutional and national policies, but also many examples of good practice. And, more importantly, a willingness to share this practice and learn from others’ experiences.

The IPPHEAE project was concluded in 2013 by an international conference focused on plagiarism, its detection and prevention name Plagiarism Across Europe and Beyond. The conference was hosted by a project partner – the Mendel University and took place in Brno, Czechia.
This conference started the tradition of the European conferences on academic integrity and we refer to it as the first ENAI conference.

Mendel University in Brno decided to repeat the conference in two years, so the international conference Plagiarism Across Europe and Beyond 2015 took place again in Brno.
Conference gala dinner took place on a stemboat on Brno reservoir during a firework festival. And that was the moment and place, where the idea of an European network for academic integrity was formulated for the first time.

The group of enthusiastic people gathered 12 European partners to apply for an Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership project 3-year grant funded by the European Union. The project was called the European Network for Academic Integrity (ENAI) and aimed at creating resources and educational materials on academic integrity, namely the main outputs were the database of educational materials, glossary on academic integrity, guidelines on academic integrity and self-evaluation tools.

The international conference Plagiarism Across Europe and Beyond took place again in Brno in May 2017.
It was again hosted by the Mendel University in Brno and it was organized the ENAI Erasmus+ project conference. During this conference with the support of the ENAI Erasmus+ project, we have officially founded an independent legal body (NGO) named the European Network for Academic Integrity that establishes a sustainable network and conducts its activities.

In 2018, for the first time, the international conference Plagiarism Across Europe and Beyond left Brno and traveled to Turkey, where it took place in Ephesus hosted by the Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University.
This conference also changed the existing tradition and instead of the conference being held once per two years, it became an annual conference with an organiser selected by the ENAI Board two years in advance.

In 2019, the international conference Plagiarism Across Europe and Beyond took place in Vilnius, Lithuania hosted by the Mykolas Romeris University.
For the first time, the ENAI Award was awared, it was given to Emila Sercan from Romania for “her fearless, steady and unceasing fight against academic misconduct in Romania”. The impact of her activities as both journalist, author and academic exposed malpractice including nepotism and plagiarism in doctoral education.

In 2020, the Plagiarism Across Europe and Beyond was supposed to take place in Dubai, United Arab Emirates being hosted by the University of Wollongong in Duba as it was decided at the 2018 conference (the photo is from the announcing ceremony). Instead, it became the first virtual conference. The conference organisation team of University of Wollongong in Dubai did an incredible job to transform the event into a virtual conference within one month.
During the 2020 conference, new ENAI Board and Auditing Group were elected – for the first time by the ENAI Annual General Meeting.

In 2022, the Erasmus+ Facing Academic Threats Project (FAITH) focused on improving national and institutional policies for academic integrity in higher education. This is the first international project, where ENAI itself is involved as an partner.
An online platform, where anyone facing inappropriate threats relating to research or education may post their concerns in confidence and seek advice was established within the FAITH project. The Victim Support Portal was officially launched at the European Conference on Academic Integrity and Plagiarism hosted by the University of Porto in May 2022 in Porto, Portugal.