Chapter 12 Tactics of Scholarly Abuses Brian Martin Abstract Scholarly abuse takes many forms, including fraud, plagiarism, exploita- tion, exaggeration of credentials, and blocking others’ submissions and appoint- ments. To better understand how such abuses continue, it is useful to look at tactics used by perpetrators to hide or legitimise their behaviours. For actions that are widely stigmatised, such as plagiarism, the most common tactic is cover-up. To challenge these forms of abuse, the tactic of exposure is often effective, and most effective when done by those with higher status. A different dynamic occurs with problematic behaviours that have become institutionalised, such as gift authorship and exaggerated claims in grant applications. Several additional techniques are commonly involved. One is positive framing, so that the actions are seen as normal and complaining about them deviant. Another is to set up official channels that give only an appearance of ensuring proper behaviour. A tactics analysis offers insight into how abuses are carried out and defended, points to ways to challenge them, and shows how certain questionable behaviours can become so normalised that they are seldom even called abuses. Keywords Fraud · Plagiarism · Exploitation · Abuse · Outrage · Censorship · Intimidation · Discrediting · Conflict · Bias Introduction Discussions of academic integrity most often focus on behaviour by students, especially plagiarism in assignments and cheating on exams. Student honesty is an important topic, but problematical behaviours by scholars are neglected by comparison. Even for scholars, most attention is on plagiarism and fraud. Again, these are important but do not exhaust the number of questionable behaviours, including B. Martin (✉) University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia e-mail: bmartin@uow.edu.au © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. J. Curtis (ed.), Academic Integrity in the Social Sciences, Ethics and Integrity in Educational Contexts 6, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43292-7_12 185