What can be observed about academic writing contract cheating requests and the providers behind them on a popular freelancing website? This presentation reviews the contents of a large data set of requests for academic work collected between August 2017 and September 2019.

1. Academic Ghost Writing and Contract Cheating
Provision Observed on a Freelancing Website
Dr Thomas Lancaster and Benjamin Dent
Imperial College London
European Conference on Academic Integrity and Plagiarism 2021
#ECAIP2021 #contractcheating

2. Background

3. The Research Team – Imperial College London
Dr Thomas Lancaster
Senior Teaching Fellow in Computing
http://thomaslancaster.co.uk
Twitter: @DrLancaster
Benjamin Dent
Final year BEng Computing student
https://www.bjmdent.com
Twitter: @indentcompsci
Research supported by Imperial College London’s
Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme (UROP).
Slide archive available at:
http://www.slideshare.net/ThomasLancaster

4. Quiz Time
Who are these people and
what connects them?

6. Birmingham Post
10 June 2021

7. 15 Years Ago
The First Study of Contract Cheating

8. The Current Site – Freelancer.com
Data from Freelancer.com has been examined before in
relation to contract cheating, but not for a few years.

9. Our Question
How is
Freelancer.com being
used to provide
“academic writing”
services?

10. The Research Study

11. Data Set Formation
Freelancer.com projects tagged with
the terms “academic writing”, “essay
writing” or both
Projects posted between 7 August
2017* and 9 September 2019
* These new tags were introduced on Freelancer.com on 7 August 2017

12. Data Set Details
• 4,353 projects identified including one or both tags
• 3,843* of these projects (88.3%) considered to be
contract cheating requests
• These projects received an average of 27.61 bids each
from providers
• 696 projects showed the final price paid in USD
* Based on a logistic regression machine learning model trained on
738 projects, which correctly classified 85.6% of these

13. A Few Requests
Write a small Autobiography
I need about 500 words written about my
hopes and dreams.
I am a 23 year old Entrepreneur in America,
studying Human-Computer Interaction Design.
Business Research Assignment
I have a Uni assignment ( Besuness Research paper ) to
be written about 2000-2500 words by Saturday.
We have 11 topics to choose from and will provide the list
of topic and assignment guideline at request. Most
important of all is i have to submit the assignment online
so plagiarism could be a big issue if not written properly.
Write a thesis report on infectious diseases and impact
on public health
I need someone to write a non credit thesis report on
infectious diseases and their impact on public health
essay development
essay or less describing educational plans as
they relate to my career objectives & why you
feel a scholarship will help you achieve these
goals.
89 bids, average bid $49.80 USD
21 bids, average bid $21.75 USD
9 bids, average bid $102.77 AUD, paid $111 USD ($87.55 USD)
32 bids, average bid $38.76 USD, paid $15 USD

14. Contract Cheating Requests Per Week

15. Country of Request (N=3,843)
Country Number of Requests Percentage
India 549 14.29%
United States 511 13.30%
United Kingdom 491 12.78%
Australia 283 7.36%
Pakistan 271 7.05%
• Kenya was at position 13 (64 requests, 1.67%)
• 46 different countries had made 10 requests or more
• Only one request was found from Moldova

16. Country of Bid Winner (N=1,231)
Country Number of Winning Bids Percentage
Kenya 380 30.87%
Pakistan 258 20.96%
India 123 9.99%
United Kingdom 101 8.20%
United States 74 6.01%
• Details of the winning bid is now hidden in many cases
• These five countries alone covered 76.0% of all wins

17. Financial Considerations
• 696 projects showed the final price paid (in USD currency)
• The average price point was $71.53 USD per project
• Assuming consistency across all 4,353 projects, this
represents $132,354 USD of contract cheating business
going through Freelancer.com each year
• 65 projects were paid in Euros. The average final price
paid for these was 83.62 Euros ($102 USD by May 2021
exchange rates)

18. Case Studies

19. Word Cloud – Project Titles

20. Disciplines in
Project Titles
Discipline Count
Business 124
Management 119
English 105
Marketing 67
Literature 51
Science 50
Design 48
Law 48
Engineering 48
Finance 47
Psychology 29
Health 28
History 26
Medical 24
Economics 22
• Analysis based solely on identifying
keywords within project titles (not
examining content)
• It may be possible to use these discipline
words in other context
• Disciplines made up of multiple words do
not appear

21. Discipline Notes
Highest paying discipline is “Medical”
(based on 7 projects with final USD prices, average price $278.57 USD)
Lowest paying discipline is “Law”
(based on 6 projects with final USD prices, average price $31.67 USD)
Most competitive discipline is “Literature”
Average 46.21 bids received for projects listed in USD (33 projects)
Average final amount paid $70.08 USD (based on 12 projects with final USD prices)

22. More About “Medical”
Average rather inflated by
two projects that went for
$750 USD each

23. Medical Project #1

24. Medical Project #2

25. Other Medical Projects
Project Price Information
prepare PowerPoint medical lecture
this is a PowerPoint lecture, in public medicine which hold the topic of (health determinants (biological,
environmental, social, economic, political,etc);
scientific with recent references.
16 bids
Paid $85 USD
Medical school secondary applications
I need help writing good mini-essay responses to medical school secondary application questions.
Some examples of these include: Tell us something you are passionate about and why. Do not exceed
1500 characters (about 250 words), The College of Medicine values its culture, curriculum, and the
community it serves. Which aspect(s) do you value the most? (required, 350 words max).
8 bids
Average bid $28.62 USD
(final price unknown)
ISO - Medical Tutor or similar who can write 100 word paragraph RATIONALE for multiple
choice questions.
I have around 4 subjects, each with around 40 multiple choice questions!
I expect you to double check the answers, write a very thorough rationale of why is the answer correct
and why the others are not and how could the question be change to make them correct...
I also expect impecable grammar. Not even 1 mistake. Language:English
48 bids
Paid $250 USD
make mcq medical
I need you write notes and mcqs from medical and pharmacy subjects
44 bids
Average bid $25.75 USD
(final price unknown)

26. Type of Work in
Project Titles
Type Count
Writing 570
Research 496
Essay 352
Project 269
Report 218
Paper 148
Article 128
Analysis 115
Review 83
Articles 63
Proposal 57
Content 55
Data 52
Editing 43
Development 42
Outside the Top 15
• Proofreading (32 occurrences)
• PhD (30 occurrences)
• Presentation (24 occurrences)

27. “Data” Is The Highest Paying Type
Average final cost $341
USD – but inflated by
this $2,000 USD
project…
Based on 7 projects with final USD prices

28. Payments By Type Of Work
“Project” has second highest average cost, at $149.13
(based on 32 projects with final USD prices)
“Essay” is the lowest paying type of work
(average of $40.57 USD, based on 79 projects with final USD prices)
“PhD” has an average cost of $100.60 USD
(but based on only 5 projects with final USD prices)

30. The PhD Requests Are Mostly For
Proposals…
“Need help for a phd Proposal on the impact of tax incentives
on foreign direct investment”
“writing a professional Statement of purpose for PhD student ”
“Help me write / edit PhD research proposal - 3000 words”
“Phd proposal(technical)”
“applying for PhD in Finance”
“I need you to write a PhD proposal -
Islamic Economics and Finance”
“Help in admission formalities in a PHD
program in Uk university preferably
University of Leicester”
…and many more

31. But Here’s One Of Several Gems…
It is not clear if this was
completed or not, but it
may well have been
moved into a private
project.

32. Concluding
Remarks

33. We Need To Address Contract
Cheating In All Its Forms
Contract cheating on Freelancer.com is not new,
but specific academic writing related categories
make this provision easier to find and access
Concerning trends have been observed at subject
level, involving doctoral students and in the
professional academic context

34. Connect With Dr Thomas Lancaster
My Email: thomas@thomaslancaster.co.uk
My Website: http://thomaslancaster.co.uk
My Blog: http://thomaslancaster.co.uk/blog
My LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/thomaslancaster
My Twitter: @DrLancaster