Who are the contracting authors?

The writers who might be underpinning social plagiarism practices are recruited in a variety of ways. Evidently freelancing authors make their own pitch within the various sites that allow them to advertise. Otherwise, the essay mills usually have a section which describes generically the attraction and conditions of the writing job. For instance, one UK site advertises in a way that stresses variety of topics, flexible working schedule and various kinds of bonuses. Acceptance requires “an English proficiency test and a writing skill test” (it would be interesting to know if the conditions of testing are immune from contract cheating).

It is not unclear what might be the typical academic demographic of these writers. It is likely to vary a lot. Claims have been made by journalists that it extends to university lecturers. A rare academic research project engaging with writers (Sivasubramaniamv et al, 2016) approached 25 individuals via social media advertising and interviewed the 10 that agreed to participate who seemed mainly to be freelancing or networking with others. Most of them had Masters degrees although only one had a PhD. The researchers commented that “most of these services were started by students who returned to their home country after finishing post-graduate studies abroad”, the implication being a failure to find work that matched their qualifications. This idea is reinforced by a recent BBC report.

An alternative route towards understanding the constituency of authors is to refer to the small number who have openly published thoughts on their experience. For instance, a writer reflecting in The Guardian, while revealing little about himself, does dwell on reporting the positive nature of the experience (“some of the best fun I’ve ever had”). Although admitting some apparent concern over the ethical status of the job such as did lead finally to resigning.

Another ex-writer reflects on an LSE Impact Blog. Motives were largely financial following “several unsuccessful interviews for academic jobs”. Although the renumeration was not so great as to encourage working for very long. Again the writer seems to have had a moderately positive experience. They report some pride in the work taken on, believing that they “produced good work more often than not”.

A third account is available as a reflection on YouTube. Here there is no obvious unease at the terms of such work. The writer deflects the integrity issue towards blaming a system that unhelpfully exposes students to considerable debt and associated stress to succeed.

Perhaps the most extended account of the writing experience is David Tomar’s account of the ‘ghostwriting business’, which for him seems to mean a decade writing academic essays. Again, there is some pleasure reported – put in terms of the attraction of learning something new every day. However, other threads of justification for doing the work are apparent. Tomar located contract cheating as just another species of a ubiquitous ghostwriting – a practice that he notes “holds a well-defined role in the worlds of composition and speaking”. More specifically, it is suggested that in “academia, professors come up with research ideas and analyze results, but research assistants and graduate students write the actual paper describing the outcome”. Tomar says very little about his own motivation beyond this but he does give a very full and revealing account of the mechanics of working for these services.

Therefore this posting conveys some interesting insights about working methods. For instance: “In the vast majority of cases, customers are likely to provide little more than a set of minimal instructions and the dictate to avoid Wikipedia” and “When scholarly journal articles are required, I would usually draw quotes directly from the abstracts readily available through Google Scholar. Alternatively, when specific texts are required, Google Books and Amazon provide generous samplings of which I made liberal use during my years as a ghostwriter”. Finally, “I can tell you from experience as a freelance writer that this was the easiest, most consistent, and most reliable way to keep my schedule filled with paying work every single day, especially for a recent graduate fresh from campus”

https://essaywriter.org/

Some sites offer sketches of their authors. Some even introduce them on video (UK examples). But it is unlikely that they mean anything. For instance, applying reverse image search to the two above reveals the left hand picture comes from a Russian news website and the right hand one from a Latvian music site. And the set of enthusiastic comments for the video were all posted at the same time by ‘subscribers’ with no other Youtube identity. Whether student users are taken in by such things is uncertain (over 2000 views in this case): perhaps its enough that they create an aura of professionalism.

These accounts of authors’ identities and experiences tend to be dominated by US and UK examples. Yet it is widely claimed that the industry has major centres in African countries where the writers are often international graduates, returning to their own country and failing to find work matched to their qualifications. The Mail Online has recently published an investigation into the ‘ecosystem’ that is centred on Nairobi.

Partly because real identity is a lot more carefully guarded, it seems likely that the buoyant business of social plagiarism will not be undermined by scarcity of authoring labour. Indeed, difficult employment times for graduates coupled with a sceptical attitude towards the financial and competitive stress of higher education might continue to underpin the appeal of this work. Applications will continue to arrive at sites like this.