From Founding Vision to Global Dialogue: Twenty-Two Years of the Journal of Academic Ethics (2003–2025)

Since its founding in 2003, the Journal of Academic Ethics (JAET) has established itself as a central venue for scholarship on the ethical dimensions of higher education, research, and academic governance. Despite its prominence, no systematic analysis has charted the evolution of its intellectual profile over time. This study offers a comprehensive bibliometric overview of JAET’s publications from 2003 to 2025, mapping patterns of authorship, citation, and thematic development. The dataset comprises records retrieved from Scopus for the period 2005–2025 and from JAET’s own archives for 2003–2004. Using bibliometric indicators and network visualizations generated with VOSviewer, the analysis identifies key shifts in the journal’s conceptual orientation, from early emphases on misconduct and plagiarism toward broader engagements with institutional integrity, governance, diversity, and the ethics of digital transformation. A narrative comparison with related journals situates JAET’s distinctive integrative role in linking philosophical reflection with empirical inquiry and policy discourse. The findings reveal increasing interdisciplinarity, international collaboration, and methodological diversification, marking the maturation of academic ethics as a field. Looking forward, emerging challenges such as artificial intelligence, open science, and global research governance underscore JAET’s continuing function as both a barometer and catalyst of ethical thought in academia.