The pressure to publish is a well-known and widespread problem in academics around the globe. Academics and higher education institutions are both put under strain by the publish-or-perish edict. Academics work hard to advance their careers, and one of the ways they do so is by measuring their research production and citations. Universities, meantime, are interested in improving their rankings, acquiring core and additional money, and adhering to local or worldwide accrediting standards. To some extent, all of these performance measures rely on scientific publications, especially those included in major databases such as Web of Science and Scopus.

In publishing ethics and research integrity, authorship concerns are a major concern. While much has been written about ghost authorship and research on its frequency, little is known about writers who publish and list various institutional affiliations in their author byline—university or otherwise. "The institutional affiliation specifies the place where the author or authors were while the study was done, which is generally an institution," according to the American Psychological Association (APA). It goes on to say that a dual affiliation should only be used if "two universities provided considerable funding to the project."

To minimize affiliation discrepancies, University of Duhok (UOD) encourages its academic members to observe the university's regulations for UOD's institutional affiliation. UOD updates these regulations on a regular basis, so check our website for the most up-to-date information.