The Chinese government wants to reduce the number of studies retracted for misconduct.Credit: designer491/Getty
China’s science ministry will crack down on universities that fail to investigate or sanction researchers who are involved in serious research misconduct. The move is part of a renewed push to get academics and their institutions to take scientific integrity more seriously.
The nation’s Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) said in a notification on its website that institutions should focus on investigating papers that are retracted in international science journals as a result of misconduct.
The results of those investigations will be publicized to enhance deterrence. Institutions will face serious penalties if they conceal or tolerate wrongdoing by their researchers, the note states, although it does not reveal what those penalties might be.
Holding institutions accountable can be an effective way to curb academic misconduct, says Li Tang, a science- and innovation-policy researcher at Fudan University in Shanghai, China. Research integrity is often managed most effectively when done at the institutional level, she adds.
China has a been trying to address ongoing research misconduct for years. In 2023, Hindawi, a subsidiary of the publisher Wiley, issued more than 9,600 retractions, of which about 8,200 had a co-author in China. In 2024, the government did the first nationwide audit of retracted papers, asking universities to clarify why papers had been retracted and to investigate cases of misconduct.
In the wake of this, MOST set up a national database to record serious cases of misconduct that authorities can use when considering scientists’ eligibility for funding, major projects, talent programmes, academy elections and awards.
Tang says that until now there have been few cases of institutional staff being punished or universities fined for failing to properly investigate researcher misconduct1.
Long-term goal
The policies “should be understood as part of a longer, cumulative effort by the Chinese government to strengthen research-integrity governance”, says Tang.
