Notice About The 5 Not-Allowed Rules While Publishing Academic Articles by 7 Organizations
(in Chinese)
01.12.2015
Document (2015) 98 of CAST
In recent years, there has been being great progress in China's science and technology researches, the number of papers published in academic journals has increased dramatically, and the quality has improved significantly. However, some issues emerged while the great achievements are earned. For instance, the withdrawals by international academic journals happened among the articles submitted by some domestic scientific researchers, which caused the extremely severe damages to the reputations of scientific and technical fields in China.
In order to renew and clarify the conduct code for scientific and technical personnel in publishing academic papers, we jointly studied and formulated a notice of The 5 Not-Allowed Rules While Publishing Academic Articles. According to the suggestions from the central government, we print The 5 Not-Allowed Rules While Publishing Academic Articles and deliver to you, please follow the rules. We demand:
1) The relevant organizations must understand it in-depth, explain it to the publicity extensively, formulate and improve it combined with their own actual situations, and establish the investigation and handling mechanism for academic misconducts, further reform and improve the assessment system of science and technology, therefore providing the feasible policy and environmental guarantees for personnel in scientific and technological innovation and entrepreneurship.
2) The effective measures must be launched while investigating the authors of withdrawn articles, the actions violating The 5 Not-Allowed Rules While Publishing Academic Articles, must be seriously handled depending on the circumstances, and the handling results should be reported to the superior administrative organization for the record.
3) All scientific personnel must strength self-discipline on academic conduct, and obey The 5 Not-Allowed Rules While Publishing Academic Articles. Concurrently, personnel must have a self-inspecting, actively retract own submitted papers as long as the actions of violating The 5 Not-Allowed Rules are realized, and resolutely resist the academic misconduct from “3rd party”.
4) Each associations and academic society in whole China must act as the role of scientific community in educating and guiding researchers, defending academic dignity and maintaining the fair academic atmosphere.
We will enhance the communications, coordination and joint actions, conduct the implementation of The 5 Not-Allowed Rules While Publishing Academic Articles, inspect the involved organizations to investigate and handle manuscript-withdrawal incidents, gradually establish a record system of serious dishonesty in scientific activities and the information sharing mechanism of black list, consequently promote the reform of scientific and technical assessment systems, standardize the management of scientific research integrity, and protect the legal benefits of personnel in scientific work.
China Association for Science and Technology (CAST)
Ministry of Education of P. R. China
Ministry of Science and Technology of P. R. China
National Health and Family Planning Commission of P. R. China
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Chinese Academy of Engineering,
National Natural Science Foundation of China
in 23.11.2015
The 5 Not-Allowed Rules While Publishing Academic Articles
1. It is not allowed that the "3rd party" ghostwrites the paper. Scientific and technical personnel should write their own papers, and absolutely resist the "3rd party" to provide the services.
2. It is not allowed that "3rd party" acts as a replacer of submitting the paper. Scientific and technical personnel should manage the submission process of an academic journal, complete by themselves the whole process of submitting papers and replying the comments from peer review, and absolutely resist the "3rd party" to provide the service of replacing the authors in submitting the papers.
3. It is not allowed that "3rd party" modifies the content of a paper. The principal of "3rd party" polishing the language should be based on the manuscripts completed by authors, and only limited on perfection of language expression, and absolutely resist modifying the actual content in the name of polishing the language.
4. It is not allowed to provide false information of peer-review. In case of peer reviewers should be recommended while publishing papers in academic journals, scientific and technical personnel must ensure that the provided reviewers’ names and contacts are true and reliable, and absolutely resist any fraud behavior in the peer review process.
5. It is not allowed to violate the signature specification. Each author signed his/her name in the paper must prior read the paper and then agree the paper to be published, and bear all related responsibilities. The draftsman of the paper must request the opinions from signed authors on the contents of whole paper and the approval of signing their names. Every author with his/her name signed on the paper must have the actual academic contribution to the paper, and absolutely resist the person with no actual academic contribution having his/her name signed on the paper.
The "3rd party" mentioned in the above "5 Not-Allowed Rules While Publishing Academic Articles" refers to any institution or individual except the authors and the journal. “Ghostwriting the paper” refers to actions that the signed authors do not complete the paper writing by themselves, instead by any other persons. “Replacer of submitting the paper” refers to the actions that the authors with their names signed on the paper do not complete the whole process of submitting the paper and replying the comments of peer-review by themselves.
