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Five ways China must cultivate research integrity

A swift increase in scientific productivity has outstripped the country’s ability to promote rigour and curb academic misconduct; it is time to seize solutions.
  1. Li Tang

    1. Li Tang is a professor of public policy at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University, Shanghai, China; and a member of the board of directors of the Chinese Association for Science of Science and S&T Policy (CASSSP).

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A technician loads mice containers onto a rack at a Cyagen Biosciences Inc. facility in China

A researcher stacks mouse containers at an animal-breeding facility near Guangzhou, China. Credit: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg/Getty

How researchers in China behave has an impact on the global scientific community. With more than four million researchers, China has more science and technology personnel than any other nation. In 2008, it overtook the United Kingdom in the number of articles indexed in the Web of Science, and now ranks second in the world. In 2018, China published 412,000 papers.

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Nature 575, 589-591 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03613-1

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 29 November 2019: An earlier version of this article misstated which agency revoked 40 grants for fake peer review. It was the NSFC.

References

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Supplementary Information

  1. Supplementary information for Tang Comment
  2. Results of 2017 misconduct survey of Chinese scholars

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