China’s 2022 Research Misconduct Rules Underpin the Retracted-Paper Campaign in 2026

The Rules for the Investigation and Handling of Research Misconduct are China’s main national instrument for dealing with research misconduct. They were issued by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) together with 21 other departments under notice 国科发监〔2022〕221号, dated 25 August 2022. They revise the trial rules on handling research integrity cases issued in 2019, and were drafted under the Science and Technology Progress Law and related legislation to implement central government policy on strengthening research integrity.

Article 2 lists the types of misconduct. They include plagiarism and appropriation of others’ results or project proposals; fabricating the research process, falsifying results, and buying, falsifying or tampering with experimental data, figures, conclusions or test reports; buying, selling, ghostwriting or submitting papers or project materials on behalf of others, and inventing peer reviewers or review comments; obtaining approvals, projects or awards by deception; forging ethics review documents; listing authors without substantive academic contribution; and duplicate publication. A catch-all category covers other research misconduct. Plagiarism, falsification, fabrication and duplicate publication are to be judged against academic publishing norms and relevant industry standards.

MOST’s policy explanation states that the 2022 revision added seven types of misconduct compared with the trial rules, including buying experimental data, authorship without substantive contribution and duplicate publication, and made provision for dealing with third-party agencies that sell, ghostwrite or submit papers.

MOST is responsible for coordination in the natural sciences and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences for humanities and social sciences. Where the person under investigation is an individual, the investigation is generally carried out by the unit that employs them at the time; where there is no employer, the local science and technology department or the responsible social sciences body takes it on. Where the subject is the head of a unit or an organisation itself, the supervising authority investigates. Complaints may be made to the employer, its supervising department, the funding or award administrator, or the journal that published the work.

Article 22 provides that where an investigation finds that a third-party intermediary is suspected of buying, selling, ghostwriting or submitting papers, data or project materials, the matter must be reported promptly to the competent authorities for investigation. Available sanctions include terminating funded projects obtained through misconduct and recovering unspent government funds, and revoking awards and professional titles with recovery of bonuses. Entry into the serious research misconduct database is set out as a separate measure, and results are reported through the national research integrity management information system so that other departments can apply joint penalties.

On 26 November 2025 MOST and other departments launched a special campaign on retracted papers involving academic misconduct, focusing on retractions of papers by Chinese scholars in international journals in the natural sciences. The campaign targets plagiarism, fabrication or tampering with data and images, paper trading and fake peer review, and requires item-by-item review and investigation.

Provincial education departments have passed the requirements on to universities. A notice from the Hunan provincial education department, citing a MOST general office document, required universities to search for retractions of papers bearing their name or their staff’s names since 2023, verify the reasons, prepare self-inspection reports and complete summary tables. Investigation of papers involving misconduct is led by the unit of the first corresponding author, under the 2022 Rules and related provisions. Units found to have concealed, tolerated or shielded misconduct by their researchers are to be dealt with severely.

At a State Council Information Office press conference on 29 September 2026, MOST vice minister Qiu Yong said the ministry was leading the retracted-paper campaign and pushing departments to set up routine mechanisms for checking and handling retractions, while reinforcing the primary responsibility of research units. He also said the serious misconduct database supports integrity reviews for project approvals, academician elections and science awards.

For researchers in China, a retraction now routinely triggers an institutional review, and a misconduct finding can affect eligibility for national projects, awards and academician elections. Authorship without substantive contribution and duplicate publication are expressly listed as misconduct, which makes accurate authorship statements and full disclosure of related publications essential.

For international sponsors, journals and medical writing providers working with Chinese institutions, the Rules make clear that third-party services that sell, ghostwrite or submit papers are a regulatory target. Writing support should be transparent, acknowledged and limited to legitimate editorial assistance, with authors retaining responsibility for content and data. This brief is a summary for information only and is not legal advice.