A few days ago, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) had a press conference to announce to the public its Declaration on the Concept of Science and Chinese Academy of Sciences Suggestion on Strengthening Construction of Standard Scientific Research Behaviors, which sets clear 6 basic criteria for its scientific research behaviors, including respect of intellectual property as well as the connotation of malpractice in science, criteria for determination and procedure for disposal.

The 6 basic criteria are as follows:

a)  Abide by the ethical criteria for all citizens of the People's Republic of China;

b)  Abide by the principle of honesty. Research personnel must seek truth from facts in such areas as collection of data and information, and disclose their achievements of scientific research, and have the responsibility of guaranteeing the effectiveness and accuracy of the data they collected and released;

c) Abide by the principle of openness and make public the process and result of their research on the precondition of keeping state secret and protecting intellectual property; 

d) Abide by the principle of justice. Research personnel should take a frank, scientific and just approach, give appropriate acceptance and evaluation of contributions made by their rivals and cooperators, and recognize the latter's errors or slips in their achievements in a suitable manner, and are prohibited from hindering their rivals in various unethical and illicit means from conducting scientific researches;  

e) Respect the regulation on intellectual property, when any achievement is to published, the people having made contribution and being responsible for the related part have the right of authorship，without their consent in writing they cannot be excluded in the name-list of authors. Regarding general data collecting assistants, people and units that have given support and provided facilities to the research team, acknowledgement should be expressed to them in the publication;

f) Abide by the stipulations for statement and withdrawal. When any conflict of interest occurs in such activities as research, investigation, publication, release to media, provision of material and facilities, financial support for application, recruitment and promotion, all people involved have the obligation to disclose all organizations and individuals that have interests, direct, indirect or potential, with them, including such conflict of interest as may possibly impact the benefit of others, they must withdraw if it is deemed necessary.

The Declaration and Suggestion are published for two purposes: one is to further carry forward the spirit and thinking of science in the field of science and technology, emphasize the social responsibility of science and code of conduct; the other is to promote the self-reform and development of the CAS. Lu Yongxiang, vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the NPC, chairman of the CAS and executive president of ACS presidia expressed that sound rules and systems are strong guarantee for the construction of a harmonious academic bio-climate, and that the two documents together with related regulations formulated and implemented in recent years have formed a complete system of scientific criteria.