Gengyan Tang

My name is Gengyan Tang, and my academic journey has been shaped by a growing concern for integrity in research and education. During my master’s studies in China, I investigated predatory journals and the motivations behind authorship, which gave me first-hand exposure to the systemic challenges of misconduct. These experiences convinced me that questions of research integrity are embedded in broader institutional and cultural contexts.

As a Ph.D. student at the University of Calgary, my current work weaves together three interconnected strands. First, I examine paper mills as organized systems that mirror and exploit institutional logics in higher education. My work analyzes how their operations become structurally aligned with prevailing governance arrangements and incentive regimes. Second, I analyze research integrity policies, with particular attention to ongoing shifts from punitive, compliance-oriented approaches toward frameworks that emphasize learning, proportionality, and institutional responsibility. This line of inquiry focuses on how research integrity is governed in practice. In parallel, I explore how local knowledge traditions and context-sensitive ways of knowing can inform more relational and practice-oriented approaches to research integrity, offering alternatives to universalized, rule-based models.

Memberships & Affiliations

Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)
The Chinese Association of Science of Science and S&T Policy Research
The Graduate Programs in Education Students' Association, Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary
Student Advisory Council of Centre for Artificial Intelligence Ethics, Literacy and Integrity, University of Calgary

Research

Areas of Research

Research interests

Research integrity
Research misconduct
Artificial intelligence and Large Language Models (LLMs), as they relate to publishing ethics, research integrity, and academic integrity
Academic integrity
Publication ethics
Scholarly publishing
Higher education
Paper mills
Research integrity education
Posthumanism
Higher education policy

Research skills

R
Python
Citespace
Eviews
SPSS
Stata
Prism
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Premiere

Participation in university strategic initiatives

Human Dynamics in a Changing World (2015-2021)

Transdisciplinary Research

Awards

Top 5% Highly Cited Scholars in CNKI, 2025, China National Knowledge Infrastructure. 2025
Werklund Doctoral Scholarship, Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary. 2025
Eyes High International Doctoral Scholarship, University of Calgary. 2025
International Graduate Tuition Award, University of Calgary. 2025
Top 5% Highly Cited Scholars in CNKI, 2024 , China National Knowledge Infrastructure. 2024
International Graduate Tuition Award, University of Calgary. 2024
Outstanding University Graduates in Sichuan Province, Sichuan Provincial Department of Education, China. 2022
National Scholarship for Postgraduates, Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China. 2021
The 1st Prize for Academic Scholarship, Sichuan Provincial Department of Education, China. 2021
The 3rd Prize of the 19th Social Science Excellent Achievement Award, The People’s Government of Sichuan Province, China. 2021
National Scholarship for Postgraduates, Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China. 2020
The 1st Prize for Academic Scholarship, Sichuan Provincial Department of Education, China. 2020
The Excellent Conference Paper, Nanjing Normal University, China. 2020

Publications

Citation Contamination by Paper Mill Articles in Systematic Reviews of the Life Sciences. Tang, Gengyan, and Hao Cai. JAMA Network Open. e2515160. (2025)
Mapping nine decades of research integrity studies (1935–2024): A scientometric analysis. Tang, Gengyan. Accountability in Research: Ethics, Integrity and Policy. 1-38. (2025)
Apply the legal ‘true malice’ principle to protect research-misconduct sleuths. Tang, Gengyan. Nature. 34. (2025)
Using mixed methods research to study research integrity: Current status, issues, and guidelines. Tang, Gengyan. Accountability in Research: Ethics, Integrity and Policy. 1-22. (2025)
The punishment intensity for research misconduct and its related factors: An exploratory study on hospitals in Mainland China. Tang, Gengyan. Accountability in Research: Ethics, Integrity and Policy. (2024)
A rapid investigation of artificial intelligence generated content footprints in scholarly publications. Tang, Gengyan, and Sarah Elaine Eaton. Journal of Scholarly Publishing. 337-355. (2024)
Are the lists of questionable journals reasonable: A case study of early warning journal lists. Tang, Gengyan, and Jingyu Peng. Accountability in Research: Ethics, Integrity and Policy. (2023)
Status bias in Chinese scholarly publishing: An exploratory study based on mixed methods. Tang, Gengyan, Hao Cai, and Jingwen Jia. Accountability in Research: Ethics, Integrity and Policy. 241-257. (2022)
Characteristics of blacklisted journals: Evidence from Chinese-language academic journals. Tang, Gengyan, and Jingwen Jia. Accountability in Research: Ethics, Integrity and Policy. 210-221. (2022)
Why do master’s students of humanities and social sciences publish papers in Chinese-language predatory journals? A qualitative study based on Grounded Theory. Tang, Gengyan, and Jingwen Jia. Accountability in Research: Ethics, Integrity and Policy. 1-20. (2021)
Letter to Editor: Academic journals should clarify the proportion of NLP-generated content in papers. Tang, Gengyan. Accountability in Research: Ethics, Integrity and Policy. (2023)
Academic journals cannot simply require authors to declare that they used ChatGPT. Tang, Gengyan. Irish Journal of Medical Science (1971 -). (2023)
Academic journals should rethink the concept of originality before permitting the use of ChatGPT. Tang, Gengyan. European Science Editing. (2023)
The dark corner of scholarly publishing: A study on the phenomenon of Chinese-language predatory journals. Tang, Gengyan. Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences. (2022)
Analysis and insights on the application of publishing research methods in China, 2016-2020. Tang, Gengyan, and Jingwen Jia. Science-Technology & Publication. 129-136. (2022)
On rational trade-off in academic publishing peer review crisis. Tang, Gengyan, and Hui Li. Publishing Research. 60-64. (2022)
Reconstruction and reengineering: The impact of the preprint platforms on the scientific communication system. Tang, Gengyan. Studies in Science of Science . 1729-1735. (2021)
Public opinion governance dilemma faced by preprint platforms and corresponding countermeasures: Reflection on "COVID-19". Tang, Gengyan, and Hao Cai. Studies in Science of Science . 587-593. (2021)
Concept, implementation, and content of the transparency principle of reviewing manuscripts for Chinese academic journals. Tang, Gengyan, and Jingwen Jia. Chinese Journal of Scientific and Technical Periodicals. 757-764. (2021)
Research on the impact of journalism and communication periodical contents on academic influence. Tang, Gengyan, Ji Lu, and Hui Li. Media Observer . 91-97. (2021)
The History, Characteristics and Inspiration of Preprint Platform Construction. Tang, Gengyan. Research on the History of Publishing in China. 144-155. (2021)
The Experience and Enlightenment of "The New England Journal of Medicine" in Responding to Public Health Emergencies. Tang, Gengyan. Medicine and Society. 69-72. (2021)
Characteristic elements of Chinese predatory journals based on Grounded Theory. Tang, Gengyan, Xingxia Long, Hao Cai, and Qiujiang Li. Chinese Journal of Scientific and Technical Periodicals . 1402-1408. (2020)
Strategies of shortening publication delays of scientific and technological journals: Taking medical journals under the ‘COVID-19’ context for example. Tang, Gengyan. Publishing Journal. 67-73. (2020)
Analysis on the Position of Copyright Trade in the Sino-US Trade Friction. Tang, Gengyan. Publishing Research Quarterly. 284-295. (2020)

In the News

Why Canada is ill-equipped to tackle the growing threat of fake science. Canadian Affairs. (2025)
In che modo i paper mill compromettono l’integrità delle revisioni sistematiche?. gastroinfo. (2025)
Sínteses contaminadas. Revista Pesquisa FAPESP. (2025)
Systematic reviews cited retracted articles, new study finds. STAT News. (2025)
Authorship for sale: Nature investigates how paper mills work. Nature. (2025)
China’s supreme court calls for crack down on paper mills. Nature. (2025)
La lista cinese dei periodici accademici sospetti. Il Bo Live. (2024)
The Higher the Academic Rank, the Lighter the Punishment. Jieluoxuan. (2024)