Gengyan Tang

My name is Gengyan Tang, and I was born in Fushun, Zigong, a small city in southwestern China. I spent my first 18 years there, completing my K-12 education in the same place. My exposure to English was limited, with little to no training in speaking or listening. After high school, I moved to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, where I lived for eight years before relocating to Chongqing for another three years.

Chongqing quickly became my favorite city due to its distinctive urban landscape and well-known hotpot cuisine.

During my undergraduate studies, I developed a strong interest in academic research. I joined a project under my supervisor and became particularly interested in the media industry. After completing my undergraduate program, I took the Chinese National Postgraduate Entrance Examination. I didn’t pass on my first attempt but succeeded on my second, gaining admission to the Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences. My advisor provided a flexible and supportive environment, allowing me to explore my research interests independently.

It was during this time that I became focused on research and publication integrity. First-hand exposure to cases of academic misconduct led me to examine the issue more systematically. My master’s thesis, built on two papers published in Accountability in Research, used a mixed-methods approach—including scientometrics, statistical analysis, semi-structured interviews, and grounded theory—to investigate predatory journals in China and the motivations behind authorship.

After my master’s, I applied to Ph.D. programs but faced rejections for two consecutive years. During this period, I continued my research and conducted fieldwork in a public hospital in Chongqing, focusing on internal research misconduct, such as gift authorship, ghostwriting, and data fabrication.

More recently, I have been studying the impact of emerging technologies on research integrity, particularly the influence of AI tools like ChatGPT and other AIGC innovations. While I see the potential benefits of these technologies, I also recognize the importance of maintaining ethical standards, integrity, and transparency in their application.

Outside of academia, I have a cat named Mimi, whom I found as a stray in Chongqing. Due to my relocation to Canada, my mother now takes care of him, and he has grown from 3 kg to 5 kg under her care.

Memberships & Affiliations

Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)
The Chinese Association of Science of Science and S&T Policy Research

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
Higher education
Ethical leadership
Predatory journals
Paper mills
Integrity education
Scholarly publishing
Science of science

Research skills

R
Python
Citespace
Eviews
SPSS
Stata
Prism
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Premiere

Participation in university strategic initiatives

Human dynamics in a changing world

Transdisciplinary Research

Awards

Top 5% Highly Cited Scholars in CNKI, 2024 , China National Knowledge Infrastructure. 2025
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

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

China’s supreme court calls for crack down on paper mills. Nature. (2025)
The Higher the Academic Rank, the Lighter the Punishment. Jieluoxuan. (2024)
La lista cinese dei periodici accademici sospetti. Il Bo Live. (2024)