China's CNKI offers new service on academic essay writing guideline

BEIJING - The China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), runner of China's major academic resource library, has been offering a new service to help university students avoid academic misconduct in paper writing.

The CNKI recently launched an online platform on academic integrity, on which students can learn and test their knowledge of academic essay writing process and norms, including topic selection, literature review, referencing and citation and moral code of experiments.

The platform also provides access to an app on dissertation and thesis writing, which can check dissertations and theses against academic misconduct such as plagiarism, fabrication and ghostwriting.

Academic integrity received wide attention earlier this year after the top Peking University confirmed academic misconduct by Zhai Tianlin, a Chinese actor who was a postdoctoral candidate at the university's Guanghua School of Management.

The Ministry of Education then urged higher education institutions to strictly observe postgraduate student enrollment, academic essays evaluation and degree-awarding, and vowed "zero tolerance" for academic misconduct and plagiarism.