On the afternoon of September 3, the first class to freshmen of postgraduate of 2017 was hosted in the auditorium of International Academic Exchange Center. The first class of HZAU given to all these freshmen was hosted by vice-president Zhang Xianlong, and academician Zhang Qifa delivered the report of scientific moral and academic discipline construction for freshmen of postgraduate of 2017.
The report delivered by Professor Zhang Qifa consists of three parts, what is academic moral rules? Why should we abide by academic rules? How does HZAU build and manage academic rules respectively.
What is academic moral rules? Professor Zhang put forward a basic principle that we should seek truth from facts. Any activities which are not seeking truth from facts violates academic rules. As a scientific research staff, you should never have any academic misdeeds. Why should we abide by academic rules? Professor Zhang listed the example that the international journals named Tumor Biology withdrew 107 submitted manuscripts from China and the comments from People daily that the scientific research should insist on integrity and take integrity as valuable as our eyes to admonish students to scrupulously abide by academic rules and promote the scientific spirit.
Next, Professor Zhang Qifa introduced some rules of HZAU on academic standards. There are three main documents on academic standards, namely HZAU academic rules, HZAU tentative methods of dealing with academic misdeeds, and HZAU penalty rules of academic misdeeds. Since these documents have been made and published in 2014, the classification methods are like traffic rules with features of policy-based and operability, which effectively avoids the occurrence of academic misdeeds. Professor Zhang Qifa hoped that students can abide by rules, pursue the truth, being rigorous and realistic and respect laws.
On defining the academic behaviors, Professor Zhang Qifa elaborated several situations such as plagiarism, forgery or falsifying data and documentations, publishing the same paper for several times and inappropriate authorship, and explained the results raised up by these misdeeds. Once the students have the academic misdeeds, she or he will bear the corresponding penalty. If the student who commits copy or publishes repeatedly, the basic principle is to criticize and educate and supervise he or she to correct; if the student who commits plagiarism or falsifies data or documentations, he or she will lose the degree and will bear some other punishments.
How to prevent academic misdeed from the beginning? The method is to make a good experiment record. Students should do experiments according to the record. The content recorded must be loyalty, concise, neat and easy to understand. The specific experiment record textbook is required. Professor Zhang Qifa stressed the importance of making experiment record. Meanwhile, making a good experimental record is good for cultivating rigorous scientific attitudes. The university insisted to cross-check scientific records. Those whose experiment records are unqualified cannot apply for thesis defense and their tutors cannot temporarily recruit new postgraduates students and are suspended to apply for the research topic.
The writing norms of thesis defense is crucial contents of academic rules. Professor Zhang Qifa explained formats and rules of thesis defense in recent 30 years since the founding of our university in the 1980s. The appearance changes reflect the writing rules becoming concrete, thorough and meticulous. He also clarified writing rules of thesis defense and required that students should have the requirement of exporting the elaborate works and take the thesis defense as the important milestone in life.
Last but not least, professor Zhang Qifa hoped that students can cultivate academic moral, insist on academic norms, stay away from academic misdeed, improve personal scientific research capability, do a good record and write the thesis in a higher standard and stricter requirement.
Lu Yu, from microbiology major, felt moved after hearing the first class delivered by Professor Zhang Qifa. She said that she benefited a lot from Professor Zhang's lecture, which can make me save twists and turns in the scientific road and stay away from the prohibited line and let me to be a dutiful scientific researcher.
It is learned that HZAU carried out activities on lecturing the scientific moral and academic discipline building education since 2011. In 2015, HZAU is listed as one of trail-units (11 in total) of national scientific moral and academic discipline building's education case presentations by China Association for Science and Technology. Since 2016, scientific norms and academic rules is also listed as the first class for freshmen of postgraduates. Academician Zhang Qifa, also director of HZAU academic moral committee serves as the first lecturer. The freshmen of postgraduate in 2017 also sign the letter of commitment of academic loyalty for postgraduates to firmly establish academic loyalty awareness.
