1.Preamble and Fundamental Purposes
Academic ethics and scholarly morality constitute the fundamental foundation of global higher education autonomy, academic credibility, institutional accreditation authority, cross-border academic exchanges and standardized industrial governance. Rigorous and standardized academic ethical norms represent the core symbol of the maturity, standardization and international recognition of modern higher education quality assurance systems, and serve as the basic professional obligation that all higher education institutions and academic practitioners must strictly abide by.
As a globally influential non-profit international organization dedicated to higher education quality assurance and institutional accreditation, the International Association of Private Universities and Colleges (IAPUC) upholds the core values of academic freedom, academic self-discipline, quality supremacy and impartial governance. This Academic Ethics and Moral Code is formally formulated in accordance with universally recognized international academic integrity conventions, global university research ethical guidelines, cross-border intellectual property protection provisions, international higher education accreditation operational norms, as well as the applicable civil laws, administrative laws and intellectual property laws of relevant sovereign jurisdictions.
This Code is established for the following core purposes: to standardize the full range of academic behaviors, document submission practices, accreditation declaration procedures and interactive conducts of all IAPUC users; to eradicate academic dishonesty, moral anomie and improper interest transactions in academic activities; to safeguard the fairness, impartiality, authenticity, transparency and procedural rigor of IAPUC’s international academic evaluation and institutional accreditation systems; to protect the legitimate academic rights and interests of all compliant institutional and individual users; to prohibit improper academic competition and academic speculation; to purify the ecological environment of global higher education academic undertakings; and to perpetually uphold the professional dignity, objective credibility and standardized operational order of the IAPUC global academic service system.
All provisions stipulated herein constitute an indispensable core component of the IAPUC comprehensive institutional compliance governance system, and possess equal legal binding force with the IAPUC Terms of Service, Refund Policy, Privacy Policy and Copyright Statement. All service and academic participation behaviors of users shall be subject to the joint constraint of the aforesaid complete policy system.
2. Universal Binding Scope and Basic Governing Rules
This Code implements a governance principle of universal coverage, zero exemption, lifelong binding force and full-process supervision applicable to all IAPUC users. No institutional or individual user shall be exempted from compliance on the grounds of institutional attributes, personal identity, cooperation cycle, service type or regional differences. All entities and individuals participating in any official academic and accreditation activities of IAPUC shall fully recognize, voluntarily accept and strictly implement all ethical and moral provisions of this Code.
The mandatory binding subjects include, but are not limited to, the following categories:
(1) All formal institutional members, associate institutional members and cooperative member institutions of IAPUC, as well as authorized administrative personnel, faculty representatives, project liaisons, accreditation applicants and internal staff who participate in official IAPUC affairs on behalf of affiliated institutions;
(2) All formal individual members, scholar members, expert database experts, registered academic researchers, university faculty and independent academic practitioners of IAPUC;
(3) All candidate institutions applying for IAPUC institutional accreditation, quality level review, professional certification, school-running qualification evaluation and periodic supervisory review;
(4) All individual professional certification candidates, competency evaluation applicants, academic trainees and course certification applicants;
(5) All registered participants, keynote speakers, poster presenters and cooperative organizers of IAPUC international academic conferences, seminars, academic forums and online-offline exchange activities;
(6) All external cooperative institutions, third-party service providers, academic reviewers, guest experts, and all entities or individuals that submit institutional reports, academic papers, research achievements, evaluation materials and review documents to IAPUC independently or by entrustment;
(7) All users who access official IAPUC platforms, complete account registration, submit official documents, participate in evaluation activities and utilize IAPUC academic resources in any formal manner.
Any act of accessing IAPUC official platforms, submitting official application materials, paying service fees, participating in academic activities and accepting IAPUC evaluation and certification services shall be deemed as voluntary, unconditional and full acceptance of all clauses of this Code. The compliance obligations of academic ethics are persistent and lifelong, and shall not terminate upon the completion of service procedures, acquisition of qualification certificates, expiration of membership validity, termination of cooperative relations or withdrawal from individual academic activities.
3. Core Guiding Principles of Academic Ethics (Mandatory Compliance)
All academic behaviors, declaration conducts, cooperative activities and interactive practices of users shall take international universal academic ethical norms as the fundamental criterion, and strictly abide by the six core mandatory guiding principles specified below. These principles run through the entire process of document submission, review and evaluation, academic participation and result confirmation, serving as rigid institutional constraints that shall not be violated, circumvented or altered.
3.1 Principle of Authenticity and Good Faith
All institutional operational data, teaching quality indicators, talent training outcomes, scientific research achievements, qualification certificates, honor credentials, self-evaluation reports and personal academic backgrounds submitted by users shall be true, accurate, complete, valid and traceable. Users are strictly prohibited from fabricating non-existent academic achievements, falsifying original data, concealing adverse factual information, modifying historical records, and making misleading or false statements for the purpose of obtaining accreditation qualifications, evaluation results and academic honors. All submitted materials shall be consistent with the actual operational and academic status of the submitting subject.
3.2 Principle of Objectivity and Rationality
All academic declarations and institutional evaluations shall be based on objective facts, original records, verifiable evidence and unified international higher education quality benchmarks. Users shall not artificially interfere with objective evaluation results, subjectively exaggerate institutional advantages, deliberately conceal operational deficiencies, or adopt selective data submission to mislead the professional judgment of review experts. All academic judgments and result descriptions shall maintain rationality, neutrality and factual orientation.
3.3 Principle of Fairness and Impartiality
The IAPUC academic evaluation and accreditation system implements unified standards, equal opportunities and non-discriminatory mechanisms for all users. All users shall uphold the fair competitive order of the global higher education industry, refrain from seeking improper evaluation advantages through non-academic means, and shall not defame, suppress or infringe upon the legitimate academic rights and interests of other compliant participants, so as to jointly maintain a standardized and equitable international academic competition environment.
3.4 Principle of Independence and Academic Neutrality
Users shall fully respect the independent professional judgment, academic neutrality and review autonomy of IAPUC expert review teams and evaluation working groups. All review conclusions are generated in accordance with standardized procedures and unified scoring criteria. Users are prohibited from interfering with review progress, disrupting evaluation order, exerting improper pressure on review experts, and attempting to alter objective evaluation results through human relations, interest inducement or public opinion intervention.
3.5 Principle of Intellectual Property Respect and Academic Inheritance
Users shall respect the intellectual property rights, copyrights and academic labor achievements of global institutions of higher education, research institutes and individual scholars. All quoted literatures, research data, evaluation models, academic viewpoints and institutional cases shall be cited in a standardized manner with complete source attribution. Any act of embezzling, plagiarizing or concealing others’ academic achievements constitutes a violation of basic academic morality and international intellectual property regulations.
3.6 Principle of Legal Compliance and Self-Disciplinary Governance
All academic activities and document submission behaviors shall comply with international academic ethics conventions, cross-border intellectual property protection systems, applicable national laws and regulations, as well as IAPUC institutional management norms. Users shall establish internal self-discipline mechanisms, standardize behavioral procedures, proactively resist all forms of academic misconduct, and bear full legal and institutional responsibilities for all non-compliant behaviors conducted under their own name or institutional affiliation.
4. Strict Definition and Comprehensive Classification of Academic Misconduct (Zero-Tolerance Policy)
IAPUC implements a full-coverage zero-tolerance mechanism, whole-process investigation and lifelong retrospective accountability system for all academic misconduct. Any behavior that undermines academic authenticity, procedural standardization, evaluation impartiality and intellectual property norms shall be deemed a serious violation of academic ethics and institutional compliance agreements, and shall trigger hierarchical disciplinary sanctions and legal liability investigations. The detailed classified definitions of prohibited academic misconduct are specified as follows:
4.1 Falsification, Fabrication and Unauthorized Data Tampering
This category of misconduct refers to the deliberate creation of false academic and institutional operational information or unauthorized alteration of valid original records, including but not limited to: fabrication of institutional school-running scale, faculty structure, student training scale, teaching achievement awards, scientific research project funds, published papers and monograph outcomes; falsification of teaching quality monitoring data, student employment data, graduation qualification data and internal evaluation data; deliberate modification, deletion and optimization of unqualified original data, defective records and adverse evaluation records; fictitious filling of non-existent teaching activities, academic exchanges and research projects to meet accreditation index criteria; tampering with official seal records, signature records and review filing records.
4.2 Plagiarism, Infringement and Unauthorized Appropriation of Academic Achievements
This category covers all acts of unauthorized possession and utilization of legitimate academic achievements of others without standardized citation and formal authorization, including: direct or disguised plagiarism of others’ academic viewpoints, research data, argument frameworks, paper contents and evaluation system models; unattributed hidden citation, repeated citation and ambiguous citation leading to untraceable sources; unauthorized extraction, revision, secondary sorting and public release of third-party institutional evaluation reports, teaching reform achievements and research outcomes; commercialized reuse and secondary dissemination of copyrighted academic resources without the consent of copyright owners; and all other acts infringing upon global copyright, patent and academic achievement protection systems.
4.3 False Declaration, Document Forgery and Qualification Fraud
This refers to the act of defrauding academic qualifications and evaluation results by submitting inauthentic documents, including: forgery, alteration, splicing and scanning modification of institutional qualification certificates, school-running licenses, honor certificates and industrial certification documents; forgery of personal degree certificates, professional qualification certificates, expert appointment certificates and training certificates; declaration by virtue of expired, invalid, revoked and cancelled qualifications; deliberate concealment of institutional administrative penalties, academic violation records, qualification rectification records and bad credit records; false commitment of institutional capabilities and service guarantees to obtain review qualifications.
4.4 Improper Submission, Repeated Utilization and Academic Speculation
This includes all speculative behaviors that evade standardized review and disrupt evaluation fairness, including: repeated submission of identical institutional materials and academic achievements to multiple review projects and certification activities without updated supplementation; long-term reuse of outdated, expired and invalid historical review materials; disguised modification of partial content to evade system duplicate checking and manual review; entrusting third-party institutions or individuals to draft, revise and polish institutional self-evaluation reports and academic papers on behalf of applicants; paid ghostwriting, paid revision and paid data packaging behaviors; and speculative operation targeting accreditation declaration quotas and academic honor qualifications.
4.5 Non-Compliant Application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Academic Practices
In response to emerging ethical risks arising from the application of artificial intelligence in global higher education, IAPUC incorporates non-standard AI utilization into the scope of mandatory academic misconduct management. Prohibited behaviors include: concealing the use of generative artificial intelligence tools in official accreditation documents, academic reports and declaration materials; generating institutional evaluation texts, data analysis contents and achievement summaries entirely via AI without factual verification, data validation and manual proofreading; failing to mark AI-generated content in accordance with international academic transparency norms, resulting in inauthentic, unverifiable and non-reproducible academic outputs; utilizing AI tools to tamper with data trends, forge simulation results and optimize indicator data to conform to review standards.
4.6 Improper Intervention, Interest Transaction and Academic Bribery
All non-academic behaviors interfering with review neutrality are strictly prohibited, including: private contact with IAPUC expert reviewers, administrative supervisors and staff without official procedural approval; attempting to influence review progress, document verification standards, scoring results and final review conclusions through gift-giving, property benefits, hospitality treatment, relational lobbying and future interest commitments; providing improper benefits and cooperative commitments to review experts; exerting inappropriate pressure, directional guidance and public opinion coercion on review teams; and interfering with the neutral and standardized operation of the academic evaluation mechanism.
4.7 Academic Slander, Malicious Disturbance and Institutional Rule Violation
This category includes behaviors that damage the global academic ecology and IAPUC institutional reputation, including: fabricating false facts to slander the IAPUC review mechanism, expert professionalism and official management norms; maliciously discrediting legitimate evaluation results of compliant users and peer institutions; disseminating false rumors and misleading public opinions in academic exchange activities; disrupting the on-site order of academic conferences, training activities and on-site accreditation inspections; maliciously attacking platform systems, review procedures and institutional rules; organizing or participating in group non-compliant behaviors that undermine the normal operation of the IAPUC academic governance system.
5. Tiered Academic Ethical Obligations and Subject Liability Division
In accordance with the differentiated attributes of institutional and individual users, this Code clarifies tiered ethical obligations and precise liability division, implementing the accountability principle of conduct-based responsibility, hierarchical supervision and traceable liability, so as to eliminate ambiguous liability definitions and institutional compliance loopholes.
5.1 Obligations and Primary Liabilities of Institutional Members and Accreditation Applicant Institutions
Institutional users bear primary management responsibility, principal subject responsibility and lifelong accountability responsibility for internal academic ethics construction and official document declaration behaviors. All institutions shall establish a sound internal academic ethics management system, document review mechanism, data authenticity verification mechanism and staff restraint mechanism, clarify the post responsibilities of managerial personnel, academic leaders and declaration handlers, and form a standardized internal review and filing procedure for all accreditation declaration materials and academic outputs.
Institutions shall exercise strict supervision over all authorized representatives and staff engaged in official IAPUC affairs, and prohibit any individual from conducting academic misconduct in the name of the institution without official approval. All documents submitted in the name of an institution shall be deemed as the authentic intent and official recognition of the institution. The institution shall bear full institutional liability and joint legal liability for false declaration, data fraud and improper intervention behaviors conducted in the institutional name, and shall assume all subsequent disciplinary sanctions, qualification losses and reputation damages.
5.2 Obligations and Independent Liabilities of Individual Members, Certified Candidates and Activity Participants
Individual users shall bear full independent personal legal responsibility and lifelong moral accountability for all personal academic behaviors and submitted documents. Individuals shall strictly abide by personal academic self-discipline norms, truthfully declare personal academic backgrounds, educational experiences, professional qualifications, training experiences and academic achievements, and are prohibited from forging personal resumes, plagiarizing others’ academic outcomes, and defrauding certification qualifications, academic credits and activity participation eligibility through improper means.
All individual academic misconduct shall be permanently recorded in the IAPUC personal academic integrity file, independent of institutional affiliation changes and service termination. IAPUC shall implement lifelong restraint, retrospective investigation and cumulative punishment for repeated individual violations.
6. Standardized Norms for Academic Citation, Intellectual Property and Transparency
Standardized academic citation and respect for intellectual property rights are fundamental symbols of standardized academic governance and core components of international academic ethics. All academic documents, institutional self-evaluation reports, research achievements, case analyses and public academic contents submitted by users to IAPUC shall comply with internationally recognized academic citation specifications, copyright protection rules and intellectual property ethical requirements.
All quoted literatures, research data, evaluation models, industrial cases and academic viewpoints shall be marked with complete source information, including author, publication year, publishing platform, article title and resource link, ensuring traceable sources and standardized attribution. Hidden citation, ambiguous citation, unmarked quotation and disguised plagiarism are all deemed academic infringement and ethical violations. Users are prohibited from unauthorized commercial reuse, secondary revision and derivative creation of third-party copyrighted resources without formal written authorization.
Users shall guarantee that all independently submitted original academic contents possess legal and valid intellectual property rights and complete authorization qualifications. In the event of intellectual property disputes, copyright disputes and achievement ownership disputes arising from user submission behaviors, the relevant users shall independently bear all legal liabilities, compensation responsibilities and adverse consequences, and IAPUC shall not assume any joint liability.
7. Full-Process Supervision, Retrospective Inspection and Lifelong Filing Mechanism
IAPUC establishes a full-cycle academic ethics supervision system featuring pre-event review, in-process supervision, post-event random inspection and lifelong retrospective verification, realizing zero-blind-spot supervision over all user academic behaviors.
Prior to review, all submitted documents shall undergo system duplicate checking, preliminary data authenticity verification and manual compliance review to intercept obvious non-compliant behaviors; during the review process, expert teams shall conduct real-time verification of questionable data and abnormal contents; upon service completion, IAPUC shall conduct regular random retrospective sampling inspection of historical declaration documents and evaluation results.
All user-submitted documents, review records and behavioral records shall be permanently filed in the official IAPUC academic ethics database. Even if users complete accreditation review, obtain qualification certification, finish activity participation, expire membership validity or terminate cooperative relations, IAPUC reserves the right to initiate disciplinary procedures and pursue accountability in accordance with this Code upon the retrospective verification of academic misconduct at any subsequent stage.
8. Hierarchical Disciplinary Sanctions and Complete Legal Liability Mechanism
Any violation of this Code constitutes a material breach of academic morality and institutional service agreements. In accordance with the severity, frequency, adverse impact scope and subjective fault degree of violations, IAPUC implements hierarchical, standardized and traceable disciplinary sanctions, and reserves the right to pursue legal liabilities in accordance with applicable laws:
(1) Minor Violation: Issuance of an official internal written warning, entry of violation records into the academic ethics file, mandatory formal rectification and written compliance commitment, and targeted academic ethical education;
(2) General Violation: Rejection of current application documents, termination of ongoing review procedures, invalidation of partial evaluation results, and temporary suspension of user service application eligibility;
(3) Serious Violation: Full invalidation of all acquired evaluation results, certification qualifications and activity credits; suspension of institutional or individual membership; freezing of all service rights and academic participation qualifications;
(4) Major Violation: Permanent revocation of institutional and individual membership qualifications, permanent blacklisting of the violating subject, and lifelong prohibition of all subsequent IAPUC service applications, academic participations and cooperative engagements;
(5) Public Credit Punishment: Official public announcement of serious non-compliant behaviors and bad faith records within the official system, and inclusion in the IAPUC academic integrity credit database.
Where academic misconduct causes direct or indirect institutional reputation losses, economic losses, third-party rights infringement disputes and legal proceedings, IAPUC shall strictly pursue the user’s civil liabilities, economic compensation liabilities and extended legal responsibilities in accordance with applicable national civil laws, intellectual property laws and international compliance conventions.
9. Lifelong Binding Force and Continuous Compliance Obligations
The compliance obligations of academic ethics are perpetual, continuous and lifelong effective. The binding force of this Code shall not terminate upon the completion of a single service cooperation, conclusion of accreditation review, expiration of membership term, withdrawal from academic activities, or change of user institutional affiliation and personal identity.
All users shall maintain long-term academic self-discipline and professional moral constraints, proactively abide by international academic ethical norms and IAPUC institutional rules in all subsequent academic research, teaching operations, institutional management and academic exchange activities, and perpetually safeguard the clean, fair, transparent and credible order of global higher education quality assurance and academic exchanges.
10. Policy Interpretation, Conflict Resolution and Supplementary Provisions
This Academic Ethics and Moral Code serves as a core independent normative document within the IAPUC institutional compliance system, possessing exclusive authoritative binding force. This Code complements and supports all other official IAPUC policies and institutional rules, jointly forming a closed-loop standardized compliance governance system.
In the event of any provision inconsistency between this Code and other auxiliary institutional rules concerning academic ethics judgment, misconduct identification and compliance standard measurement, the provisions of this Code shall prevail as the sole authoritative adjudication criterion.
Exclusive Interpretation Right: The exclusive final interpretation right, revision right and supplementary right of this Code shall be vested in the IAPUC Academic Ethics and Moral Review Committee. In response to the iteration of international academic ethical standards, updates of national legal provisions and emerging academic behavioral risks, the Committee shall timely optimize and revise the contents of this Code. All revised versions shall take effect upon official announcement on the IAPUC official website and shall be universally binding on all users.
11. Official Consultation, Ethical Complaint and Supervision Channels
To ensure the openness, transparency and procedural standardization of academic ethics supervision, complaint acceptance and dispute settlement, IAPUC establishes dedicated official institutions and exclusive communication channels for global academic ethics affairs:
Competent Authorities: Academic Ethics and Moral Review Committee
Dedicated Official Email: aemrc@iapuc.org
Official Website: www.iapuc.org
All complaint information and ethical dispute applications shall be kept strictly confidential by the competent authorities. The Academic Ethics and Moral Review Committee shall conduct independent verification, impartial review and standardized disposal, and issue official written feedback to applicants within the prescribed procedural period.
12. Copyright Statement and Interpretation Reservation
Copyright © 2026 International Association of Private Universities and Colleges (IAPUC). All Rights Reserved. This Academic Ethics and Moral Code is an officially released exclusive institutional normative document of IAPUC. No unauthorized reproduction, excerpt, revision, public dissemination or commercial utilization is permitted. All final official interpretation rights are exclusively reserved by the Academic Ethics and Moral Review Committee.
