Academic papers are divided into six grades. The first level is papers published in two journals, Science and Nature. The second level refers to SCI publications and papers, natural sciences, SSCI publications and social sciences. The third level refers to the papers collected by the internationally used retrieval systems of SCIE, EI and ISTP. The fourth level refers to the papers published in core journals, generally referring to the papers published in Peking University Library's "Overview of National Chinese Core Journals", the fifth level refers to national general journals, and the sixth level refers to provincial general journals.

There are three levels of content-based publications. Content-based publications must be sponsored by the education department, published by the China Education Association and its special committees at the national level, published by the Ministry of Education, published at the provincial level and published at the district level.