Objective To compare the ethics quality of articles published in Chinese versus international nursing journals by Chinese scholars. Methods A collection of experimental papers on human subjects published in nursing journals indexed in SCI/SSCI or CSCD between 2013 to 2017, with first or corresponding authors being from mainland China, were retrieved. The ethics quality of the papers were evaluated and compared in terms of "informed consent", "privacy protection", "harmlessness", "ethics committee review", "fairness" and "conflict of interest". Results A total of 133 papers, including 57 English papers and 76 Chinese papers, were retrieved from 120 nursing journals. The ethics quality of the papers published in four Chinese nursing journals had no significant differences （P＞0.05 for all）.The total ethics quality scores, and the scores "informed consent", "conflict of interest", "ethics committee review", "clinical trial registration" for papers in Chinese were significantly lower than papers in English （P＜0.01 for all）. Conclusion The ethics quality of papers published in Chinese nursing journals need to be improved. Besides, the researchers must follow the ethical requirements in the research process, and domestic nursing journals should enforce ethical standards, so as to improve the ethics quality of papers published in Chinese nursing journals.