China
Nicola Gulley is editorial director of IOP Publishing, which has had an office in China for the past 10 years
Some of the Chinese physics journals are the very best in the country and there has been increased funding in science over the past five to 10 years with growth in output of research material as a result. There was considerable focus on the print journal 10 years ago as online access was sometimes difficult or expensive. This has now changed and online access is much easier, particularly in new buildings that have internet access factored in from the beginning. One big challenge is overcoming the language and cultural barriers. In some areas this is less pronounced, but there is still a preconception that articles published in Chinese journals are not as high quality as those published in the established Western journals, which is not always true. Language is still a barrier, but many scientists speak English, with many of the top researchers having studied outside of China for many years. However there can be issues in communicating within different frames of reference. This issue is not unique to China (for example, there can be communication issues between UK English and US English that can lead to misunderstandings). The amount of research going on
within China is enormous, and this has been seen by the growth of articles published. However the visibility of some of this research has not grown as quickly. It has improved over the past 10 years but there is still more work to do here. Given the recent investment, I predict
that research publishing will continue to grow. In many areas of physics research China publishes the highest number of articles, followed closely by North America. Currently, a lot of those articles are published in Western journals, because they have higher impact and higher visibility, but as research publishing in China grows, the impact of the home journals will also increase.
16 Research Information August/September 2010
David Swinbanks is publishing director, Nature Publishing Group and CEO of NPG Nature Asia-Pacific
The leap in citations of Chinese papers has only happened in the past few years and many editors in the West have not yet woken up to the dramatic increase in high- quality research coming from China. Understandably, what editors tend to still
see is the flood of rather low-quality papers coming out of China. But recently leaders of top institutions and universities in China have been stressing the need to improve the quality rather than just the quantity of their scientific output. And this change is happening. A decade ago we published only a handful of papers (fewer than 10) in Nature journals among the thousands from the rest of the world. Now China’s output in
‘It will not be long before
China surpasses Japan and starts challenging some of the top Western countries for high-quality output’
Nature journals is well over 100 per year. This is still behind countries like Japan (with over 200 per year) and the UK and USA, but it will not be long before China surpasses Japan and starts challenging some of the top Western countries for output of high-quality research. A challenge for Chinese researchers is
access to science websites based outside China. Universities and institutions are charged for the download of content from websites based outside of China. The charges are significant and all but the best- funded institutions place restrictions on their users accessing offshore websites. As a result, Western publishers either have to set up some sort of mirror site or caching site within China so users can access their content without additional charge or enter into a contract with CERNET, the internet network for
universities in China, so
the Western publisher in effect pays the downloading charges on behalf of the user.
Yan Shuai, director of journal publishing at Beijing Forestry University and president of the Society of China University Journals
The Chinese government has a very strict policy on publishing. Any organisations that want to publish a new journal have to register with the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP). Once the application is approved, GAPP will issue a China Serial Number (CN) and then the journal can have an ISSN. Sometimes a journal is only given a CN, which means that it can only be distributed inside mainland China. Chinese local governments also do an annual check on journal publishing every spring. Most Chinese journals are owned by societies, institutes and universities. They are seldom published by commercial publishers. Anybody who wants to be an editor has to have recently passed a national examination. The ‘responsible editors’ also
have to take part in training programmes approved by GAPP. Another difference between China and the West is that Chinese journals pay more attention to SCI impact factors than foreign journals do. Compared with those in the West, Chinese researchers don’t have many chances to carry out international projects and it is difficult to attend international meetings. Language is a problem; only a small portion of editors and researchers can write and speak English fluently. The West can help with this by sponsoring some projects or developing joint projects and by Western researchers spending time in China. Access to foreign websites such as journals, societies, and conferences can also help to eliminate barriers between China and the West.
www.researchinformation.info
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