China
Adrian Stanley is CEO of The Charlesworth Group (USA), which sells and markets Western content to Chinese libraries and provides global publishing services
Charlesworth China directors proposing a toast
For Western publishers (the smaller ones without local offices in China), I believe there are challenges in communicating and understanding the culture; cultivating long- term relationships and partnerships; and knowing the market and how to work in it. Another challenge for Western publishers
is that Chinese institutions like hosting legacy content on their own platforms. That is a challenge, as publishers are often concerned about letting their content be elsewhere. As a company we find that we are increasingly being called on to get involved with these deals to provide reassurance. Having offices or representation in the country helps, but companies need to have the right approach. I’ve seen many people try to go to China and fail. For Chinese publishers, there are challenges to promote and market their content outside China. University presses have published in Chinese in the past, but they are now trying to be more international. Many of the best Chinese authors already want to publish in international journals.
Yan Shuai, director of journal publishing at Beijing Forestry University and president of the Society of China University Journals
One big opportunity for Western publishers in China is joint publishing, because some journals wish to increase their international influence. Another opportunity is rights licensing. There is also potential for western publishers to do training in China. However, they should be careful because China’s General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) restricts this. Many Chinese scholarly journals are
seeking high impact in their field worldwide, so they might be interested in cooperation. I predict that networking will replace printing to a great extent; Chinese journals will have more contributions from abroad; and editorial committees will become more international.
David Swinbanks is publishing director, Nature Publishing Group and CEO of NPG Nature Asia-Pacific
One of the biggest challenges facing Western publishers in China is that they cannot set up 100 per cent-owned publishing operations in China. They can only set up a joint venture with a Chinese partner with a minority shareholding for the Western publisher. So Western publishers either set up publishing services companies (which can be 100 per cent-owned) or enter into partnerships or publishing contracts with Chinese publishers. There is a danger that, as the quality of Chinese scientific output grows and the strength and the capabilities of Chinese science publishers improves, Western publishers may find themselves restricted in what they can achieve in China. This won’t happen overnight because, at this stage, Chinese science publishers still have a lot to learn from the West and it will take quite a few years to catch up. But Western publishers may face quite a challenging situation with local Chinese competition 10 or 20 years down the road, unless they are allowed to play on a level playing field with their Chinese counterparts. Another challenge facing Western
publishers is quite extensive exploitation and abuse of their copyrights by pirates operating
22 Research Information October/November 2010
in the online world. The Chinese government is committed to the protection of IPR; it is in China’s best interests to protect IPR as Chinese companies in areas like electronics become strong players in the world markets. But protection at the local level remains weak and there are several cases of blatant exploitation of copyright of Western content. The pressure to publish and problems of
fraud and plagiarism are serious issues that China has to address and something that Western publishers have to be conscious of. We, and other Western publishers, are making a lot of effort to educate the Chinese scientific community in how to publish in top scientific journals – but more could be done on this front. Language is not such a problem for the top
scientists in China, as they have often trained in the West and have good English language skills. But to reach the middle and lower-tier research organisations and universities, and the general public in China, language is a barrier. It is also an opportunity if we can provide content in Chinese. We run a Chinese-language website that highlights some of the top papers from Nature each week and we anticipate
that we will publish more in Chinese in the future, just as we have already done in Japan. Translating content into Chinese on an extensive scale accurately and in a form that is natural and readable is costly and challenging (as we have already found in Japan) and the challenge is to come up with business models that cover the costs and makes it a profitable exercise. We are beginning to find ways to do this as the Chinese market. The biggest opportunities lie in the rapidly-
growing output of high-quality research from China, but also in publishing the growing output of scientific papers in general from China. If ways can be found to fund open- access (OA) publishing from China with appropriate fees to cover the cost of publishing this could become a significant opportunity for publishers, given the massive growing output of research papers from China and the desire of the Chinese authorities and institutions to make their research better known to the world and freely available.
www.researchinformation.info
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