China implements reforms for science journals

Objective of the government plan is to improve the quality and scientific impact of journals published in China, said Yan Shuai, Chief Editor of the Tsinghua University Press, at FAPESP event.

By Elton Alisson

Agência FAPESP – China has more than 10,000 science journals, 5,000 of which are in the fields of Exact Sciences, Technology and Medicine, published mainly by research institutions, universities, corporations and science associations.

To increase the international scientific impact of the published articles, China is conducting an extensive reform of its academic scientific publications that includes improving quality and professionalizing and internationalizing responsibilities, processes and editorial content.

The details of the plan were addressed by Yan Shuai, Associate Chief Editor of the Tsinghua University Press, of Tsinghua University in Beijing, during a talk at the 1st Brazil-China Bilateral Meeting on STM Publishing, held at FAPESP May 23, 2014.

Promoted by Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO), a FAPESP program, the meeting brought together journal editors and science communication professionals from China and Brazil for the purpose of sharing ideas, information and experiences about editing, publishing and disseminating journals to increase the international visibility of the publications of the two countries.

“One of the differences between science journals published in China and those published in the West is that there are not many Chinese journals published by publishing houses,” Shuai said.

“We have approximately 5,000 science journals [in the Exact Sciences, Technology and Medicine] edited and published by more than 2,000 organizations and only a few publishing houses, while in Europe, for example, university journals are mostly published by publication companies,” said the Chief Editor of the Tsinghua University Press, which has 14 titles in the fields of Computer Technology, Science and Engineering, Economics, Management and Human Sciences, Professional Education and Foreign Languages and plans to launch one in the field of Traditional Chinese Medicine in 2014.

According to Shuai, one of the main reasons for the low number of science journals published by publication houses in China is that traditionally, it is the Chinese universities and research institutions that perform the work of selecting, peer review, editing and publication of the scientific articles.

Some time ago, however, the agency that regulates the press and Chinese publications, known as the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP), began to implement reforms to publications in China, specifying that universities and research institutions could delegate the tasks of publishing and distributing the content of Chinese science journals on different platforms to commercial publishers.

“One of the main objectives of the reform is to distinguish and separate the academic work of editing science journals conducted by the universities from the business of publishing,” Shuai said. “The universities could continue to work on selecting articles and conducting peer review and make decisions on what is published. But the publishing houses could publish and distribute the content.”

Reforms in the publication of Chinese academic journals seek to bring together the resources of academia, editing, digital platforms and major Chinese academic journals to form groups of professional journals and commercial publishing houses in the country and promote the development of academic journals, explained Shuai.

“The purpose of the reforms is to make the editorial market for science journals in China more open to the outside and promote cooperation with international editors and the publication of online scientific articles by Chinese researchers. The idea is to strengthen the high-impact publications, integrate and restructure those with growth potential, and deactivate the weakest,” he said.

Increased impact

One of the most important investments made within the scope of the reform was the September 2013 release of a project by the Chinese Association of Science and Technology, an umbrella organization of China’s science and technology associations, to increase the international projection of Chinese science journals already published in English, explained Shuai in a meeting held with representatives of the SciELO program at FAPESP on the same day as the event.

Designated as the Project for Enhancing International Impact of China STM Journals (PIIJ), the project calls for inviting renowned foreign scientists to be Chief or Associate Editors, restructuring the editorial board, improving the process of peer review adopted by publications and seeking to attract high-quality scientific articles, particularly findings of research funded by the Chinese government.

The project also plans to invest nearly US$340,000.00 per year through 2018 in a group of Chinese journals with the highest scientific impact factor. These include Nano Research and the International Journal of Oral Science, published by Tsinghua University Press.

According to Zeng Jie, editor of the Tsinghua University Press, China has nearly 2,000 universities and schools. More than 600 of them conduct research and have approximately 700,000 scientists and engineers. China publishes, on average, nearly 600,000 scientific articles each year, mainly in domestic science journals.

Of a total of 5,000 titles in the Exact Sciences, Technology and Medicine, however, only 240 are published in English, and of these, 147 are found in the database of the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), which is a resource that allows assessment and comparisons of scientific publications on the Web of Science, Jie explained.

“Academic journal publication reform is also designed to increase the number of journals we publish in English and their international scientific impact,” Jie said during the event.

Jie and Shuai further mentioned that China’s academic journals also face the problem of lack of a publication platform such as SciELO.

Domestic articles

According to data presented by Rogério Meneghini, scientific director of the SciELO network during the event, China has more domestic science journals published in English on the Web of Science than Brazil does – 73.5% compared to 50.3% of Brazilian science journals found in the database.

The science journals of both countries found on the Web of Science have a similar number of scientific articles by national authors, 83% in the case of China and 82.9% in the case of Brazil, Meneghini explained.

“In emerging or developing countries [such as Brazil and China], national journals are mainly designed to direct the flow of scientific production from these two nations,” Meneghini said.

“In the science journals published in developed countries, domestic articles represent, in general, a minority [in relationship to the articles published by foreign authors],” he compared.

According to Meneghini, the reason for this tendency is that science journals from developed countries have a greater international impact than those from developing countries. For this reason, they tend to publish more articles from other countries.

Journals from developing countries, however, have less international impact and thus tend to give larger flow to their own articles rather than those from other countries. “This tendency could change as the science from emerging countries develops more,” Meneghini told Agência FAPESP.

Another difference, according to Meneghini, is in article citation. Developing or emerging countries tend to present a balance in the citation of their own articles with those from other countries. In the case of developed countries, however, the majority of articles cited are from other countries, he explained.

“Eighty-five percent of the citations made in articles published by Switzerland from 2010 to 2011, for example, were from studies published by other countries,” said Meneghini.

Brazilian science journals

Brazil has 5,068 science journals classified by the Qualis system of the Brazilian Federal Agency for the Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education (CAPES), explained Abel Packer, SciELO program coordinator during the event.

SciELO Brasil currently has nearly 278 journals published by 176 different institutions that make up a collection of the main domestic scientific titles available in open access on the Internet, and it has already made more than 900 journals available.

Among the lines of action established in recent years to improve management and increase the visibility of the SciELO Brasil collection, according to Packer, are professionalizing management, ensuring financial sustainability and internationalizing the publications.

“We need to increase the percentage of foreign researchers involved on the editorial committees, in the process of peer review and especially as authors of articles published by Brazilian journals,” he noted.