RESEARCH ARTICLE
Toward internationalization: A bibliometric analysis
of the social sciences in Mainland China
from 1979 to 2018
a n o p e n a c c e s s
j o u r n a l
Lin Zhang1,2
, Yuanyuan Shang1
, Ying Huang1,2
, and Gunnar Sivertsen3
1School of Information Management, Wuhan University, China
2Centre for R&D Monitoring (ECOOM) and Department of MSI, KU Leuven, Belgium
3Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education, Tøyen, Oslo, Norway
Citation: Zhang, L., Shang, Y., Huang,
Y., & Sivertsen, G. (2020). Toward
internationalization: A bibliometric
analysis of the social sciences in
Mainland China from 1979 to 2018.
Quantitative Science Studies, 2(1),
376–408. https://doi.org/10.1162
/qss_a_00102
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00102
Received: 30 April 2020
Accepted: 17 June 2020
Corresponding Author:
Ying Huang
ying.huang@kuleuven.be
Handling Editor:
Li Tang
Copyright: © 2020 Lin Zhang,
Yuanyuan Shang, Ying Huang, and
Gunnar Sivertsen. Published under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International (CC BY 4.0) license.
The MIT Press
Keywords: China, international collaboration, internationalization, international journals, social sciences
ABSTRACT
The past 40 years have witnessed profound changes in the international competitiveness of
Mainland China’s scientific research. Based on publication data from Chinese researchers in the
Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) from the Web of Science ( WoS), this study aims to provide
a bird’s-eye view of how social science research in Mainland China has internationalized over
the past four decades. The findings show that the number of social science articles published
by Chinese authors in international journals has experienced a noticeable increase, and the
collaboration networks of researchers from Mainland China have broadened, with the number of
articles with a Chinese first author showing a strong upward trend. In addition, findings show that
Chinese scholars are published in a wider range of journals, and there has been a steady increase
in their appearance in higher impact journals (influenced in part by certain journals). Finally,
different social science disciplines show various degrees of internationalization. This study
provides a broad view from which to examine the internationalization process in Mainland
China’s social science landscape in the last four decades, while also noting some of the possible
explanations for these changes, thereby deepening our understanding of social science research
stemming from the region.
INTRODUCTION
1.
The era of reform inaugurated by Deng Xiaoping in 1978 and Mainland China’s subsequent
opening to the outside world has led to rapid advances in China, particularly in the areas of
economics, education, science, and technology. Mainland China has been recognized as one
of the leading nations for scientific research due to the “exponential growth” of its publication
output (Foland, 2010; Jin & Rousseau, 2004). As part of this development, internationalization—
the exchange of information and intellectual collaboration across national boundaries—has
emerged as a distinctive component in Mainland China’s emergence as a pacesetter in scientific
research. Internationalization is “an essential part of the path that social knowledge must walk
in order to become truly scientific” (Boncourt, 2018). Indeed, internationalization is important
not only for ensuring research quality and the development of specialization (Sivertsen, 2016)
but also for enhancing the prestige, visibility and competences of the country, institution or
individual (Altbach & Knight, 2007). However, local orientation in research is important as
well. The social sciences would lose their raison d’être and support from society by
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
/
.
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
disconnecting from the surrounding culture and society to mainly communicate in international
journals that are only read by peers abroad (Sivertsen, 2016). The social sciences not only study
culture and society but may also collaborate with, influence and improve culture and society
in domains such as economic and social development, policy design, public administration,
legislation, education, sustainable urban and rural life, media and information, international
affairs, and global understanding. Hence, internationalization and local relevance in the social
sciences should not be seen as opposed to each other, but as a question of a dynamic balance
(Sivertsen, 2018). This article focuses on the process and characteristics of internationalization
as a dynamic balance over time in Mainland China’s social sciences.
There are three interconnected levels (reflected in Figure 1) at which the process of advancing
internationalization can be observed.
In a broad sense, the meaning of internationalization may include three levels—national,
institutional, and individual level. At the national level, there are various policies and research
programs that encourage and support scientific research that crosses international boundaries. At
the institutional level (e.g., universities), internationalization can be promoted through foreign-
language instruction, exchanging and/or teaching international students, constructing faculty
teams with international backgrounds, etc. At the individual level, it can involve collaborating
and publishing internationally, seeking academic recognition abroad, being active in international
research organizations and conferences, and research stays in secondary affiliations abroad.
The use of the research framework in Figure 1 will require a wide range of document studies
and statistical data that are partly only available at the local level. However, scientific publica-
tions in themselves contain useful information about various aspects of internationalization in
knowledge production, and these are highlighted in the lower part of Figure 1. Cited references
represent the knowledge base of the study. The authors may have affiliations (published
addresses) in different countries, and the topic of the study may be more or less relevant across
countries. Some journals are more international than others with a worldwide representation of
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
.
/
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
Figure 1. The research framework for internationalization of scientific research.
Quantitative Science Studies
377
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
authors. The publication itself may achieve a broad citation impact across countries. Bibliometrics
can be used to capture such aspects of internationalization. The source of knowledge for an article
(to what extent the literature sources come from different countries), the process of the research
(whether there is international collaboration expressed as coauthorship), where the article is
published (in international or domestic journals), and the impact of the research (to what extent
publications receive citations from the international community) can all be investigated through
bibliometrics. As a first step in systematic research, the current study focuses on investigating
internationalization from the perspectives of international collaboration and journal information.
It should be noted that in Mainland China there are striking differences in the degree of inter-
nationalization between the natural sciences and the social sciences. The remarkable gains that
research in the natural sciences has enjoyed in Mainland China over the past four decades have
been well documented (Basu, Foland et al., 2018; Jin & Rousseau, 2005; Wang, 2016). This is
partially attributable to the fact that the objects of study in the natural sciences are usually
universal, which is convenient for international academic communication. In contrast, the
phenomena of the social sciences are typically embedded locally, as described above, and the
obligations towards local relevance may often lead to a lack of international relevance and influ-
ence. In addition, Chinese social scientists face difficulties when participating in the global arena
owing to cultural differences and language barriers (Yang, 2013). Our study will show that
Mainland China still has far to go to raise the level of internationalization of its social science
research.
Mainland China has only recently become internationally visible in social science research,
with significant growth in research outputs and more frequent cross-border communication and
collaboration (Li & Li, 2015). On this background, we focus on the internationalization of
Mainland China’s social science research for the following reasons. First, in the past 40 years,
Chinese universities have developed their international connectivity and competitiveness
around the world. China’s universities are being reshaped by a series of “excellence initiatives,”
including “Project 211,” “Project 985,” and “Double First-Class.” These excellence initiatives,
among other policy contexts, have profoundly advanced the internationalization of Chinese
researchers’ academic communication and outputs (Rhoads & Hu, 2012). Internationalization
has been adopted as one of the major strategies by elite Chinese universities to meet national
targets for world-class status (Mohrman, 2008; Xie, 2018; Yang & Welch, 2012).
Second, while Mainland China is renowned as a large and influential contributor in the natural
and technological sciences, the standing of its social sciences is still an underresearched area. It
remains unclear whether Mainland China has also risen to the same level of global influence
when it comes to the social sciences (Liu et al., 2015).
Finally, several new research policies related to social science research have been launched in
China during recent decades. As an example, the Chinese government issued its “Opinions on
Further Prospering the Development of Philosophy and Social Science” in 2004, which spelled
out a roadmap for the internationalization of social science and humanities research in Mainland
China1. In our study, we will relate our observations of the development of Mainland China’s
social sciences to the relevant policy contexts over time.
Most of the existing studies seek to answer some variants of the research question “Is China
becoming a ‘giant’ in social sciences?” Several responses have drawn on bibliometric analyses.
For example, Zhou, Thijs, and Glänzel (2009) charted the evolution and citation impact of
1 http://www.gov.cn/test/2005-07/06/content_12421.htm. The term “philosophy” refers to the humanities in
general.
Quantitative Science Studies
378
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
/
.
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
China’s publication activity in the social sciences and concluded that “China has not yet taken off
in the internationalization of social sciences” (p. 615). Liu, Hu et al. (2015) similarly concluded
that China is still not a major player in the social sciences with regard to the number of Chinese
journals indexed in SSCI and the number of globally recognized researchers. There have also
been a series of studies investigating the development of China’s social sciences from the
perspective of specific disciplines (Wang, 2011; Zhang, Xu et al., 2018).
Apart from the observations reported in the previous literature (Liu et al., 2015; Zhou et al.,
2009), this study focuses on a thorough analysis of the long-term internationalization process
(1979–2018) in Mainland China’s social science research from a comprehensive bibliometric
perspective. Our four specific research questions are
1. What are the overall and periodic development trends in the internationalization process
for social science research by Chinese researchers? How can international and local
publication trends be explained in light of Mainland China’s research policies to promote
international development?
2. What role does international collaboration play in internationalization? Are Chinese
authors increasingly taking the first-author role in international collaboration articles in
social sciences?
3. Are more social science articles involving Chinese authors published in high-impact
journals? What role does the rapid development of open access (OA) in publication
activities play in this process?
4. What differences exist concerning the above questions with respect to the different social
science disciplines?
2. DATA AND METHODOLOGY
2.1. Data Source
This study takes articles indexed in SSCI as the data source for the analysis of internationalization.
In addition, Chinese articles indexed in CSSCI (Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index)2 are
analyzed for comparison with domestic publishing. Limitations of the SSCI data should be
mentioned. The heterogeneity of the scholarly publication patterns in the social sciences includes
not only journal articles. Books and articles in books are also often used for publishing research in
the social sciences (Sivertsen, 2016). Further, journal articles have limited coverage in the SSCI in
several social science disciplines (Aksnes & Sivertsen, 2019). In addition, as a result of the pro-
liferation of interdisciplinary researches, many studies sit between the natural and social sciences.
Some articles indexed in SSCI are also related to social sciences. Despite the limitations, com-
pared to other data sources and for the feasibility of international comparisons across disciplines
and countries, SSCI contains the core body of international literature along with stable long-term
coverage. Furthermore, as a vehicle for scholarly communication and collaboration within the
international academic community, articles published in international journals do play a vital
role in the internationalization of most disciplines. Therefore, we selected publications indexed
as “Article” in SSCI within the years 1979–2018 as the original data sample. The total number of
publications from all countries is almost seven million.
2 CSSCI (https://cssrac.nju.edu.cn/a/cpzx/zwshkxwsy/) is a citation index database in Mainland China. It was
developed by Nanjing University in 1997 and was established in 2000. This citation database covers about
500 Chinese academic journals in the humanities and social sciences.
Quantitative Science Studies
379
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
/
.
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
.
/
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
Figure 2. Data source and processing for the internationalization analysis.
2.2. Data Processing
2.2.1. The classification of social science disciplines
The data source and processing procedures are indicated in Figure 2. Although SSCI mainly in-
dexes journals in the social sciences, it contains some journals that are also assigned to natural
sciences categories. All journals in our data set were, therefore, additionally filtered by the
ECOOM classification (Glänzel & Schubert, 2003; Glänzel, Thijs & Chi, 2016). Only journals
that were assigned to one of the six ECOOM social sciences fields were kept for further investi-
gation. Furthermore, taking the large share of psychology journals and publications in SSCI into
consideration, a “Psychology” field was added in addition to the original ECOOM classifications
of the social sciences3. Therefore, the social sciences referred to in this study include academic
articles that belong to these seven social science field classifications: Business, Economics,
Planning; Community & Social Issues; Education, Media & Information Science; Law; Political
Science & Administration; Psychology; and Sociology & Anthropology. The matching relation
between the above social science field classification and WoS journal categories ( WCs) is listed
in the Appendix. There were 5,036,181 publications available after filtering. We refer to these
publications as “social science articles” to differentiate from the original whole data sample in-
dexed in SSCI (almost seven million). For specific disciplinary analysis, a full-count assignment
scheme has been applied for publications with multiple disciplinary classifications.
2.2.2.
Identifying country/region from the author’s address
The country/region information is extracted from the author’s institutional address, which is
included in the publication’s bibliographic information. For the purposes of this study, we sepa-
rated Mainland China from Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan. These jurisdictions have very
different scientific research systems. Among all the authors of a publication, as long as at least
one of the authors’ institutional address is located in Mainland China, the publication is included
3 This new classification corresponds with the 11 WoS categories ( WCs) that are related to psychology.
Quantitative Science Studies
380
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
in the data set of Mainland China. We could thereby assign 49,109 publications to Mainland
China. The same assignment approach is applied for other countries (the United States, the
United Kingdom, and Japan) for comparative analysis.
2.2.3. The different collaboration types of articles
To conduct an in-depth analysis of collaboration, we classified the publications by collaboration
type. In this study, we defined that noninternational collaboration articles (N-ICA) are written by
researchers with addresses in the same countries, and international collaboration articles (ICA) are
written by researchers with addresses in different countries. Specifically speaking, based on the insti-
tutional addresses of the authors of the publications, noninternational collaboration articles (N-ICA)
are those where all the listed affiliations are located in Mainland China. International collaboration
articles (ICA) list one or more affiliations in another country. Note, however, that we did not classify
Hong Kong, Macao, or Taiwan as “another country.” There is a small group of articles (8.16% of the
data sample) with combined affiliations in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan. These
articles are not included in the ICA and N-ICA categories, but are analyzed separately.
To investigate the role of Chinese scholars in international collaboration, we then further di-
vided the set of ICA articles according to the first author’s affiliation. The order in which the au-
thors’ names appear generally reflects the contribution that each author made to the article
(Egghe, Liang, & Rousseau, 2003), with the first author typically playing a lead role in the research
and writing process (Larivière, Desrochers et al., 2016). Articles in which the first author is affil-
iated with a Chinese institution are categorized as Mainland China-led ICA. Articles in which the
first author is affiliated with another country are categorized as Other-led ICA4. ( We used the
corresponding author information where first author data was missing.) Figure 3 summarizes
the different types of collaboration.
2.2.4. The calculation of journal quartiles
For the analysis from a journal perspective, we calculated the journal quartiles according to jour-
nal impact factors for each year from 1996–20175. Although the Journal Citation Reports ( JCR)
website provides journal quartiles for each year and discipline, its data are difficult to download
in bulk from the JCR website. Our study is based on long-term large-scale data, and therefore we
chose to calculate the quartiles ourselves using the journal impact factor data.
Two steps were required for calculating journal quartiles. First, subdata sets were created of jour-
nals in each year of every WoS category (WC) and then ranked within each subdata set by journal
impact factor in decreasing order. The percentile value of each journal was computed as 100 × i/n
(where n and i indicate the number of journals and the rank value, respectively). The resulting quar-
tiles were designated Q1 (0–25%), Q2 (25%–50%), Q3 (50%–75%), and Q4 (75%–100%). We did
not calculate quartiles for subdata sets containing less than four journals. In cases where a journal
belonged to more than one WC, we used the best quartile result of that journal in that year.
3. RESULTS
The results are presented in three subsections, focusing on different dimensions of Mainland
China’s social science research publication performance from the perspective of internationali-
zation. In the first subsection, we discuss Mainland China’s social science publication track
4 There are two reasons for taking first author rather than corresponding author as the basis of classification:
Compared with corresponding author, first author is more frequently used or recognized in social sciences,
and research evaluation in Mainland China in general favors attributed “first-author” contributions.
5 Journal impact factor data have been available for downloading since 1996.
Quantitative Science Studies
381
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
/
.
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
.
/
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
Figure 3. Different types of collaboration articles.
record in terms of general performance. We compare with selected countries and add Chinese
articles indexed in CSSCI for a domestic comparison. In the second subsection, we investigate
international collaboration in Mainland China’s social sciences, including general collaboration
trends and the distribution of disciplines, and investigate collaboration networks across conti-
nents, regions, and countries. The final subsection focuses on international journals in which
Chinese researchers have published, including the quartile distribution of international journals,
as well as some details related to disciplines and collaboration types. A discussion of OA journals
is also included in the last section.
3.1. The Emerging Internationalization of Mainland China’s Social Science
In this subsection, we focus on the development trends in Mainland China’s social science
research, with a comparative analysis of international and domestic articles. To understand the
differences between how social sciences have developed in Mainland China as opposed to other
countries, we chose to compare with three developed nations, the United States, the United
Kingdom6, and Japan. Chinese articles indexed in CSSCI were also added to the picture to help
understand the relative role of internationalization within Mainland China.
3.1.1. General trends
Figure 4 shows the number and annual growth of social science articles indexed by SSCI from
Mainland China.
Two observations are clear: International articles rarely occurred with a strongly fluctuating
annual growth rate prior to 1998. More recently, Mainland China’s researchers have been
6 The United Kingdom includes England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
Quantitative Science Studies
382
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
Figure 4. Phases in the evolution of Mainland China’s international social science articles in SSCI
(1979–2018) 7.
publishing significantly more articles internationally while the annual growth rates have stabi-
lized (around 20%). As mentioned in Section 1, a policy was issued by the Chinese government
on promoting the international development of social sciences in 2004, and it may have contrib-
uted to the increasing growth rate of Mainland China’s social science articles indexed in SSCI
around 2005. We observe three different evolution phases of Mainland China’s social science
research—initial exploration, development, and relative stability.
3.1.2.
International comparison
As Figure 5 shows, the world share of social science articles from the United States has main-
tained roughly the same 25%–30% over the last decades. Moreover, the world shares of social
science articles from the United Kingdom and Japan have shown relatively steady growth. In con-
trast, there is a noticeable growth in Mainland China’s share, especially in the last decade. The
number of publications for each country was calculated on the basis of a full counting scheme.
3.1.3. Domestic comparison
The above comparison shows a significant growth of international articles in Mainland China’s
social sciences compared to three other countries. This may be regarded as a sign of increasing
internationalization. However, this trend needs to be contrasted with the indigenous practice of
academic publishing in Chinese social science to get the full picture.
Similar to SSCI, the CSSCI is a citation indexing database based on a selection of relatively
prestigious journals in the humanities and social sciences, but it only includes journals published
in Mainland China. These journals are highly recognized in Mainland China, and they publish a
7 The growth rate in 1980 is 300% due to the excessively small number of articles in 1979 and relatively large
variation in 1980. Therefore, this particular case is not shown in Figure 4.
Quantitative Science Studies
383
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
/
.
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
.
/
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
Figure 5. The number and world share of social science articles of Mainland China, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan
(1979–2018).
representative portion of the local articles in Mainland China’s social science fields8. The
annual number of social science articles indexed in CSSCI and SSCI is shown in Figure 6.
Figure 6 shows a decline in social science articles indexed by CSSCI after 2010. This trend can
be compared to, and perhaps explained by, the increasing trend of social science articles indexed
by SSCI from around the same time. However, local journals are still publishing the bulk of social
science publications by Chinese researchers. The number of CSSCI articles are nearly 25 times
that of SSCI articles during 1999–2018. Although the proportion of SSCI articles relative to the
total has been increasing over time, it only accounted for 14% in 2018. Mainland China’s world
share in Figure 5 is also very low compared to the situation in natural sciences, where Mainland
China is now the largest contributor in the world to international journals (Tollefson, 2018)9. We
can conclude that even with a high and stable growth rate recently, internationalization is not yet
a dominating trend in Mainland China’s social science. Compared to eight non-English speaking
European countries where data representing domestic publishing in the social sciences is avail-
able as well (Kulczycki, Engels et al., 2018), the share of articles published internationally from
8 The classification of social science disciplines in CSSCI is different from that of SSCI. Here, we choose similar
disciplines, including management, economics, political science, law, sociology, ethnology, journalism and
communication, library, information and literature, education, sports science, statistics, psychology, general
theory of social science, and military science.
9 We note that China and the United States’ position as “the largest contributor in the world to international jour-
nals” depends on the data source and the counting methods for international collaborated publications
(Sivertsen, Rousseau, & Zhang, 2019).
Quantitative Science Studies
384
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
.
/
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
Figure 6. The number of social science articles indexed in CSSCI and SSCI (1999 –2018)10.
Mainland China is lower than in Central and Eastern Europe (around 25%) and much lower than
in Western Europe (around 50%).
The trends reflected in international articles and domestic articles may demonstrate how
Mainland China has so far dealt with the dynamic balance between internationalization and
localization (Sivertsen, 2018). The process of internationalization is evident, but localization is
still dominating. Both have their own merits and defects. The term “localization” refers to social
science research that is based on domestic circumstances and practices and oriented towards
serving local needs. As mentioned before, it is part of the raison d’être of the social sciences to
be useful for local culture and society. Publishing in specialized journals on the international
level is necessary to be confronted with and inspired by scholarly standards, critical discussions,
and new developments among other experts in the field (Sivertsen, 2019). Obviously, localiza-
tion also means limited international visibility, influence and gains from international collabora-
tion. Not only the wish to be locally relevant but also the influence of cultural differences and
language barriers may strengthen localization and inhibit the development of a dynamic balance.
Some researchers see localization and internationalization as opposed to each other: The inter-
nationalization of academic production will potentially jeopardize the development of local
knowledge (Li, 2016; Yang, 2015), and there is a dilemma of publishing globally and perishing
locally or publishing locally and perishing globally (Hanafi, 2011). Yet the relation between in-
ternationalization and localization need not be antagonistic. The balance can be dynamic and
monitored with comprehensive data (beyond international databases), enabling both localiza-
tion and internationalization without just defending status quo or only focusing on one of the
strategies (Sivertsen, 2019; Zhang, Zhao et al., 2020).
The more recent policy of Mainland China for its social science research is not only“go
global,” (Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China [MOE], 2011) but also “publish
10 As the CSSCI database started providing data in 1999, the comparative analysis in this section begins from 1999.
Quantitative Science Studies
385
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
your best work in your motherland to benefit the local society,” as a call proposed by President
Xi in 201611. This orientation towards local needs for research and local publishing has been
reinforced recently in a new policy of the Ministry of Education (MOE) and Ministry of Science
and Technology (MOST) (MOE, 2020; Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s
Republic of China [MOST], 2020). The new policy specifies that “in principle, when researchers
provide representative publication lists, papers from domestic journals should account for at least
one-third of all the publications” (MOST, 2020). The new policy has aroused intense discussion
in China as well as immediate interest internationally. According to Zhang and Sivertsen (2020),
the specific “one third” criterion might work as a general policy aim but needs to be applied
with differentiation according to field and type of research and the purpose of communication.
The balance between globalization and local relevance needs to be empirical and dynamic,
that is, reflecting a statistically informed policy for reasonable change (Sivertsen, 2018). To be sta-
tistically informed, the policy needs data sources and indicators for documenting and measuring
the use of language for all the different purposes in research. An example would be to combine the
two data sources used in this study (SSCI and CSSCI) and extend them to other data sources repre-
senting the communication of the social sciences with Chinese society. The development could
then be monitored, and the policy could be made dynamic by using this comprehensive informa-
tion for a discussion of reasonable change; for example, to what extent is the “one third” criterion
promoting a reasonable balance between local relevance and global participation in each social
science field?
As shown in Figure 6, the annual volume of domestic articles indexed by the CSSCI is still
much higher than that in SSCI. If not balanced with a strategy for internationalization as well,
Chinese social science may not prosper from the gains from internationalization. Therefore,
localization should not be an obstacle to internationalization, but a resource for social science
from Mainland China to gain a place in the international academic arena.
3.2.
International Collaboration
In the era of “big science,” collaboration has become one of the primary ways to combine and
organize resources into a superior platform for research (Price, 1963). The increase in joint inter-
national papers signifies an increase in scientific collaboration across national boundaries and
offers an important area for bibliometric exploration (Luukkonen, Persson, & Sivertsen, 1992).
In this section, we look at the intersection of collaboration and internationalization in Chinese
social science research articles, including general collaboration trends and how collaboration is
distributed across disciplines, countries, and continents.
3.2.1. Trends of international collaboration
Figure 7 (left panel) shows that in the early years, most social science articles indexed by SSCI
only involved authors from Mainland China. International collaborations have increased steadily
over time, and a slight increase in the proportion of N-ICAs is observed in recent years. As shown
in Figure 7 (right panel), at first, the majority of those collaborations were led by researchers in
other countries. More recently, Chinese scholars have increasingly taken the first-author role.
After a clear shift in 1998, the proportion of Mainland China-led ICAs has sharply increased,
while the proportion of Other-led ICAs went into decline. This could be a sign that Chinese re-
searchers are taking a more active role in research collaboration, but some of the explanations
might be a policy with preference and monetary incentives only for first-author articles in China
11 See http://www.xinhuanet.com//politics/2016-05/31/c_1118965169.htm.
Quantitative Science Studies
386
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
/
.
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
Figure 7. The trends of articles of different collaboration types in the social sciences in Mainland China (1979 –2018) 12.
(Quan, Chen, & Shu, 2017). Furthermore, the recent increase in the overall proportion of N-ICAs
also indicates that an increasing number of Chinese scholars publish articles in international jour-
nals independently of international collaboration.
3.2.2. Discipline distribution
The degree and forms of international collaboration differ across social science disciplines. We
investigated and counted the proportion of ICAs and Mainland China-led ICAs in each discipline,
as shown in Figure 8.
ICAs in Business, Economics, Planning, Psychology, and Sociology & Anthropology account
for more than 50% of all SSCI articles in the corresponding discipline, indicating that international
collaboration is more widespread in these disciplines. The higher proportion of international col-
laboration in these disciplines may reflect more use of internationally shared quantitative re-
search methods, data, experiments, and division of labor among collaborators, and these
results also correspond well to different degrees of international publishing in social science fields
in general (Sivertsen, 2016). The disciplines with low international collaboration and relatively
more Mainland China-led articles (Education, Media & Information Science; Community & Social
issues; Law; Political Science & Administration) are also in most cases those that are more local-
ized in their choice of topics and general publication patterns in other countries (Ossenblok,
Engels, & Sivertsen, 2012).
3.2.3. Country distribution
We divided the period of study into four timespans (1979–1998, 1999–2008, 2009–2013, and
2014–2018) to show the evolution of international collaborations and to identify the collaborat-
ing countries in each timespan13. For a holistic picture of international collaboration in Mainland
China’s social science research, countries were grouped according to their respective continents
12 The calculation of the proportions of N-ICA and ICA is based on all articles, while the calculation of the pro-
portions of Mainland China-led ICA and Other-led ICA is based on international collaboration articles.
13 As shown in Figure 4, the development of social science research in Mainland China can be divided into three
distinct periods: 1979–1998, 1998–2010, and 2010–2018. Here, the periods are further divided into 1979–
1998, 1999–2008, 2009–2013, and 2014–2018 for deeper analysis.
Quantitative Science Studies
387
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
/
.
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
.
/
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
Figure 8. The proportion of ICA and Mainland China-led ICA in each social science disciplines from Mainland China (1979 –2018) 14.
and a separate region was created for Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan. The evolution of inter-
national collaboration with Mainland China is shown in Figure 9.
On the whole, the number of countries collaborating with Mainland China is increasing. The
number of countries and regions increased from 41 in the first period (1979–1998) to 126 in the
fourth period (2014–2018). More specifically, a notable increase in Mainland China’s interna-
tional collaboration with other countries and regions in Asia can be observed. Regionally
influencing factors such as geopolitics, history, language, and cultural similarity seem to be very
important for collaborative networks, as observed in other studies (Luukkonen et al., 1992). In
addition, there is also a clear growth of collaboration articles between Mainland China and
Europe. Not only have the number of collaboration articles risen significantly, but the proportion
of collaboration articles has also increased over time, reflecting growing research links between
Mainland China and Europe. As a contrast, the overall proportion of collaboration articles be-
tween Mainland China and North America shows a decreasing trend, from 69.53% in the first
period (1979–1998) to 54.09% in the fourth period (2014–2018). North America was an impor-
tant collaboration area in the early stages of the internationalization of Mainland China’s social
science research, but Mainland China’s international collaborations have expanded and diver-
sified significantly with the growth of international collaborators from around the world.
In terms of the collaboration periods, the greatest expansion of the number of collaboration
countries and regions is seen in the second period (1999–2008), from 41 in the first period (1979–
1998) to 90 in the second period (1999–2008). Further, the largest increase in the number of col-
laboration articles is also found in the second period (1999–2008), where it increased by 2.7
times compared to the first period. These observations may reflect that 1999–2008 was a turning
point for expanding international collaboration in the social sciences in Mainland China, but it
14 The calculation of the proportion of ICA is based on all articles, while the calculation of the proportions of
Mainland China-led ICA is based on international collaboration articles.
Quantitative Science Studies
388
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
Figure 9. Collaborations with Mainland China during each period (1979 –2018) 15.
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
.
/
might also reflect an increasing worldwide interest in social science research on topics relevant
for China and Chinese collaborators.
3.2.3.1. Collaboration networks To visualize the evolution of Mainland China’s collaboration
networks in the social sciences, we map Mainland China’s collaboration links using Salton’s in-
dex (rij) to measure the strength of copublication links (Glänzel, 2001; Salton & Bergmark, 1979;
Zhou et al., 2009). Salton’s measure can be defined as:
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
rij ¼
(cid:1)
pij
pi (cid:2) pj
(cid:3)1
2
where pi is the number of publications of country i, pj is the number of publications of country j,
and pij is the number of joint publications. The higher the Salton index, the stronger is the ob-
served collaboration intensity. The change in Mainland China’s scholarly cooperation can
then be visualized by maps (see Figure 10).
15 X indicates the number of Mainland China’s collaboration countries and regions; Y indicates the number of
Mainland China’s collaboration articles; bubble size indicates the proportions of all collaboration articles.
Quantitative Science Studies
389
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
/
.
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
Figure 10.
Social sciences collaboration map for Mainland China during each period based on Salton’s measure (1979–2018).
Quantitative Science Studies
390
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
Figure 10 clearly illustrates the changes in the collaboration networks over time, from being
relatively sparse to gradually increasing in intensity. The visualization confirms the observation
made in Figure 9 that the second period (1999–2008) is an important period for Mainland China
to expand and broaden international collaboration. A significant change in the intensity of inter-
national collaboration is manifested in the third (2009–2013) and fourth (2014–2018) periods.
These two periods seem critical for deepening international collaboration relations in the inter-
nationalization process of Mainland China’s social science research.
3.2.3.2. Collaboration partners with high intensity A coauthorship analysis at the country/region
level could reveal which countries/regions are particularly important for collaboration. In most
cases, frequent coauthorships reflect active collaboration between partners. Two indexes are
generally used in coauthorship calculations: collaboration frequency and collaboration intensity.
We used the proportion of the number of articles that the two countries share as a measure of
collaboration frequency and we measured collaboration intensity (i.e., the strength of the con-
nection) with the Salton index. Figure 11 depicts the top 10 countries/regions with the strongest
intensity of collaborative articles with Chinese scholars in each period, as well as the proportion
of collaboration articles of corresponding countries/regions.
As shown in every panel of Figure 11, Mainland China and the United States clearly hold an
important bilateral relationship in social science research. Collaborations between the two coun-
tries account for the largest proportion of all international collaborations by Chinese authors,
which demonstrates the important role that the United States plays in the internationalization
of Mainland China’s social science research. The strong connection between the two largest
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
/
.
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
Figure 11. Country/Region-level coauthorship ranking for each period (1979–2018).
Quantitative Science Studies
391
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
rivals for global science leadership has also been broadly reported (e.g., Mallapaty, 2018;
Woolston, 2019). In this process, Chinese students and scholars who study and work in the
United States, and also those returnees, can be an important factor in facilitating collaborations
between China and the United States (Jin, Rousseau et al., 2007). It is noticeable, however, that
there has been a slight decrease in the proportion of joint articles, from 33% in the second period
to 27% in the fourth period. Given how slight the change is, it is difficult to determine if the im-
portance of the United States to Mainland China’s internationalization process is declining.
However, as the overall number of Mainland China’s collaborations with other countries/regions
is growing, it is clear that internationalization is still important for Chinese scholars, just not nec-
essarily with the United States. Further, the collaboration intensity between Mainland China and
the United States is relatively weaker than that of Hong Kong in all four periods. The United States
is the largest contributor to social science research worldwide and maintains collaborations with
many countries/regions. In this context, Mainland China is only one of many collaborators to the
United States. This may partially explain why the collaboration intensity between Mainland
China and the United States is less pronounced.
As mentioned above, collaboration with Hong Kong has the strongest intensity throughout all
four periods. This is perhaps unsurprising, as Hong Kong has historically played an important
bridging role between Mainland China and other nations. Similarly, Taiwan and Mainland
China have maintained strong research relations, which is indicative of the influences that
history, politics, and culture have on scientific collaboration relations.
Interestingly, Japan was an essential partner to Mainland China in the early stage of the interna-
tionalization process. However, in later periods, there has been a noticeable decrease in the propor-
tion of collaborations between the two countries, and correspondingly the intensity of the
collaborations has weakened. This might be explained by the Japanese government’s findings in
its 2018 Science and Technology White Paper, which concluded that Japan’s scientific and techno-
logical competitiveness was being eroded by a decline in young researchers, stagnant growth in R&D
funding, and a decrease in the number of high-impact articles (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports,
Science and Technology, 2018). In addition, more than two dozen Japanese universities have an-
nounced that they will reduce or altogether eliminate their academic programs in the humanities
and social sciences, which may be indirectly causing the decrease in social science research in
Japan (Jenkins, 2015). In parallel with Japan’s waning importance, Singapore has gradually be-
come a more active Asian partner to social scientists in Mainland China over the period.
Other important countries for Mainland China’s collaboration network include the United
Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. These countries have helped to advance Mainland China’s
internationalization process, and their presence in Mainland China’s collaboration network also
indicates a general broadening and deepening of global collaborations in line with Mainland
China’s opening-up policy and associated reforms.
3.3.
International Journals
International journals are essential mediators through which we can analyze the internationalization
of Mainland China’s social sciences because their published articles are important external mani-
festations of the process. International journals can also be viewed as important for Chinese scholars
to be visible internationally and gain the best resources and quality standards from international
collaboration. This section therefore explores the internationalization of Mainland China’s social
science research through international journals, including investigating how articles are distributed
among journal quartiles, disciplines, and collaboration types. We will also have a closer look at OA
journals, because some of these journals may influence the general pattern considerably.
Quantitative Science Studies
392
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
/
.
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
/
.
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
Figure 12. The number of all international journals and Q1 journals in which Chinese scholars published in social science fields (1979–2018).
3.3.1. Diversity of journals
The trend towards internationalization in the social sciences and humanities is characterized by
increased use of specialized journals for publishing articles (Sivertsen, 2016). The growing diver-
sity of international journals16 in which Chinese scholars publish may reflect three different
aspects. First, Chinese researchers are publishing in a wider range of international journals.
Figure 12 shows the increase in both the total number of international journals and the number
of Q1 (first quartile according to impact factors, as illustrated in Section 2.2.4) international jour-
nals in which Chinese scholars published over the last four decades.
Another indication of journal diversification is the proportion of articles by Chinese re-
searchers in the top 10 international journals ranked by the number of articles from Mainland
China in social science fields. This proportion has shown a steady decline across all four periods,
from 23.38% in 1979–1998 to 13.05% in 2014–2018, which also reflects the fact that Chinese
scholars are publishing articles in a wider range of journals. A further indication can be seen when
looking at international journals whose title contains “China” or “Chinese,” which indicates that
these journals give special attention to research topics related to China17. As shown in Figure 13,
during the early stage of internationalization, Chinese scholars were publishing a high proportion
of their articles in international journals whose title contained “China” or “Chinese.” With the
growth of internationalization in social science research in Mainland China, the proportion of
articles published in these journals has decreased over time. The proportion of international
social science journals that specifically target China-related topics, as indicated by their title, is
also reduced considerably over time.
16 These journals are indexed in SSCI and can be classified into seven social science classifications, illustrated in
Section 2.2.1.
17 For example, the title of the journal China Economic Review suggests that it tends to publish articles related to
original research on the economy of China. See https://www.journals.elsevier.com/china-economic-review.
Quantitative Science Studies
393
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
/
.
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
Figure 13. The international journals that contained “China” or “Chinese” in their title and articles published in these journals (1979–2018).
3.3.2.
Journal quartiles
An article’s citation impact is an indication of the influence of a publication on further research.
The journal impact factor is a standard indicator of a journal’s impact within and beyond its dis-
cipline, and generally speaking, the journals with higher impact factors are considered to be more
Quantitative Science Studies
394
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
prestigious (Garfield, 2006). However, the impact factor and its use are widely debated at present
(Zhang, Rousseau, & Sivertsen, 2017). We take the view that impact factor is not a perfect
indicator of the scientific impact of journals, but it can still be considered as “a gauge of relative
quality as judged by both researchers and practitioners” (Saha, Saint, & Christakis, 2003, p. 45;
Waltman & Traag, 2020).
3.3.2.1. General journal quartile distribution Figure 14 charts the distribution of Mainland
China’s social science articles by journal quartile. Overall, more articles appear in Q1 and Q2
than in Q3 or Q4. Among the four quartiles, Q1 journals account for the largest share of articles.
We note that high-impact journals publish on average more articles than low-impact journals.
Liu, Guo, and Zuo (2018) have found that 36% of SSCI publications are published in the first
quartile journals based on data from the 2016 Journal Citation Reports, and a similar observation
was reported in Liu, Hu, and Gu (2016) based on the 2015 volume’s WoS publications. There has
been a steep decline in the proportion of Q4 articles since 2000. A clear tendency for Chinese
scholars to increasingly publish articles in high-impact journals can be observed. This could not
happen without a continuous improvement of the quality and international relevance of social
science research stemming from or performed in collaboration with Mainland China. But the
trend might also be influenced by the increasing use of journal impact factors and JCR quartiles
as the criteria for evaluating a researcher’s scientific performance in Mainland China (Quan et al.,
2017). However, as mentioned in Section 3.1.3, a radical change in policy was introduced in
early 2020 (MOE, 2020; MOST, 2020). The new policy not only supports domestic publications
in general but also states that indicators based on WoS (particularly journal impact factors and
citations) will not be applied directly any more in evaluation and funding at any level in China. By
moving away from WoS as a standard for research evaluation and funding, China is empowering
its own academic communities, research institutions, and funding organizations in defining the
principles, criteria, and protocols for evaluation (Zhang & Sivertsen, 2020). These clear changes
in policy may reshape Chinese researchers’ publications landscape in the future.
Journal quartile distribution in different disciplines There are apparent differences across
3.3.2.2.
disciplines in the influence of journal hierarchies in the process of internationalization. In
Figure 15, we analyze the journal quartile distribution of different disciplines in which social
science articles by Chinese authors were published. Business, Economics, Planning; Community
Figure 14. The number and proportion of social science articles from Mainland China by journal quartile (1996–2017).
Quantitative Science Studies
395
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
/
.
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
.
/
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
Figure 15.
Journal quartile distribution in different disciplines (1996–2017).
& Social Issues; Education, Media & Information Science; Psychology; and Sociology &
Anthropology have higher shares of articles in Q1 than in other quartiles. As a contrast, more than
50% of the articles in Political Science & Administration and Law are distributed in Q3 and Q4,
which are the more locally oriented disciplines, as already observed in Figure 8. As two repre-
sentative disciplines with low international collaboration and relatively more Mainland China-
led articles (seen in Figure 8), Education, Media & Information Science and Community & Social
issues have remarkably high performance in terms of journal quartile distributions.
Journal quartile distribution of different collaboration types
International collaboration
3.3.2.3.
has grown in importance throughout the present century. It can improve the influence of academic
research with the expansion of audiences in every region of the globe. There is a positive effect of
international collaboration on scientific impact (Glänzel & Schubert, 2001; Leydesdorff,
Bornmann, & Wagner, 2018). In this section, we further investigate how different types of interna-
tional collaboration may relate to publications’ distribution in different journal quartiles. As
observed in Figure 16, over the period studied, the proportion of ICAs distributed in Q1 and Q2
is higher than that of N-ICAs, indicating that international collaboration is an important way to
publish articles in journals with higher ranking by journal impact factors. In general, the proportion
of N-ICAs in Q3 and Q4 during the period investigated is higher than for ICAs. One of the main
reasons for this trend lies in the enhancing effect of collaborative work, which positively affects
scientific impacts (Khor & Yu, 2016), but the difference may also be due to the higher international
relevance of the topics studied when more than one country is involved (Sivertsen, 2016).
Quantitative Science Studies
396
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
Figure 16.
Journal quartile distribution of different collaboration types (1996–2017).
The distribution of ICAs among the journal quartile has remained relatively stable while fluc-
tuating more in the case of N-ICAs. It is worth noting that 2006 was a distinct turning point for
N-ICAs due to the influence of some specific journals:
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
/
.
(cid:129) From 1996 to 2006, most of the N-ICAs were published in Q4 journals. Among these
articles, nearly 50% were published in Chinese Education and Society (ISSN:1061-1932/
0009-4560) and Chinese Sociology and Anthropology (ISSN:0009-4625).
(cid:129) Since 2007, N-ICAs are increasingly published in Q1 journals. There was a surge in the
number of N-ICAs published in Energy Policy (ISSN: 0301-4215) in 2007. From 2007 to
2016, 11% of all N-ICAs were published in this one particular journal that belongs to Q1.
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
Over the periods studied, the proportion of Other-led ICAs published in Q1 is slightly higher than
that of Mainland China-led ICAs, while the proportion of Other-led ICAs published in Q4 is
Table 1.
The statistics of articles from Mainland China in Frontiers in Psychology
Year
2014
2015
2016
2017
Number
of articles
14
99
194
284
Quartile
Q1
Q1
Q2
Q2
Share of all articles in the
corresponding quartile
0.79%
4.42%
10.86%
13.18%
Quantitative Science Studies
397
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
Figure 17.
Journal quartile distribution of OA articles and Non-OA articles 18.
slightly lower than Mainland China-led ICAs. The trends of Mainland China-led ICAs fluctuate in
a relatively broader margin in every quartile compared to Other-led ICAs. Again, the publication
of articles in higher ranked international journals may depend on the international versus local
relevance of the topics.
3.3.3. Analysis of open access
The recent “nose dive” of the proportion of Q1 journals needs further comment (see Figure 14).
Previous analysis indicated that during the period under investigation, there might exist some
specific journals that publish large shares of the articles studied here. Table 1 further shows a
particular example. The number of social science articles by Chinese authors published in
Frontiers in Psychology (ISSN:1664-1078) has increased considerably since 2015, while the
quartile of this journal fell from Q1 in 2015 to Q2 in 2016. Correspondingly, there was a rapidly
increased proportion of articles published in Q2 during 2016 and 2017, as illustrated by
Figure 14. In parallel, the proportion of articles published in Q1 decreased during 2016 and
2017. Frontiers in Psychology is a gold OA journal. Its publisher (Frontiers) has been the source
of some debate in the same period, and this might have impacted its standing. Jeffrey Beall raised
some questions about the academic quality of Frontier’s articles (Bloudoff-Indelicato, 2015)
and listed Frontiers as a “potential, possible, or probable” predatory OA publisher. A study
published in Science has shown that Beall’s list of predatory journals indeed has some reliability
(Bohannon, 2013).
From the above analysis, the internationalization process of Mainland China’s social science
research has also been affected by OA to some extent. With the development of digital publish-
ing, free and unrestricted OA for readers on the internet has emerged as an additional avenue for
presenting research (Prosser, 2003). With higher accessibility and visibility, OA plays an increas-
ingly vital role in knowledge dissemination globally. In addition, previous studies have shown
that authors from developing countries are usually more likely to perceive OA positively than
authors from developed countries (Kien(cid:1)c(cid:1), 2017; Xu, He et al., 2020). Therefore, we would like
to raise the question of how OA affects the international development of Mainland China’s social
science research?
Numerous studies using different methodologies have suggested a citation advantage for OA
articles (Atchison & Bull, 2015; Koler-Povh, Južnic(cid:3), & Turk, 2014; Wohlrabe & Birkmeier, 2014).
18 The difference between an OA article and a Non-OA article is whether this article has OA information in WoS.
Quantitative Science Studies
398
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
/
.
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
Table 2.
Top five journals ranked by the number of OA articles in social science fields from Mainland China19
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
/
.
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
Indeed, OA may increase the size of the audience and the impact of academic work. This visi-
bility can also be reflected by the journal quartile for OA journals, which is based on the impact
factor. Although the number of OA articles is far lower than non-OA articles, the proportion of
OA articles distributed in high-impact journals is generally higher than that of non-OA articles in
Mainland China’s social science fields (as shown in Figure 17). However, as mentioned above
19 The calculation of the proportions of N-ICA and ICA is based on all articles, while the calculation of the pro-
portions of Mainland China-led ICA and Other-led ICA is based on international collaboration articles.
Quantitative Science Studies
399
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
(Table 1), articles by Chinese researchers in the OA journal Frontiers in Psychology have influ-
enced the proportion of Q1 and Q2 of OA articles from 2015 to 2017.
Furthermore, in the top five social science journals ranked by the number of OA articles from
Mainland China, N-ICA and Mainland China-led ICA has a large proportion of all OA articles.
This reflects a tendency of Chinese scholars to be the main players in publishing articles in these
international OA journals (Table 2).
The two journals published by Frontiers (Frontiers in Psychology and Frontiers in Psychiatry)
account for 17.39% of the total of OA articles. A third journal, Eurasia Journal of Mathematics
science and technology education (ISSN: 1305-8215) was listed in JCR Suppressed Titles in
2017 due to anomalous citation patterns20.
What is even more unusual in these five most frequent journals is that some of them published
a large number of OA articles by Chinese social science researchers in a very short period. For
example, Educational Sciences Theory & Practice (ISSN: 2630-5984) published 278 OA articles
in the social sciences from Mainland China, 277 of which were published in 2018. Similarly,
Eurasia Journal of Mathematics Science and Technology Education (ISSN: 1305-8215) published
272 OA articles in the social sciences from Mainland China, 234 of which were published in
2017. Finally, Frontiers in Psychiatry (ISSN: 1664-0640) published 130 OA articles in the social
sciences from Mainland China, 105 of which were published in 2018.
As a whole, OA publishing has increased in Mainland China’s social science in recent years.
Likely to be affected by the former criteria of the research evaluation system in Mainland China
(Quan et al., 2017), some unusual publishing activities can be observed in some OA journals, which
may influence the analysis of internationalization. This phenomenon has also been observed in
China’s SCI publications. Liu (2020) found the overrepresentation of China in some OA journals.
The most recently introduced research evaluation policy in China, as described in previous sections,
is now giving more attention to the scientific and societal value of research, and less attention to the
number of articles published and the impact factor of the journals. A further restriction of author
payment for international journals has been set in the new Chinese policies. A change in Chinese
researchers’ publication patterns is expected after the new policies (Zhang & Sivertsen, 2020).
4. CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION
4.1. Conclusion
Internationalization is necessary to align with international standards and gain from the exchange
of information and collaboration at the research frontier. But balancing the research orientation
towards local needs and topics is also necessary for the social sciences. It is a question of a dy-
namic balance with empirically informed strategies for both internationalization and localiza-
tion. To support the empirical basis for such a dynamic balance, this paper has analyzed
international academic articles, international collaboration, and international journals to provide
a more complete picture of the internationalization process of social science research in
Mainland China.
In a series of analyses covering the past four decades of research in the social sciences in
Mainland China, we find obvious trends towards increased internationalization. Both interna-
tional and domestic comparisons reveal a noticeable increase in the number and proportion of
international articles published by Chinese researchers in the social science fields, especially in
20 See http://help.incites.clarivate.com/incitesLiveJCR/JCRGroup/titleSuppressions.html.
Quantitative Science Studies
400
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
/
.
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
the last decade. Although the international trend is evident in Mainland China’s social science
research, articles published in domestic journals are still by far the dominant publication form for
Mainland China’s social science scholarship. China is a much smaller contributor to global sci-
ence in the social sciences than in the natural sciences.
As for the analysis from a more detailed perspective of international collaboration, we find that
Chinese researchers are increasingly in the lead as first authors in articles resulting from interna-
tional collaboration. The growth of Mainland China’s scientific output in the social sciences has
been accompanied by a diversification of collaboration partners around the globe, and its col-
laboration networks with other countries/regions have significantly broadened.
Furthermore, our findings also reveal that Chinese scholars publish in an increasingly wider
range of international journals. Results show an increase in the number of articles published in
high-impact international journals and especially those that involve international collaboration.
An analysis of specific journals indicates that unusual academic publication activities are related
to a few specific OA journals that have influenced our analysis markedly.
Finally, the degree of internationalization varies in different social science disciplines.
Business, Economics, Planning and Psychology account for high proportions of international col-
laboration articles. However, the proportion of Mainland China-led articles and articles in Q1
journals are relatively higher in the fields of Education, Media & Information, and Community
& Social Issues.
4.2. Discussion
As noted above, the results are a reflection of Mainland China’s improved capacity for engaging
in internationalization in social science research. Many factors may affect the international de-
velopment of social science scholarship.
4.2.1. National policy
National policy has played a vital role in the international development of Mainland China’s so-
cial sciences. Since 1978, Mainland China has adopted the Reform and Opening-up Policy
(ROP), which allowed Chinese scholarship to enter the international mainstream. Science and
technology in Mainland China have been very successful in making the transition, while
Mainland China’s social sciences have stagnated in comparison, with lower levels of internation-
alization and little global recognition (Xie, 2018). Since the beginning of the 21st century, a series
of policies have been adopted to promote the development of the social sciences in Mainland
China. A number of them are listed in Table 3.
As a result of policies that have been introduced to promote “outstanding achievements and
distinguished scholars to the world arena”21, Mainland China has more recently seen the inter-
national standing of its social science research improve considerably. It remains to be seen
whether this development continues after the most recent turn in orientation towards local needs
in Chinese research policy (MOE, 2020; MOST, 2020; Zhang & Sivertsen, 2020).
4.2.2. Capital investment
Currently, research funding is emerging as one of the most important public resources for scientific
development and internationalization. By providing financial support for research programs, insti-
tutions, and scientists, research funding plays a crucial function in knowledge production as well as
21 See http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-10/25/content_6204663.htm.
Quantitative Science Studies
401
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
.
/
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
Q
u
a
n
t
i
t
a
i
t
i
v
e
S
c
e
n
c
e
S
u
d
e
s
t
i
Year
2003
Table 3. National policies related to international development for social sciences in Mainland China
Authority
Policy documents
Source
Ministry of Education of the
People’s Republic of China
Several opinions issued by the Ministry
of Education on the development and
prosperity of social sciences in colleges
and universities
http://www.gov.cn/gongbao/content/2003/content
_62171.htm
2004
Central Committee of the
Opinions on further prospering the
http://www.gov.cn/test/2005-07/06/content_12421.htm
Communist Party of China
2011
Central Committee of the
Communist Party of China &
General Office of the State
Council of the People’s
Republic of China
Ministry of Education of the
People’s Republic of China
development of philosophy and social
science
Outline of national cultural reform and
development plan in “12th Five-Year”
http://www.gov.cn/jrzg/2012-02/15/content_2067781.htm
The construction plan for key research
bases for the humanities and social
sciences in colleges and universities
http://old.moe.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe
/moe_2558/201301/146418.html
Ministry of Education of the
People’s Republic of China
“Going out” plan for the humanities and
social sciences in universities
http://www.moe.gov.cn/srcsite/A13/s7061/201111
/t20111107_126303.html
Ministry of Education of the
People’s Republic of China
& Ministry of Finance of the
People’s Republic of China
Project for Social Science Prosperity in
http://www.moe.gov.cn/srcsite/A13/s7061/201111
Higher Education Institutions
/t20111107_126304.html
2011
2011
2011
2011
Central Committee of the
Communist Party of China
Decision of the CPC Central Committee
on “Major Issues Pertaining to Deepening
Reform of the Cultural System and
Promoting the Great Development and
Flourishing of Social Culture”
http://www.gov.cn/jrzg/2011-10/25/content_1978202.htm
2011
National Office for Philosophy
National “12th Five-Year Plan” for
http://www.nopss.gov.cn/GB/219468/14820244.html
and Social Sciences
Philosophy and Social Science Research
4
0
2
A
b
i
b
l
i
o
m
e
t
r
i
c
a
n
a
l
y
s
i
s
o
f
t
h
e
s
o
c
i
a
l
s
c
i
e
n
c
e
s
i
n
M
a
i
n
l
a
n
d
C
h
i
n
a
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
.
/
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
international development. There is a high level of research investment in Mainland China, with
gross expenditure on R&D as 2.12% of GDP in 2017, which has begun to narrow the gap compared
with 2.79% of the United States (OECD, 2019). During the period from 1979 to 2018, the authors of
slightly over 50% of the social science articles that appeared in the SSCI database (24,755 out of
49,109) received some kind of research funding. This may demonstrate that research funding has
played an important role in the international development of social sciences.
4.2.3. Research evaluation
The trend towards internationalization may also indicate the influence of research evaluation
policies and monetary reward systems on publication activities in the social science fields in
Mainland China. The WoS, which includes the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), the
SSCI, and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI), until recently played a crucial role
in Mainland China’s research evaluation system and monetary reward policies. Journal impact
factors and JCR quartiles were used as eligibility criteria for funding and for evaluating the re-
searcher’s scientific performance (Quan et al., 2017). This may have influenced the number of
articles published in high-impact journals. In addition, most universities’ scientific research eval-
uation system sees the role of “first author” and their affiliated institutions as conditions for rec-
ognizing achievement, which may have influenced the growth in N-ICA articles and in Mainland
China-led ICA articles.
The recent change in policy for research evaluation and funding encourages researchers to
publish more in domestic journals. The policy is launched at a time when the annual volume
of domestic articles indexed by the CSSCI is still around 10 times higher than the annual volume
of articles from China indexed by the SSCI for the WoS. It remains to be seen whether China will
still gain from the process of internationalization of the social sciences, as the societal contribu-
tions of research will be valued more in the evaluation system. Hopefully, localization and inter-
nationalization will not be seen as opposed to each other.
4.2.4.
Individual incentives
As for the individual level, the increasing number of international publications by Chinese
scholars may be a result of the researchers’ willingness to see their articles published in interna-
tional journals. Researchers gain scholarly credit in the academic reward system by performing
research and publishing their results internationally, and reputation is an influential consideration
for employment, promotion, funding, and increases in salary (de Rijcke et al., 2016; Weingart,
2005). Studies have shown that articles published in recognized international journals gain better
visibility than those published in national journals (Khor & Yu, 2016; Puuska et al., 2014; Sin,
2011). Furthermore, researchers can largely benefit and improve their work from high-quality
reviews through the review process in international journals. The increasing number of interna-
tional articles and articles published in high-impact journals might reflect the strong motivations
that Chinese scholars have for being recognized within international academia. It may also reflect
an increasing interest in the international communities of the social sciences in engaging in topics
relevant to China and in collaboration with Chinese researchers. Finally, international publishing
is important for Chinese researchers who studied abroad and who want to continue in their in-
ternational networks and collaborations as researchers. In particular, young researchers are gen-
erally more active in publishing internationally than older researchers. Hence, the new policy
(MOE, 2020; MOST, 2020) resonates differently in the academic community. Some researchers
are happy to leave behind the policy of globalization. Others are concerned that support for col-
laborating and publishing abroad will be taken away from them (Zhang & Sivertsen, 2020).
Quantitative Science Studies
403
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
/
.
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
4.3. Limitations and Future Research
There are several limitations to this study. The first relates to mostly relying on articles from SSCI
(except for CSSCI in one analysis). For a deeper understanding of the internationalization of social
sciences, future research should incorporate data from multiple sources and include publications
of several types, because multilingual publishing and other publication formats than journal ar-
ticles are important in the social sciences (Sivertsen, 2019). Also, regarding international data
sources, the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), which has indexed social science articles,
could be added as an additional data source for further research (Huang, Zhu et al., 2017).
Moreover, there are also other measures and indicators useful for investigating the international-
ization of scientific research, such as using citation analysis to reflect the international academic
impact and using research topics to investigate knowledge diffusion internationally. Finally, some
unusual academic publishing activities, such as the rapid growth of OA articles and the over-
representation of China in some OA journals, deserve further investigation in our future study.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
Lin Zhang: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Supervision,
Writing—review & editing. Yuanyuan Shang: Data curation, Formal Analysis, Visualization,
Writing—original draft. Ying Huang: Funding acquisition, Software, Supervision, Validation,
Writing—review & editing. Gunnar Sivertsen: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Writing—
review & editing.
COMPETING INTERESTS
The authors have no competing interests.
FUNDING INFORMATION
This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 71974150,
71573085; 72004169), the National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 18VSJ087),
the National Laboratory Center for Library and Information Science in Wuhan University, and
the Research Council of Norway (Grant No. 256223). We thank Ronald Rousseau (KU Leuven)
for his precious comments.
DATA AVAILABILITY
The raw bibliometric data were collected from Clarivate Analytics. A license is required to access the
Web of Science database. Therefore, the data used in this paper cannot be posted in a repository.
REFERENCES
Aksnes, D. W., & Sivertsen, G. (2019). A criteria-based assessment
of the coverage of Scopus and Web of Science. Journal of Data
and Information Science, 4(1), 1–21. DOI: https://doi.org/10
.2478/jdis-2019-0001
Altbach, P. G., & Knight, J. (2007). The internationalization of higher
education: Motivations and realities. Journal of Studies in
International Education, 11(3–4), 290–305. DOI: https://doi.org
/10.1177/1028315307303542
Atchison, A., & Bull, J. (2015). Will open access get me cited? An
analysis of the efficacy of open access publishing in political
science. PS: Political Science & Politics, 48(1), 129–137. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096514001668
Basu, A., Foland, P., Holdridge, G., & Shelton, R. D. (2018). China’s
rising leadership in science and technology: Quantitative and
qualitative indicators. Scientometrics, 117(1), 249–269. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2877-5
Bloudoff-Indelicato, M. (2015). Backlash after Frontiers journals
added to list of questionable publishers. Nature News, 526(7575),
613. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/526613f
Bohannon, J. (2013). Who’s afraid of peer review? Science, 342(6154),
60–65. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.342.6154.60, PMID:
24092725
Boncourt, T. (2018). What “Internationalization” Means in the Social
Sciences. A Comparison of the International Political Science and
Sociology Associations. In J. Heilbron, G. Sorá, & T. Boncourt
(Eds.), The Social and Human Sciences in Global Power Relations
(pp. 95–123). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI: https://doi.org
/10.1007/978-3-319-73299-2_4
Quantitative Science Studies
404
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
.
/
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
de Rijcke, S., Wouters, P. F., Rushforth, A. D., Franssen, T. P., &
Hammarfelt, B. (2016). Evaluation practices and effects of indica-
tor use—a literature review. Research Evaluation, 25(2), 161–169.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvv038
Egghe, L., Liang, L., & Rousseau, R. (2003), The byline: Thoughts
on the distribution of author ranks in multi-authored papers.
Mathematical and Computer Modelling, 38, 323–329. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0895-7177(03)90090-2
Foland, P. (2010). The race for world leadership of science and tech-
nology: Status and forecasts. Science Focus, 5(1), 1–9. http://
manu56.magtech.com.cn/kxgc/EN/Y2010/V5/I1/1
Garfield, E. (2006). The history and meaning of the journal impact
factor. Journal of the American Medical Association, 295(1), 90–93.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.295.1.90, PMID: 16391221
Glänzel, W. (2001). National characteristics in international scien-
tific co-authorship relations. Scientometrics, 51(1), 69–115. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010512628145
Glänzel, W., & Schubert, A. (2001). Double effort = double impact?
A critical view at international co-authorship in chemistry.
Scientometrics, 50(2), 199–214. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023
/A:1010561321723
Glänzel, W., & Schubert, A. (2003). A new classification scheme of
science fields and subfields designed for scientometric evaluation
purposes. Scientometrics, 56(3), 357–367. DOI: https://doi.org/10
.1023/A:1022378804087
Glänzel, W., Thijs, B., & Chi, P. S. (2016). The challenges to expand
bibliometric studies from periodical literature to monographic
literature with a new data source: The book citation index.
Scientometrics, 109(3), 2165–2179. DOI: https://doi.org/10
.1007/s11192-016-2046-7
Hanafi, S. (2011). University systems in the Arab East: Publish
globally and perish locally vs publish locally and perish globally.
Current Sociology, 59(3), 291–309. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177
/0011392111400782
Huang, Y., Zhu, D., Lv, Q., Porter, A. L., Robinson, D. K., & Wang, X.
(2017). Early insights on the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI):
An overlay map-based bibliometric study. Scientometrics, 111(3),
2041–2057. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2349-3
Jenkins, N. (2015). Alarm over huge cuts to humanities and social
sciences at Japanese universities. Retrieved from https://time.
com/4035819/japan-university-liberal-arts-humanities-social
-sciences-cuts/ (accessed June 17, 2020).
Jin, B., & Rousseau, R. (2004). Evaluation of research performance
and scientometric indicators in China. In H. F. Moed, W.
Glänzel, & U. Schmoch (Eds.), Handbook of quantitative science
and technology research (pp. 497–514). Dordrecht: Springer.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-2755-9_23
Jin, B., & Rousseau, R. (2005). China’s quantititative expansion
phase: Exponential growth but low impact. In P. Ingwersen &
B. Larsen (Eds.), Proceedings of the ISSI 2005 (pp. 362–370).
Stockholm: Karolinska University Press.
Jin, B., Rousseau, R., Suttmeier, R. P., & Cao, C. (2007). The role of
ethnic ties in international collaboration: The overseas Chinese
phenomenon. In D. Torres-Salinas & H. F. Moed (Eds.), Proceedings
of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics
(ISSI) 2007 (pp. 427–436). Stockholm: Karolinska University Press.
Khor, K., & Yu, L.-G. (2016). Influence of international co-authorship on
the research citation impact of young universities. Scientometrics,
107(3), 1095–1110. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016
-1905-6, PMID: 27239078, PMCID: PMC4865530
Kien(cid:1)c(cid:1), W. (2017). Authors from the periphery countries choose
open access more often. Learned Publishing, 30(2), 125–131.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1093
Koler-Povh, T., Južnic(cid:3), P., & Turk, G. (2014). Impact of open access on
citation of scholarly publications in the field of civil engineering.
Scientometrics, 98(2), 1033–1045. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007
/s11192-013-1101-x
Kulczycki, E., Engels, T. C. E., Pölönen, J., Bruun, K., Duskova, M.,
Guns, R., … Zuccala, A. (2018). Publication patterns in the social
sciences and humanities: Evidence from eight European countries.
Scientometrics, 116, 463–486. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007
/s11192-018-2711-0
Larivière, V., Desrochers, N., Macaluso, B., Mongeon, P., Paul-Hus,
A., & Sugimoto, C. R. (2016). Contributorship and division of
labor in knowledge production. Social Studies of Science, 46(3),
417–435. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312716650046,
PMID: 28948891
Leydesdorff, L., Bornmann, L., & Wagner, C. S. (2018). The relative
influences of government funding and international collaboration
on citation impact. Journal of the Association for Information
Science and Technology, 70(2), 198–201. DOI: https://doi.org
/10.1002/asi.24109, PMID: 32728598, PMCID: PMC7380135
Li, J. (2016). The global ranking regime and the reconfiguration of
higher education: Comparative case studies on research assessment
exercises in China, Hong Kong, and Japan. Higher Education Policy,
29(4), 473–493. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41307-016-0015-7
Li, J., & Li, Y. (2015). Patterns and evolution of coauthorship in
China’s humanities and social sciences. Scientometrics, 102(3),
1997–2010. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-014-1471-8
Liu, F., Guo, W., & Zuo, C. (2018). High impact factor journals
have more publications than expected. Current Science, 114,
955–956. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18520/cs/v114/i05/955-956
Liu, W. (2020). China’s SCI-indexed publications: Facts, feelings,
and future directions. ECNU Review of Education, 3(3), 562–569.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/2096531120933902
Liu, W., Hu, G., Tang, L., & Wang, Y. (2015). China’s global growth
in social science research: Uncovering evidence from biblio-
metric analyses of SSCI publications (1978–2013). Journal of
Informetrics, 9(3), 555–569. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi
.2015.05.007
Liu, W., Hu, G., & Gu, M. (2016). The probability of publishing in
first-quartile journals. Scientometrics, 106(3), 1273–1276. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-015-1821-1
Luukkonen, T., Persson, O., & Sivertsen, G. (1992). Understanding
patterns of international scientific collaboration. Science,
Technology & Human Values, 17(1), 101–126. DOI: https://doi
.org/10.1177/016224399201700106
Mallapaty, S. (2018). China and the United States are science
sweethearts. Retrieved from https://www.natureindex.com
/news-blog/china-and-the-united-states-are-science-sweethearts
(accessed June 17, 2020).
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.
(2018). [in Japanese] Science and Technology White Paper.
Tokyo: Japan Government Printing Office.
Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China. (2011). [in
Chinese] “Going out” plan for the humanities and social sciences in
universities. Retrieved from http://www.moe.gov.cn/srcsite/A13
/s7061/201111/t20111107_126303.html (accessed June 17, 2020).
Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China. (2020). [in
Chinese] Some opinions on standardizing the use of related indi-
cators of SCI papers in universities and establishing a correct
evaluation orientation. Retrieved from http://www.moe.gov.cn
/srcsite/A16/moe_784/202002/t20200223_423334.html (accessed
June 17, 2020).
Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of
China. (2020). [in Chinese] Some suggestions to eliminate the
Quantitative Science Studies
405
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
/
.
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
bad orientation of “paper-only” in scientific and technological
evaluation (Trial). Retrieved from http://www.most.gov.cn/xxgk
/ x i n x i f e n l e i / f d z d g k n r / f g z c / g f x w j / g f x w j 2 0 2 0 / 2 0 2 0 0 2
/t20200223_151781.html (accessed June 17, 2020).
Mohrman, K. (2008). The emerging global model with Chinese
characteristics. Higher Education Policy, 21(1), 29–48. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.hep.8300174
OECD. (2019). “Gross domestic spending on R&D” (indicator).
Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1787/d8b068b4-en (accessed
June 17, 2020).
Ossenblok, T., Engels, T., & Sivertsen, G. (2012). The representation
of the social sciences and humanities in the Web of Science—a
comparison of publication patterns and incentive structures in
Flanders and Norway (2005–9). Research Evaluation, 21(4),
280–290. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvs019
Price, D. J. S. (1963). Little science, big science. New York:
Columbia University. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7312/pric91844
Prosser, D. (2003). Institutional repositories and Open Access: The
future of scholarly communication. Information Services & Use,
23(2–3), 167–170. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3233/ISU-2003-232-327
Puuska, H.-M., Muhonen, R., & Leino, Y. (2014). International and
domestic co-publishing and their citation impact in different
disciplines. Scientometrics, 98(2), 823–839. DOI: https://doi.org
/10.1007/s11192-013-1181-7
Quan, W., Chen, B., & Shu, F. (2017). Publish or impoverish: An
investigation of the monetary reward system of science in China
(1999–2016). Aslib Journal of Information Management, 69(5),
486–502. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-01-2017-0014
Rhoads, R. A., & Hu, J. (2012). The internationalization of faculty
life in China. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 32(3), 351–365.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2012.711293
Saha, S., Saint, S., & Christakis, D. A. (2003). Impact factor: A valid
measure of journal quality? Journal of the Medical Library
Association, 91(1), 42–46. PMID: 12572533, PMCID: PMC141186
Salton, G., & Bergmark, D. (1979). A citation study of computer
s c i e n c e l i t e r a t u r e . I E E E T r a n s a c t i o n s o n P r o f e s s i o n a l
Communication, PC-22(3), 146–158. DOI: https://doi.org/10
.1109/TPC.1979.6501740
Sin, S. C. J. (2011). International coauthorship and citation impact:
A bibliometric study of six LIS journals, 1980–2008. Journal of
the American Society for Information Science and Technology,
62(9), 1770–1783. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21572
Sivertsen, G. (2016). Patterns of internationalization and criteria for
research assessment in the social sciences and humanities.
Scientometrics, 107(2), 357–368. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007
/s11192-016-1845-1, PMID: 27122643, PMCID: PMC4833822
Sivertsen, G. (2018). Balanced multilingualism in research. BiD:
Textos Universitaris de Biblioteconomia i Documentació, 40.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1344/BiD2018.40.25
Sivertsen, G. (2019). Understanding and evaluating research and
scholarly publishing in the social sciences and humanities.
Data and Information Management, 3(2), 61–71. DOI: https://
doi.org/10.2478/dim-2019-0008
Sivertsen, G., Rousseau, R., & Zhang, L. (2019). Measuring scientific
contributions with modified fractional counting. Journal of
Informetrics, 13(2), 679–694. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
joi.2019.03.010
Tollefson, J. (2018). China declared world’s largest producer of
scientific articles. Nature, 553(7689), 390. DOI: https://doi.org
/10.1038/d41586-018-00927-4, PMID: 29368724
Waltman, L., & Traag, V. A. (2020). Use of the journal impact factor
for assessing individual articles need not be statistically wrong.
F1000Research, 9, 366. DOI: https://doi.org/10.12688
/f1000research.23418.1
Wang, C. (2011). The development of China’s scholarly publica-
tions in library and information science, 1979–2009: An analysis
of ISI literature. Library Management, 32(6/7), 435–443. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1108/01435121111158574
Wang, L. (2016). The structure and comparative advantages of
China’s scientific research: Quantitative and qualitative perspec-
tives. Scientometrics, 106(1), 435–452. DOI: https://doi.org
/10.1007/s11192-015-1650-2
Weingart, P. (2005). Impact of bibliometrics upon the science sys-
tem: Inadvertent consequences? Scientometrics, 62(1), 117–131.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-005-0007-7
Wohlrabe, K., & Birkmeier, D. (2014). Do open access articles in
economics have a citation advantage? (MPRA Paper No. 56842).
Munich: Munich Personal RePEc Archive. Retrieved from http://
mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/56842 (accessed June 17, 2020).
Woolston, C. (2019). US-China science weathers political ill wind.
Retrieved from https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/us
-china-science-weathers-political-ill-wind (accessed June 17,
2020). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03541-0
Xie, M. (2018). Living with internationalization: The changing face
of the academic life of Chinese social scientists. Higher
Education, 75(3), 381–97. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734
-017-0145-x
Xu, J., He, C., Su, J., Zeng, Y., Wang, Z., … Tang, W. (2020).
Chinese researchers’ perceptions and use of open access journals:
Results of an online questionnaire survey. Learned Publishing,
33(2), 246–258. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1291
Yang, R. (2013). Indigenised while internationalised? Tensions and
dilemmas in China’s modern transformation of social sciences in
an age of globalisation. In M. Kuhn & K. Okamoto (Eds.), Spatial
social thought: Local knowledge in global science encounters
(pp. 43–61). Stuttgart: ibidem Press.
Yang, R. (2015). Reassessing China’s higher education develop-
ment: A focus on academic culture. Asia Pacific Education
Review, 16(4), 527–535. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564
-015-9397-2
Yang, R., & Welch, A. (2012). A world-class university in China?
The case of Tsinghua. Higher Education, 63(5), 645–666. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-011-9465-4
Zhang, L., Rousseau, R., & Sivertsen, G. (2017). Science deserves to
be judged by its contents, not by its wrapping: Revisiting Seglen’s
work on journal impact and research evaluation. PLOS ONE, 12(3),
e0174205. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0174205,
PMID: 28350849, PMCID: PMC5369779
Zhang, L., & Sivertsen, G. (2020). The new research assessment
reform in China and its implementation. Scholarly Assessment
Reports, 2(1), 3. DOI: https://doi.org/10.29024/sar.15
Zhang, L., Zhao, W. J., Sun, B. B., Huang, Y., & Glänzel, W. (2020).
How scientific research reacts to international public health
emergencies: A global anal ysis of r esponse patterns.
Scientometrics, 124, 747–773. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007
/s11192-020-03531-4, PMID: 32836522, PMCID: PMC7282204
Zhang, W., Xu, X., Evans, R., & Yang, F. (2018). Towards interna-
tionalization: A critical assessment of China’s public administra-
tion research in a global context 2000–2014. International Public
Management Journal, 21(1), 74–104. DOI: https://doi.org/10
.1080/10967494.2016.1276036
Zhou, P., Thijs, B., & Glänzel, W. (2009). Is China also becoming a
giant in social sciences? Scientometrics, 79(3), 593–621. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-007-2068-x
Quantitative Science Studies
406
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
/
.
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
APPENDIX
Table A1.
ECOOM social science classifications and the correspondence with WoS categories
ECOOM (Social Sciences I &
Social Sciences II)
Business, Economics, Planning
Community & Social Issues
WoS Category
Business
Business, Finance
Economics
Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism
Industrial Relations & Labor
Management
Planning & Development
(Development Studies)
Cultural Studies
Demography
Social Issues
Social Sciences, Biomedical
Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary
Social Work
Area Studies
Asian Studies
Urban Studies
Education, Media & Information Science
Communication
Law
Education & Educational Research
Education, Special
Information Science & Library Science
Education, Scientific Disciplines
Criminology & Penology
Law
Political Science & Administration
International Relations
Political Science
Public Administration
Quantitative Science Studies
407
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
.
/
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China
Table A1.
(continued )
ECOOM (Social Sciences I &
Social Sciences II)
Psychology (Added classification)
Sociology & Anthropology
WoS Category
Psychiatry
Psychology, Applied
Psychology, Biological
Psychology, Clinical
Psychology, Developmental
Psychology, Educational
Psychology, Experimental
Psychology, Mathematical
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Psychology, Psychoanalysis
Psychology, Social
Anthropology
Ethnic Studies
Family Studies
Sociology
Women’s Studies
Sport Sciences
Folklore
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
/
e
d
u
q
s
s
/
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
2
1
3
7
6
1
9
0
6
5
7
8
q
s
s
_
a
_
0
0
1
0
2
p
d
.
/
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
Quantitative Science Studies
408
