EDITORIAL
Understanding Chinese science:
New scientometric perspectives
Li Tang1
, Liying Yang2
, and Lin Zhang3,4
1Department of Public Administration, School of International Relations and Public Affairs,
Fudan University, Shanghai, China, 200433
2Library of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, 100190
3School of Information Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
4Centre for R&D Monitoring (ECOOM) and Department of MSI, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
INTRODUCTION
1.
China’s rise in science has aroused great interest in the research community and captured the
attention of policy makers around the world. With its tremendous increase in research invest-
ment, fast growing SciTech workforce, and broadened access to international collaboration,
China has become one of the most important contributors to global scientific knowledge. In
2016, China surpassed the United States as the largest producer of scientific articles indexed
in Elsevier’s Scopus database (Tollefson, 2018; NSB, 2018). In terms of scientific articles indexed
in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), China surpassed the US as the number one
knowledge producer in 2018 (Zhu & Liu, 2020).
China’s gallop in science has a far-reaching impact on the global scientific enterprise (Shu
et al., 2019; Tang, 2019; Zhou & Leydesdorff, 2006). Accordingly, the study of China’s science is
receiving a considerable amount of attention (per esempio., Liu et al., 2015; Zhang, Shang, et al., 2021).
Among various research methods for exploring China’s scientific development, scientometric
perspectives are becoming increasingly important in the era of evidence-based science policy.
Per esempio, in the journal Scientometrics, the number of research papers related to China was
only 13 in the period of 1990–1999. The number of such papers grew to 82 in 2000–2009, E
over the last decade, 311 papers in this journal explored different aspects of China-related sci-
entific research.1 The small number of empirical studies on China in the 1990s can be explained
by both the limited influence of the country and the paucity of data at that time. With the aid of
international publication databases (mainly Web of Science [WoS] and Scopus), the number of
scientometric studies focusing on China has grown tremendously over the past decades.
These studies provide valuable insights into understanding the patterns, dynamics, driving
factors and consequences of China’s scientific development. Nonetheless, scientometricians
outside China to date still have only limited knowledge on the Chinese science system, Quale
sometimes leads to inaccurate interpretations of scientometric findings. This is partly due to the
lack of detailed information on scientometric data sources and scientometric methods for study-
ing Chinese science.
1 The WoS search query we used to retrieve records is: ((TI=(CHINA OR CHINESE) OR AB=(CHINA OR
CHINESE) OR AK=(CHINA OR CHINESE)) AND (SO=SCIENTOMETRICS) AND (PY=(1990-2019) )). IL
search, which was conducted on January 8th, 2021 through Fudan University Library, returned 406 hits.
Only articles and reviews were considered.
a n o p e n a c c e s s
j o u r n a l
Citation: Tang, L., Yang, L., & Zhang, l.
(2021). Understanding Chinese
science: New scientometric
perspectives. Quantitative Science
Studi, 2(1), 288–291. https://doi.org
/10.1162/qss_e_00113
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_e_00113
Corresponding Author:
Li Tang
litang@fudan.edu.cn
Copyright: © 2021 Li Tang, Liying Yang,
and Lin Zhang. Published under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
Internazionale (CC BY 4.0) licenza.
The MIT Press
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Understanding Chinese science
To foster and bring together insights into China’s scientific development, in June 2019
Quantitative Science Studies published a call for submissions to the special issue “Understanding
Chinese science: New scientometric perspectives.” We solicited papers studying the Chinese
science system and research assessment in China. We were particularly interested in scientometric
analyses of Chinese science and in contributions discussing the methodological challenges of
such analyses.
2. CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SPECIAL ISSUE
After several rounds of selection and peer review, eight contributions were accepted for publi-
cation in the special issue. These articles cover important and relevant topics, using rigorous
methods and a variety of data sources.
The special issue covers a diversity of topics on Chinese science, ranging from scientometric
analyses (cioè., Chinese social science in general, Sino-U.S. collaborative research, Chinese
domestic publication in science, and China’s research team size features and dynamics) A
studies of the Chinese science system and research assessment in China (cioè., Chinese higher
education system, Chinese university rankings, Chinese journal system and journal evaluations).
The contributions use both international and domestic data sources. Unsurprisingly, WoS
(Clarivate Analytics) is the most applied global publication data source in this special issue.
Six out of eight articles use WoS at least partially for their analyses. China’s largest national
bibliographic data source, the Chinese Science Citation Database (CSCD), and other data
sources such as Nature Index, Technology Alert List, and various university indexes are also
used in this special issue (Liu, 2021; Zhu et al., 2021).
The contributions in this special issue primarily use quantitative analytic approaches,
showing an impressive range of methods and techniques. Several articles adopt classical scien-
tometric indicators such as coauthorship and citations, whereas some apply newly developed
ranking indicators such as rank-biased overlap (Chen et al., 2021). Some combine bibliometrics
and science visualization techniques such as science overlay maps, clustering, and heatmaps,
whereas others develop innovative network analytics for identifying problems and solutions
from scientific documents. Some apply solely quantitative methods, whereas others provide
in-depth descriptions of the history of Chinese journal evaluation or the evolution of the
Chinese higher education system (Huang et al., 2021; Shu et al., 2021).
Surveying the eight articles in this special issue also reveals a couple of interesting facts. On
the one hand, seven articles are products of international collaboration, involving contributors
affiliated to research institutes in the United States, Korea, Austria, Norway, the Netherlands and
other countries. D'altra parte, all primary authors, namely corresponding authors and first
authors, have Chinese family names. This renders support to the internationalization of Chinese
social sciences, and also seems to support the idea that native language matters in investigating
and discovering country-specific knowledge.
3.
INSUFFICIENT COVERAGE OF SOME TOPICS
While this special issue advances our understanding of the Chinese science system in various
important ways, it leaves a number of vexing issues unsolved, such as name disambiguation
for Chinese scholars and integration of national and global data sets. The problem of name
ambiguity, which is in particular a challenge for Asian names, not only impedes rigorous studies
on microlevel data involving Chinese scholars, but may also lead to inconclusive findings or
even wrong policy recommendations. In a similar vein, the lack of glocalized (cioè., globalized
Quantitative Science Studies
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Understanding Chinese science
and localized) scientometric data sets creates an incomplete picture and thus leads to incom-
plete understanding of the research landscape of the country with the largest SciTech workforce.
Inoltre, this special issue does not cover altmetric research based on popular Chinese
social media. Research on the dark sides of China’s rapid scientific advancement, ad esempio
the problem of fraudulent or flawed articles authored by Chinese researchers, is also missing
in this special issue.
These important yet underinvestigated topics will hopefully be explored in future contribu-
tions published in Quantitative Science Studies, enabling scientometricians to further develop
their understanding of the Chinese science system as well as China’s scientific advancement.
4. LOOKING BEYOND
We hope that this special issue provides scientometricians, and other interested readers, con un
deeper understanding of the Chinese science system and of scientometric approaches that can
be adopted to study Chinese science. Undoubtedly, each paper has its merits as well as room for
improvement. Some readers may find the methods—for instance those introduced by Zhang,
Wu, et al. (2021) and Liu et al. (2021)—valuable, while others may find some arguments a bit
strong without excluding alternative explanations (Liu et al., 2021). In a similar vein, some
readers may appreciate the combined use of multiple data sources for profiling international
collaboration (Zhu et al., 2021) and for funding agency name cleaning and consolidation (Liu
et al., 2021), while others may question some of the methodological choices. Hopefully future
articles in Quantitative Science Studies will further widen the application of scientometric
methods to the Chinese science system and open up new perspectives. These findings will speak
directly to research evaluation practices and science policy making.
Attracting high-quality submissions is always a challenge for newly launched journals.
Quantitative Science Studies, launched in 2019, serves as the official journal of the
International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (ISSI). The journal is fully open access,
with a relatively low article processing charge (APC) that can be waived for authors that lack
financial support. Despite the appealing profile of Quantitative Science Studies, the number
of Chinese submissions to the journal has been quite limited so far. Quantitative Science
Studies may have attracted more submissions from Chinese authors if it had already been in-
dexed in the Web of Science Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI). This is particularly true for
junior scholars in China, whose publications in SSCI-indexed journals weigh more than other
journal publications in terms of promotion and award. Tuttavia, this may change in the near
future, since a radical reform of research assessment practices in China was launched in early
2020. The new policy seeks to replace a focus on WoS-based indicators with a balanced com-
bination of qualitative and quantitative research evaluation (Zhang & Sivertsen, 2020). This may
result in a systematic change in the Chinese science system in terms of research assessment,
publication behavior, international collaboration and so on, although the actual effects still
remain to be seen.
Finalmente, we would like to express our gratitude to all contributors and reviewers for their
support in making this special issue possible. We sincerely look forward to strengthening com-
munication and mutual understanding between China and the rest of the world.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We are grateful to the Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB)—Leibniz Information Centre for
Science and Technology for covering the APCs of the papers published in this special issue. Noi
also would like to thank Professor Ludo Waltman for his insightful comments and suggestions.
Quantitative Science Studies
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Understanding Chinese science
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