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Global impact or national accessibility? A paradox in China’s science

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Abstract

During the past decades, Chinese science policy has emphasized the international dissemination of research. Such policies were associated with exponential growth of English-language publications and have led China to become the largest contributor to international scientific literature. However, due to the paywalls and language barriers, China’s international publications are less accessible to local Chinese scholars, which suggests that the dissemination to the international scientific community may come at the expense of dissemination to the local Chinese community. This paper investigates the local accessibility of China’s international publications and finds that publishing internationally limits the visibility of Chinese research for the national Chinese scientific community, and the restriction is even worse for immediate access.

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Notes

  1. In this study, international journals/publications refer to all journals/publications indexed by major international bibliometric databases (e.g., Web of Science, Scopus, etc.) while national journals/publications refer to all journals/publications indexed by national Chinese bibliometric databases, regardless of language.

  2. Although some social science and humanity (SSH) papers from multidisciplinary journals are also indexed by CSCD, the representation of SSH is very low in CSCD.

  3. https://images.webofknowledge.com/images/help/WOS/hp_research_areas_easca.html.

  4. The conversion table will be shared as an appendix with permission from Clarivate (Clarivate Analytics. (n.d.)).

  5. The period between 2011 and 2015 is China’s 12th 5-year plan, which is a series of social and economic development (including science and technology development) initiatives issued by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Most policies are consistent during the 5-year plan while the changes will happen in the next 5-year plan.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by Zhejiang Provincial Philosophy and Social Sciences Planning Project (22NDJC085YB).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chinese Academy of Science and Education Evaluation, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China

    Fei Shu, Xiaojian Wang, Sichen Liu & Junping Qiu

  2. École de Bibliothéconomie et des Sciences de l’information, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada

    Fei Shu & Vincent Larivière

  3. Observatoire des Sciences et des Technologies, Centre Interuniversitaire de Recherche sur la Science et la Technologie, Université du Québec a Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada

    Vincent Larivière

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  1. Fei Shu
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Correspondence to Junping Qiu.

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Shu, F., Wang, X., Liu, S. et al. Global impact or national accessibility? A paradox in China’s science. Scientometrics 128, 263–277 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-022-04537-w

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