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Publish and flourish: investigating publication requirements for PhD students in China

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Abstract

This study analyzes the publication requirements of PhD programs in China. It is based on a representative sample of PhD programs from 164 Chinese universities from all fields of science. Our results show that Chinese PhD student significant pressures to publish in order to obtain their degree, with papers indexed in the Science Citation Index often a mandatory requirement for students to obtain their degree. Moreover, it is found that first authorship is also mandatory: only as first authors count towards the degree, which may affect PhD students’ collaborative behavior. These findings highlight the role of publications indexed in the Science Citation Index for China’s PhD programs and contributes to our understanding of the landscape of research evaluation in China’s higher education system.

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Notes

  1. Data is retrieved from the Ministry of Education.

  2. Double-blind peer review is extensive using doctoral dissertation review.

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Acknowledgements

Research for this article has been funded by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central University and Small Equipment Funding for Young Scholars from Hunan University, Educational Science Research Base Project from Hunan Province, National Social Science Funding (22CTQ039), China.

Funding

This work is supported by the National Social Science Fund of China Grant No. 22CTQ039 to Wei Quan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Educational Science Research Institute, Hunan University, Changsha, Hunan, People’s Republic of China

    Wei Quan & Meijia Yang

  2. Chinese Academy of Science and Education Evaluation (CASSE), Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, People’s Republic of China

    Fei Shu

  3. École de Bibliothéconomie Et Des Sciences de L’information, Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada

    Fei Shu & Vincent Larivière

  4. Observatoire Des Sciences Et Des Technologies (OST), Centre Interuniversitaire de Recherche Sur La Science Et La Technologie (CIRST), Université du Québec À Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada

    Vincent Larivière

  5. Western Pipeline Co. Ltd of Pipe China, Urumqi, China

    Meijia Yang

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  1. Wei Quan
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Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: WQ FS. Performed the experiments: WQ FS VL. Analyzed the data: WQ MJY. Contributed reagents/material/analysis tools: WQ FS VL MJY. Wrote the paper: WQ VL.

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Correspondence to Wei Quan.

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Quan, W., Shu, F., Yang, M. et al. Publish and flourish: investigating publication requirements for PhD students in China. Scientometrics 128, 6675–6693 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04854-8

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