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Feature report on China: a bibliometric analysis of China-related articles

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Abstract

China’s rise in science has been widely acknowledged. Yet we know little empirically about academic research focusing on China. Utilizing a uniquely constructed large-scale dataset, this paper explores China-related publications through bibliometric analysis. Our data suggests that not only interest in China but also knowledge about China has developed rapidly over the years. Despite an increasingly diverse profile of participants, the substantial rise of research focusing on China is largely limited to affluent regions and some geographically proximate neighbors of China. The research discloses that overseas Chinese facilitate academic research focusing on China. The research foci of China-related studies have gradually shifted from social science to natural science and, in more recent years, to Chinese environmental issues, public health and economy.

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Notes

  1. Considering the difference of science and technology systems between Mainland China and Taiwan, in this paper, we confine our analysis to Mainland China and two Special Administrative Regions: Hong Kong and Macau.

  2. This process included steps such as removing duplicated records based on ISI unique identifiers, merging affiliations in England, Scotland, and North Ireland into the United Kingdom, and splitting references to the University of California into different campuses of the University of California system based on the affiliation address.

  3. The publications indexed in the A&HCI database begin in 1975. In the period 1966–2013, approximately 6.6 % of our downloaded sources have missing data on affiliations and thus are not included in our analysis.

  4. We downloaded all the data in mid-November of 2013 before the Web of Science had indexed all the 2013 publications. Thus, we see a spike of CRPs in that year.

  5. The yearly publications of WoS and U.S.-focused data are available upon request. We assumed the same proportion of missing data for U.S.-focused publications in the affiliation field and adjusted our figures accordingly.

  6. The full list of Chinese surnames is available upon request.

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Acknowledgments

This work is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (#71303147, #71132006, and #71003054).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China

    Weishu Liu & Mengdi Gu

  2. School of Public Economics and Administration, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China

    Li Tang & Guangyuan Hu

Authors
  1. Weishu Liu
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  2. Li Tang
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  3. Mengdi Gu
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  4. Guangyuan Hu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Guangyuan Hu.

Appendix

Appendix

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Table 5 Search strategies
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Liu, W., Tang, L., Gu, M. et al. Feature report on China: a bibliometric analysis of China-related articles. Scientometrics 102, 503–517 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-014-1371-y

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