The rise of Chinese research collaborations demonstrates that the US is in danger of becoming the go-to place for scientific publishing in the global academic publishing system
China’s domestic research collaborations are also skyrocketing: the number of natural-science papers in the Nature Index authored solely by China-based researchers grew by 194% between 2015 and 2023. The implication, says Lee, is that US hegemony as the ‘go-to place’ for researchers around the world is in peril. It shows how global science is changing away from the West. She says that international collaboration may be shifting to a more regionalized model.
China wants to have a bigger role in shaping the global academicpublishing system and not always follow the rules set up by Western countries, she says.
Being selected for support under the CJEAP is not easy, says Shu Fei, who studies scholarly communication at Hangzhou Dianzi University in China. “It requires an ambitious plan for improvement, and to be indexed in the Web of Science within three years,” he says. If the journal isn’t affiliated with a top university or Chinese Academy of Sciences, it will not be able to get that indexing. He is involved in a journal that has been unsuccessful in applying to become a part of theCJEAP.
The lists are very important, that is what the person says. When assessing researchers for promotion, “universities will often have specific requirements” for how many publications were in journals deemed to be of a higher level, she says. “So, to meet that bar you need to benchmark against the preferred lists.”
China’s Resilient Resilience to the Silk Road Revisited by the BRI: How Open Access is Changing Research in China
Although the Chinese government and many leading institutions officially support open access, they remain suspicious of it, says Goncharoff, especially the trend towards gold open access. “China is quite resistant to gold open access. They think it’s a Western business model that’s being foisted on them. The gold model could be costly for China. If most publishing shifts to gold open access, China might have to spend as much as four times more on APCs, even with some declines in subscription costs.
There have been many discussions in China about what reasonable’s APC would be to control costs. There is funding available for Chinese researchers to pay APCs, but if the cost exceeds about US$2,800, it must be reviewed by an academic committee. Some universities are beginning to reject any above US$2,000, and there is an idea that a reasonable APC is around US$1,200.
English versions of some Chinese-language journals are establishing themselves as a hub for education studies research, as they invite global scholars to join their editorial board. “They’re not just for Chinese authors, they want to be properly international.”
The Silk Road, an ancient system of trade between China and the eastern edge of Europe has been reinvented by the BRI. The BRI is a bid to strengthen the resilience of China’s trade networks both overland and by sea, and by building maritime stations throughout the Asian continent.
She says that part of this is driven by geopolitics. Several countries, including the United Kingdom and United States, have banned Chinese firms such as Huawei from engaging in projects that involve key technology or infrastructure, such as telecommunications and electrical grids. The European Union is looking at policies that are close to their own. That has a knock-on effect; researchers in China who are interested in working in these areas don’t change fields — they look for collaborators in other countries.
Strengths in chemistry and the physical sciences have propelled the country to the top of the Nature Index. But there is untapped potential in other subject areas.