Rise of Chinese Research Publishing: What are the lessons for India? Today, China is at number one in research publishing with almost 800,000 articles being published every year. (Source: Clarivate 2021) The Chinese model has been hailed by all commercial publishers and the Western Stamp of quality has been liberally dished out. This article explores the options of growing India’s research by understanding how China became number one overtaking USA.
Around the year 2008 China stood way behind USA, the UK and Germany. In 10 years, Chinese research publishing grew 375% bringing it close to the USA and surpassing all European nations.
Fast forward to 2020 and China is at number 1 with almost 800,000 articles being published every year.
The Chinese model has been hailed by all commercial publishers and the Western Stamp of quality has been liberally dished out. But as the old American saying goes, “let’s examine what is under the hood”.
In the early part of the century, China embarked on an ambitious plan to grow its stature as a researcher. It understood clearly that the way to do this was to get more research published.
At the school level, a 2011 report published in the Economist calls the Chinese claims of 300 million learning or have learnt English, a farce.
A China Highlights report of 2022 says that less than 1% of the population that speaks English can have a normal conversation in this language. This is perhaps distorted considering the size of the country and acknowledging that English is not the primary language.
A Florida University Research Paper by two Chinese academics evaluated performance of the average Chinese student that made it to the USA. Remember, this is the best of the best out of China and are paying a premium to study in the USA.
The results were shocking – most Chinese students struggled with Grammar, Language Structure, Terminology, Vocabulary (limitations of), Culture use of the language and most importantly thinking in English to understand classroom teaching.
In the realm of research publishing China has reached the top spot. Here are some facts that are being stated as they appear when examining data around Chinese publishing.
- No one says their language is flawed. They apparently write English better than the British and the Americans combined. Research, however, paints a different picture all together. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/46953887.pdf
- It’s not just Chinese scholars reaching the Western World, Chinese Universities are also under question. https://academic.oup.com/eltj/article/76/2/261/6472333
- Chinese research is highly quoted by Chinese researchers when compared to how many Western academics quote Chinese research. (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-23024-z)
- Not everyone agrees with the research out of China; some have raised questions about the quantum and quantity. https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-research-papers-raise-doubts-fueling-global-questions-about-scientific-integrity-11593939600
- No one says their research is local or regional. Suddenly research in China by Chinese academics is “having a global impact”. Ask any researcher in the developing world and she will tell you that the most common ground for rejecting research is that it is “too regional with limited or no global impact”.
If such questions are floating, one can’t help but wonder why does the Chinese publishing juggernaut continue to march on? The answer lies in the sheer scale of financial transactions that fuels this process.
From the Chinese side here is what is being done.
- Since the late 1990s, China embarked on an aggressive Publish or Perish program for its researchers. The government set very high ‘publishing quotas’ for their HE faculty which were supplemented by CASH BONUSES. https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/observations/1/end-publish-or-perish-chinas-new-policy-research-evaluation
- The entire focus of Chinese publication has been in journals listed in the Scientific Citation Index. Almost 25% of the articles (as of 2018) were from Chinese Scholars. Contrast this with non SCI journals where Chinese scholars contributed just about 5%. https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/observations/1/end-publish-or-perish-chinas-new-policy-research-evaluation . Needless to say it is obvious where the cash bonuses were earned from.
- When we talk about cash bonuses and APC charges paid by Chinese scholars, what really is the amount we are talking about? One study has suggested that between 1999 and 2016, China gave out cash bonuses between US$ 30 to US$165,000 to individual Chinese scholars! This translates into INR 2400 to INR 1 Crore 32 lakhs!! https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1707/1707.01162.pdf
- In another key indicator Chinese research gained credibility by increasing their Field Weighted Citation Index. How did they do it? They simply ensured that Chinese scholars were incentivized to Cite other Chinese scholars. This is not just a theory it is evidenced by research https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-23024-z
It is evident that such financial incentives are one of the causes for Western Publishers tripping over themselves to publish Chinese research. The sad part though remains the legitimizing of the research in a blatantly skewed manner.
There is at least one multinational publisher that has launched an entire imprint of Open Access Journals that are exclusively publishing Chinese research. At last count, this imprint had over 100 journals.
The entire operation is centered in China and given that it is Open Access, there is clearly a very large financial incentive to promote this model. And yes, it is clearly communicating that is research with a global impact.
The point of this article is not to question or discredit any country’s research, the focus is and will always remain – what are the lessons we can learn from this?
It is clear that India can ill afford to replicate the Chinese model; we simply can’t be throwing money at foreign publishers to legitimize our research. Here is what I think will work for us (Indian research)
- Given the challenges in sustaining traditional subscription based journals coupled with ONOS, Open Access is the only way to grow publishing of Indian research.
- At the same time India needs to be wary of predatory journals that have almost double the submissions of articles than legitimate Indian journals.
- Western APC rates are centered around the US$1500 mark (around INR 120,000). Predatory journals begin at around INR 2000. It is clear that both these options are unacceptable.
- India needs to grow the Citation Index of its publishing. But there is no easy way to do this given the article distribution (of Indian authored ones). There needs to be a platform where Indian authors can publish and become more searchable.
- India’s eco-system of Peer Review, Publishing Editor and even Authoring articles needs to be strengthened. While India has 1.5 million HE practitioners a very small percentage make it to becoming Peer Reviewers and or Publishing Editors.
- Traditional narrow focused journals don’t tick the box for interdisciplinary publishing, indexing and searchability. If India must implement its NEP (2020) effectively then it has to think differently on publishing interdisciplinary research.
One solution is the creation of a Mega Journal.
Unfortunately there isn’t a single one in India. Mission Vikramshila has been actively working in addressing these issues.
Watch this space for solutions that will redefine the way India’s research gets published.