Recently, the 9th Scientific Journal Development Forum was held in Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province. Over 600 scholars from the domestic and foreign scientific journal industry participated in the forum.
Guangming Daily published an article summarizing the discussion on the topic of how the fact that China’s scientific journals lag behind other countries is incompatible with China’s image as a scientific and economic giant. The article said that China has the largest number of researchers who publish the second largest number of scientific papers and it also holds the third largest number of patents in the world. China has close to 5,000 scientific journals. They account for 50 percent of the total number of journals in China. Thus China ranks second in the world next to the U.S. However, only 239 or 5 percent of those journals are in English. Their quality is considered to be low and they do not have much of an impact in their respective scientific fields. The article disclosed that over 80 percent of the Chinese researchers have chosen to publish their papers in foreign journals rather than in domestic journals. It also said that China’s journal industry is behind in online and digital publishing. Currently scientific groups, research agencies, or universities publish articles, but they have a limited publication size and sales channels and can hardly compete with international publishers.
The article also reported that the General Administration of Press and Publications, Radio, Film and Television has and will continue to introduce policies to assist in the development of the scientific journal industry and to improve its international influence.
Source: Guangming Daily, November 30, 2013
http://news.gmw.cn/2013-11/30/content_9652103.htm