ArticlePDF Available

China's global growth in social science research: Uncovering evidence from bibliometric analyses of SSCI publications (1978–2013)

Authors:
Weishu Liu at Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics
Weishu Liu
Guangyuan Hu
Guangyuan Hu
Guangyuan Hu
  • This person is not on ResearchGate, or hasn't claimed this research yet.
Li Tang at Fudan University
Li Tang
Yuandi Wang
Yuandi Wang
Yuandi Wang
  • This person is not on ResearchGate, or hasn't claimed this research yet.
Download full-text PDF
Read full-text
Download citation

Abstract and Figures

The phenomenon of China's rise as an emerging scientific power has been well documented, yet the development of its social science is less explored. Utilizing up-to-date Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) publication data (1978–2013), this paper probes the patterns and dynamics of China's social science research via bibliometric analyses. Our research indicates that despite the national orientation of social science research and the linguistic obstacle of publishing for an international audience, China's publications in the SSCI dataset have been rising in terms of volume, world share, and global ranking. But China is still not yet a major player in the arena of social sciences, as is evidenced by the number of Chinese journals indexed in SSCI and the lack of Olympic players. Team research features China's international publishing in social science, but the research outputs are highly unbalanced at regional and institutional levels.
Figures - uploaded by Weishu Liu
Author content
All figure content in this area was uploaded by Weishu Liu
Content may be subject to copyright.
Content uploaded by Weishu Liu
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Weishu Liu on Aug 05, 2019
Content may be subject to copyright.
Journal of Informetrics
Manuscript Draft
Manuscript Number: JOI-D-15-00002
Title: Uncovering social science research in China: Evidence from bibliometric analyses of SSCI
publications (1978-2013)
Article Type: Full Length Article
Keywords: arge-scale bibliometric analysis, research evaluation, social sciences development, China,
science and technology policy
Abstract: The phenomenon of China's rise as an emerging scientific power has been well documented,
yet the development of its social science is less explored. Utilizing up-to-date Social Science Citation
Index (SSCI) publication data (1978-2013), this paper probes the patterns and dynamics of China's
social science research via bibliometric analyses. Our research indicates that despite the national
orientation of Chinese social science research and the linguistic obstacle of publishing for an
international audience, China's publications in the SSCI data set have been rising in terms of volume,
world share, and global ranking. But China is still not yet a major player in the arena of social sciences
evidenced by the lack of Olympic players. China's social science research output is highly concentrated
at both regional and institutional levels with a declining dominance of Hong Kong. The study also finds
that team research features China's social science development, and Chinese social scientists are much
more likely in cooperating with international partners than their counterparts in the natural sciences
domain.
1
Uncovering social science research in China:
Evidence from bibliometric analyses of SSCI publications (1978–2013)
Weishu Liu1, Li Tang2*, Guangyuan Hu2, Yuandi Wang3
1. Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University,
Shanghai 200052, China.
2. Corresponding author, Li Tang. School of Public Economics and Administration,
Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai 200433, China. Email:
tang.li@shufe.edu.cn
3. School of Business, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610064, China.
Abstract: The phenomenon of China‘s rise as an emerging scientific power has been
well documented, yet the development of its social science is less explored. Utilizing
up-to-date Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) publication data (1978–2013), this
paper probes the patterns and dynamics of China‘s social science research via
bibliometric analyses. Our research indicates that despite the national orientation of
Chinese social science research and the linguistic obstacle of publishing for an
international audience, China‘s publications in the SSCI data set have been rising in
terms of volume, world share, and global ranking. But China is still not yet a major
player in the arena of social sciences evidenced by the lack of Olympic players.
China‘s social science research output is highly concentrated at both regional and
institutional levels with a declining dominance of Hong Kong. The study also finds
that team research features China‘s social science development, and Chinese social
scientists are much more likely in cooperating with international partners than their
counterparts in the natural sciences domain.
Keywords: large-scale bibliometric analysis, research evaluation, social sciences
development, China, science and technology policy
Acknowledgment: This research is supported by National Natural Science
Foundation of China (#71303147, #71132006 and #71302133) and Shanghai Pujiang
Talent‘s Program (#13PJC052). The views expressed herein are those of the authors
and not necessarily those of the funders listed here. This study has benefited greatly
from the insightful comments from three anonymous reviewers. We are responsible
for any errors.
*Manuscript
Click here to view linked References
2
Uncovering social science research in China:
Evidence from bibliometric analyses of SSCI publications (1978–2013)
Abstract: The phenomenon of China‘s rise as an emerging scientific power has been
well documented, yet the development of its social science is less explored. Utilizing
up-to-date Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) publication data (1978–2013), this
paper probes the patterns and dynamics of China‘s social science research via
bibliometric analyses. Our research indicates that despite the national orientation of
Chinese social science research and the linguistic obstacle of publishing for an
international audience, China‘s publications in the SSCI data set have been rising in
terms of volume, world share, and global ranking. But China is still not yet a major
player in the arena of social sciences evidenced by the lack of Olympic players.
China‘s social science research output is highly concentrated at both regional and
institutional levels with a declining dominance of Hong Kong. The study also finds
that team research features China‘s social science development, and Chinese social
scientists are much more likely in cooperating with international partners than their
counterparts in the natural sciences domain.
Keywords: large-scale bibliometric analysis, research evaluation, social sciences
development, China, science and technology policy
Introduction
One hundred years ago, Chen Duxiu, then one of China‘s most influential
intellectual leaders of the New Culture Movement, personalized democracy and
science as ―Mr. Democracy‖ and ―Mr. Science‖. He appealed that ―only these two
gentlemen can save China from the political, moral, academic, and intellectual
darkness in which it finds itself‖(Chen, 1919). One century later, while the debate of
Mr. Democracy and Mr. Science has not totally settled, the discussions of parallel
developing basic science versus applied science, natural science versus social
science, are intensified in alignment with the balancing allocation of China‘s
escalating research and development fund (Rao, 2014; Gu, 2001).
Social science research has been playing an increasingly active role in national and
international policy making. Unlike natural science focusing on natural world, social
science studies the ―society and the manner in which people behave and influence the
world around us.‖ 1It is expected to promote and secure social and economic
sustainable development by providing insights, responses and solutions to the
interacting processes of social and environmental change (ISSI 2013).
When measured by the quantity of journal articles, China has risen as a global
scientific power (Zhou, Thijs, & Glanzel, 2009; Kostoff, 2012); this is particularly
1 Source: UK Economic and Social Research Council definition.
http://www.esrc.ac.uk/about-esrc/what-is-social-science/
3
true in some cutting-edge fields such as grapheme and nanotechnology (Arora et al.,
2013; Leydesdorff, 2005). Accordingly, voluminous bibliometric studies focusing on
China have tried to evaluate the scientific research performance from a variety of
research domains and perspectives (Youtie et al., 2008; Zhou & Leydesdorff, 2009;
Tang, Shapira & Youtie, 2014). Yet, it remains unclear whether China has also risen as
a global scientific power when it comes to social science development. To fill the
research gap, this paper adopts China‘s publication indexed in Social Science Citation
Database (1978-2013) to profile the status quo and dynamics of China‘s research
performances in general social sciences at a more granular level.
The topic is important for at least two reasons. First, Chinese social scientists are
becoming interpreters and even ‗legislators‘ of social change in China (ISSI 2010;
2013). Focusing on issues with which both the public and policy-makers are
concerned, their scholarly publications can serve as a prism to reflect on what are
happening and their impacts on China‘s sustainable development. Second, as the
largest developing country, China‘s social science development can and should add
more open debates on a variety of global critical issues. A greater engagement by
Chinese scholars and attention to Chinese social science development can and will be
adding a plurality of opinions bridging east-west knowledge divide (ISSI 2013; Liu et
al., 2014).
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 briefly reviews the
existing sporadic literature on social sciences and the novelty of this research. Next
we describe the data set for analysis. Then we combine both bibliometric analysis and
visualization techniques to portray the intellectual structure of China‘s social science
research among five categories: (1) general trends, (2) key actors at both regional and
institutional levels, (3) co-authorship, (4) research foci, and (5) key funding sources.
We conclude with major findings, limitations, future directions, and policy
implications.
Literature review
Using large-scale bibliometric analysis as a tool for research evaluation is well
received among academics and policy makers. The majority of bourgeoning literature,
however, focuses mainly on natural science, with very few exceptions investigating
social science. For example, using 40 thousand monograph records in the
International Bibliography of the Social Sciences files, Kishida and Matsui (1997)
conducted a scientometric analysis of selected domains in social science literature
published from 1981 to 1985. They found that at the country level gross domestic
product (GDP) is highly correlated with the number of monographs. Ingwersen (2000)
discussed the usefulness and caveats of applying SSCI to evaluate Scandinavia
research. He posited the validity of SSCI publications holds for selected social
sciences. Later, country-level analysis on social science and humanity research
emerged. For example, Kavunenko et al. (2006) analyzed the rapid expansion of
Ukraine journals in the fields of social sciences and humanities. They observed a
4
trend of decentralization evidenced by a notable growth of publications outside the
capital of Kyiv. Gulgoz et al. (2002) explored Turkey SSCI publications in the period
1970–1999. They argue Turkey‘s social science achieved considerable progress in the
examined period, evidenced by publication counts and global rankings.
There are also some efforts focusing on China (Zhou & Glänzel, 2010; Zhou &
Leydesdorff, 2006; Zhou et al., 2009a; Ma et al., 2014). Utilizing SSCI publications,
Zhou and her colleagues (Zhou et al., 2009a) portrayed China‘s performance in social
science research from 1974 to 2007. Stimulated by its finding of the dramatic
disparity of performance between natural science and social science in that work,
Zhou et al. (2010) further examined the citation network of Chinese social science
research, drawing upon publications in both SSCI and CSSCI (Chinese Social
Sciences Citation Index) in the single year of 2007. They appealed for the
establishment of a more objectifying system of research evaluation and
internationalization of Chinese domestic journals to upgrade the international impact
of Chinese social science development. Recently bibliometric analyses focusing on
special domains in social sciences, such as management and entrepreneurship, have
begun to appear (Zhai et al., 2014a; Zhai et al., 2014b). For example in one study
conducted by a research group at Wuhan University, the researchers explored the
collaboration patterns of China‘s social science research in national journals drawn
from publications indexed in CSSCI from 1998 to 2011 (Ma et al., 2014).
However, some interesting aspects such as regional distribution, internationalization
of research, major funding sources, and the like are left unexplored. Additionally, the
extant studies do not go much further than these observations in speculating factors
(including institutional incentives) driving China‘s social science research
development. Built upon previous research, this paper further explores China‘s social
science research and examines these unexplored topics. We benchmark China‘s social
science development against its natural science cohorts and see if any unique patterns
emerge. Our data covers a 36-year span—1978–2013, a period of rapid expansion of
China‘s science base. This enables us to ascertain if any new developments have
arisen or shifted in China. For a country still in its rapid transitional period, we pay
more attention to the status quo, but we also assess the dynamics of China‘ research
trends.
Methods
Following common practice, this study used the Web of Science Social Science
Citation Index (WoS-SSCI) database as the data source (Glänzel, 1996; Zhou et al.,
2009a). We judge that the SSCI data set provides us a sufficiently large and diverse
sample to analyze China‘s social science research at the global stage.2 This is
particularly true in the time period where the Chinese government highly values and
2 We did not include the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) data set in our analysis due to
differences between social science and humanity research (Hicks & Wang, 2011).
5
provides a package of incentives for WoS indexed publications (Zhang & Zhou, 2007;
Tien, 2000, 2008).
The whole counting method was adopted in identifying China‘s SSCI publications
based on author-reported affiliated countries. We searched ―China‖ or ―Hong Kong‖
or ―Macao‖ in the country field, and this returned 54,134 hits.3 Full bibliographic
information was downloaded on May 8, 2014, in plain text format. It was then
imported into Vantage Point, a text-mining software, for substantial cleaning and
standardization through thesauri and manual checks.4 Only four document types
(articles, letters, notes, and reviews) are included (Zhou et al., 2009a; Tang, 2013).
Web of Science categorization is adopted to depict the main research areas of
China‘s social science research. We follow the geographic location method
introduced by Tang and Shapira (2011) to allocate all of China‘s SSCI publications
to its 33 provincial regions: 22 provinces, 4 municipalities, 5 autonomous regions,
and 2 special administrative regions.5 After several rounds of thorough cleaning, we
finalized 51,264 of China‘s SSCI publications for analysis in the examination period
of 1978 to 2013.6.
Analyses
General trends
Our data shows that SSCI publications affiliated with China appear to increase
substantially over the study period. The number of Chinese SSCI articles rose from
64 in 1978 to 8,040 in 2013, with an annual growth rate of 14.81%. A very large
share of the Chinese social science papers were produced in the last decade. This
demonstrates that China was increasingly making its presence known in the social
science domain.
In order to further understand the dynamics of China‘s SSCI publications, we split
the study period into three 12-year phases: 1978–1989, 1990–2001, and 2002–2013.
As depicted in Figure 1(a), China‘s social science research at the first phase is barely
visible: the average number of publications per year is only 167. Between 1990 and
2001, the number of Chinese publications indexed by SSCI increased from 281 to
1,096, an almost fourfold increase. This leads to a total of 7,260 articles in this
3 Considering the difference in science and technology systems between mainland China and Taiwan,
all analyses in the papers were restricted to mainland China and two Special Administrative Regions:
Hong Kong and Macau. The document types are restricted to articles, letters, notes, and reviews.
4 This process included a series of steps such as removing duplicate records based on ISI unique
identifiers; merging affiliations in England, Scotland, and North Ireland into the United Kingdom; and
identifying different forms of the same institution merged together (e.g., the variants of the Chinese
Academy of Sciences, CAS, and Academia Sinica verified by address field); and the like.
5 Note that Hong Kong returned to China in 1997, while Macau did in 1999. In order to have a
consistent comparison base, we include both special administrative regions throughout the whole
examination period.
6 Our online search shows that China‘s SSCI publication is rather sporadic until 1977; thus, we
confined the data coverage from 1978, the initial year of China‘s Reform and Open-door Policy, to
2013.
6
period. China‘s SSCI publications boomed during the last 12-year stage. The whole
volume of this period reached over 42,000 articles with an annual growth rate of
19.67%.
Fig.1 China‘s SSCI publications by Years, 1978-2013
China‘s increased visibility in social science research is also demonstrated by the rise
of its world share of SSCI publications. China‘s SSCI publications originated at only
0.11% of the world total in 1978, and the figure leaped to 4.30% in 2013 with a
factor of almost 40. Although still not a big share, the growth trajectory, especially
after 2002, seems lucrative.
Many factors contribute to China‘s fast development in social science. The first one
is its rapid expanding researcher base. According to the Educational Statistics
Yearbooks of China (2002; 2013), the number of Chinese full-time equivalent social
science researchers almost doubled within 12 years, from 243,582 in 2001 to
482,050. Secondly, China‘s rising status triggered more interest in China around
the globe. As documented by Liu et al. (2014), the interest in China and knowledge
about China has developed rapidly over the years. This, intuitively, partially
explained an increasing number of Chinese journals indexed in SSCI, and may also
make research from China being accepted into international journals more likely
than before. From an institutional perspective, the Chinese university policy of
encouraging more international publication matters. In spite of specific promotion
criteria varying across different institutions and disciplines, in many Chinese
universities and research institutes, a greater emphasis is placed on SSCI or SCI
indexed journals in addition to governmental grants and official competitive research
awards (Shao et al., 2011; Shao & Shen, 2012). Under such a reward structure,
rational Chinese social scientists naturally tend to shift their efforts and concentrate
7
on more valued international publishing.
When compared to China‘s SCI publications, the growth rate of China‘s social
science research is noticeably lower.7 As shown in Figure 1(b) the disparity between
these two intellectual domains is widening in terms of both absolute number and
global share. Our data disclose that China‘s global ranking has jumped from 26th, to
13th, and then to 8th in these three successive phases. These are consistently lower than
the ranks with regard to SCI publication, which are 21th, 9th, and 2nd in the same
periods, respectively.
Yet China is still not a major player in the arena of social sciences. In July 2014,
Thomson Reuters released a new list of 3072 Highly Cited Researchers for 2002-2012
covering 22 broad fields of the Sciences and Social Sciences.8 Among them 132
unique researchers affiliated with Chinese universities and research institutes.9 In
sharp contrast, no Chinese scientists appeared in three social science domains:
Psychiatry/Psychology; Social Sciences, general, and Business & Economics. This
indicates that China does not have Olympic players in social science domains.
There are a couple of reasons accounting for China‘s imbalanced development in
social and natural sciences. To begin with, in contrast to natural sciences, social
sciences are more imbedded in and thus affected by the national system (culturally,
economically, and politically) to which they are oriented (Zhou et al., 2010). This
posits restraints for publications appealing to a global audience. Second but related,
social sciences have a higher demand of mastery of English language than natural
sciences, which poses harder challenges for non-English-speaking scholars in
countries such as China. These striking differences between social science and natural
science may not be limited to China. Further comparative study of social science
development in other countries would be interesting.
Concentration of research output
Key actors at regional level
We examine the concentration of China‘s social science research at both regional and
institutional levels. Table 1 identifies the key regional players of China‘s SSCI
publications. As shown, China‘s distribution of SSCI publications is highly skewed:
the top three most productive regions accounted for 77% of all publications in the
examined period. But different from regional hubs in science domains (He et al., 2005;
Zhou et al., 2009b; Chen et al., 2007), Hong Kong, rather than any other mainland city,
leads with 24,304 papers (about 47%), followed by Beijing (13,208, or about 26%)
and Shanghai (4,587, or about 9%). The ten least productive regions in this phase only
authored 886 SSCI publications together, occupying 1.7% of the total.
7 To benchmark the development trajectory of China‘s social science research, we also recorded and
calculated yearly publications of SCI papers of China and worldwide using WoS online analyzing
tools.
8 For detailed method description, please refer to http://highlycited.com/
9 Please note there are about 135 researchers are highly influential in more than one research domain.
8
Table 1 also breaks down regional outputs of SSCI publications into the three
successive periods. As shown, Hong Kong ranks first in all three phases. With just
0.5% of the Chinese population, Hong Kong accounts for 47% of research output in
social science.10 It is interesting to point out that the relative share of the mainland in
China‘s SSCI publications plummeted from 47% in phase 1 (1978–1989) to 31% in
phase 2 (1990–2001) and then rose to 64% in the last twelve years. In phase 3, the
mushrooming of China‘s SSCI publications is actually driven by research activities in
both mainland China and Hong Kong. From 2007 the number of SSCI publications of
mainland China has surpassed Hong Kong.
One speculation for this dynamic is that after the 1989 Tian-An-Men Square Event,
many Chinese intellectuals in the mainland became more cautious and more reluctant
to be critical toward social and political issues; while in more recent years, with the
rise of the Chinese economy and the government‘s policies of attracting overseas
talents, more voices and suggestions were uttered by social science researchers
residing in mainland China. Judging by the high growth rate, it seems that Beijing will
replace Hong Kong as the leading SSCI producer regarding the volume of
publications.
The geographic information system software MapInfo 11.0 was used to visualize the
changing pattern of China‘s SSCI publications by region (Liu et al., 2014). Again we
can see the growth rate of China‘s social science research masks the huge variations in
geographical concentrations of research output. As depicted in Figure 2, during the
first 24 years of the studied period, only a few regions located on the eastern coast of
China are relatively active in SSCI paper production. In phase 3, regions from the
midwest of China, such as Sichuan and Shaanxi, became involved in the knowledge
10 Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China. http://data.stats.gov.cn/
9
Table 1 Regional actors of China SSCI publications
Period
1978-2013
1978-1989
1990-2001
2002-2013
Region
#
National
share
%
International
collaboration
%
#
%
#
%
#
%
Hong Kong
24304
47.41
38.9
1058
52.98
5184
71.40
18062
43.00
Beijing
13208
25.76
54.2
516
25.84
1114
15.34
11578
27.56
Shanghai
4587
8.95
54.4
172
8.61
327
4.50
4088
9.73
Guangdong
2396
4.67
43.2
35
1.75
110
1.52
2251
5.36
Jiangsu
2020
3.94
43.7
43
2.15
123
1.69
1854
4.41
Zhejiang
1816
3.54
49.5
13
0.65
68
0.94
1735
4.13
Hubei
1531
2.99
43.6
23
1.15
106
1.46
1402
3.34
Sichuan
1217
2.37
54.4
14
0.70
64
0.88
1139
2.71
Shaanxi
1134
2.21
46.6
15
0.75
40
0.55
1079
2.57
Liaoning
926
1.81
48.5
22
1.10
53
0.73
851
2.03
Shandong
879
1.71
50.5
11
0.55
74
1.02
794
1.89
Hunan
840
1.64
48.5
26
1.30
50
0.69
764
1.82
Macau
731
1.43
41.3
8
0.40
11
0.15
712
1.69
Tianjin
761
1.48
42.3
12
0.60
62
0.85
687
1.64
Fujian
700
1.37
51.3
4
0.20
24
0.33
672
1.60
Chongqing
693
1.35
42.0
6
0.30
22
0.30
665
1.58
Anhui
696
1.36
40.1
5
0.25
42
0.58
649
1.54
Yunnan
461
0.90
64.6
9
0.45
39
0.54
413
0.98
Heilongjiang
375
0.73
48.5
5
0.25
17
0.23
353
0.84
Henan
368
0.72
51.9
3
0.15
24
0.33
341
0.81
Jilin
318
0.62
53.8
6
0.30
22
0.30
290
0.69
Jiangxi
205
0.40
48.8
4
0.20
6
0.08
195
0.46
Gansu
202
0.39
51.5
3
0.15
5
0.07
194
0.46
Guangxi
207
0.40
63.3
4
0.20
14
0.19
189
0.45
Hebei
161
0.31
50.9
5
0.25
14
0.19
142
0.34
Shanxi
141
0.28
54.6
5
0.25
8
0.11
128
0.30
Xinjiang
122
0.24
45.9
1
0.05
8
0.11
113
0.27
Inner Mongolia
72
0.14
56.2
1
0.05
0
0.00
71
0.17
Guizhou
73
0.14
56.2
4
0.20
14
0.19
55
0.13
Hainan
54
0.11
64.8
0
0.00
1
0.01
53
0.13
Qinghai
45
0.09
62.2
2
0.10
6
0.08
37
0.09
Ningxia
39
0.08
46.2
1
0.05
4
0.06
34
0.08
Tibet
40
0.08
82.5
1
0.05
9
0.12
30
0.07
Total
51264
100
Ave.=46.4
1997
100
7260
100
42007
100
10
production of social sciences, as evidenced by the darkened color shades. But overall
the expanding clusters have strengthened among more developed coastal provinces,
thereby intensifying China‘s coastal-interior divide in social science research.
Key actors at organizational level
China‘s concentration of social science research is also reflected at organizational
level. During the studied period, more than five thousand Chinese affiliations take
part in the knowledge production of social sciences. The number which was only
about 500 in phase 1, doubled in phase 2 and increased four times in the period of
2002–2013. Table 2 identifies the top 10 most productive Chinese institutions in
social science research.
The University of Hong Kong leads the production of SSCI publications with 6,630
papers. It is closely tailed by Chinese University of Hong Kong (6598), and followed
by Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and City University of Hong Kong, with
4066, and 3602 papers, respectively. Chinese Academy of Sciences, the giant in
scientific research, occupies only the fifth place with 3100 papers. The data also
disclose that six out of the top 10 are located in Hong Kong. And in each of the three
phases at least 90% of the top 10 prolific institutions are located in Hong Kong,
Beijing, or Shanghai. In addition, the top 20 most prolific institutions participate
over 70% of China‘s SSCI paper production. All these data suggest a high
concentration of Chinese social science research at both regional and organizational
levels.
Co-authorship analysis
General analysis
As one of the most tangible forms of research collaboration, co-authorship is a
widely accepted indicator in the bibliometric community (Cronin et al., 2004;
Glänzel & Schubert, 2004; Wang et al., 2005). Anecdotal evidence repeatedly
reports that collaboration is playing an increasingly important role in academic
research (Wuchty, Jones, & Uzzi, 2007; Zhou & Glänzel, 2010). This also holds in
China‘s SSCI publications. In our data, over 80% of the publications are
multi-authored. Among them, about two-thirds are collaborated by at least two
institutions, and 46% are internationally collaborated. This number is twice high as
China‘s international co-publication rate in science (23%).
11
Fig 2. Regional distribution of China‘s SSCI publications: three phases
12
Figure 3 depicts the dynamics of China‘s SCI and SSCI international collaboration
rates. The international co-authorship rate of SSCI papers experienced a rapid
growth in early periods, and since 1992 it remains relatively stable between 40% and
50%. As shown, during the entire 36-year study period, the international
collaboration rates of SSCI publications are consistently higher than those of SCI
publications except in 1981. This suggests that Chinese social scientists are more
likely to collaborate with international partners than their counterparts in the natural
sciences domain.
One interesting finding is that Hong Kong turns out to have the lowest international
collaboration rate among 33 regions with 39%, which is 15 percentage points less
than Beijing and Shanghai, and only half that of Tibet. One possible reason is that
there exists a large pool of excellent scholars within Hong Kong, and thus there is no
need for them to go abroad seeking collaborators. This conjecture is partially
supported by our data. When grouping Hong Kong‘s SSCI publications by Chinese
versus non-Chinese surnames (Tang & Shapira, 2012), we found that about 86%
involve at least one researcher with a Chinese family name over the examined period.
When excluding foreign institutions, the figure remains at the same rate.
Key collaborating countries
Worldwide, Chinese researchers have co-authored with researchers from 140
countries/regions to publish SSCI papers from 1978 to 2013. Figure 4 and Table 3
show the top 20 international partners in the three 12-year periods.11 In the first
phase of 1978–1989, China collaborated with 33 countries with 486 SSCI papers.
The international collaboration intensifies in the next two phases, as evidenced by
the number of collaborated countries, which rises to 75 and 136 with 2,941 and
20,339 international coauthored papers, respectively. As shown in Table 3, we
observe the rise of collaboration with Australia and Singapore in the latter two
periods and the relative decline of collaboration with the United State.
Unsurprisingly, the United States is China‘s most important partner in social science
research. Over half of China‘s internationally collaborated SSCI publications involve
at least one scholar from the U.S. This is followed by the U.K., Canada, Australia,
and Singapore, with shares of 13.87%, 10.69%, 9.71%, and 4.34%, respectively. The
top 10 international partners account for 92.51% of all the international collaborated
papers.
Research foci
Research categories
Our data set encompassed 232 WoS categories. Table 4 illustrates the distribution of
the top five WoS categories in the three phases of the studied period.
11 Given the large variation of publication counts in the 36 years, the bar charts in Figure 4 are drawn
on a logarithmic scale for the purpose of better demonstration.
13
From 1978 to 1989, Chinese researchers published in 160 WoS categories. The WoS
category Economics leads with 175 publications and a share of 8.76%,12 followed
by Area Studies (138, 6.91%), Psychiatry (127, 6.36%), Anthropology (124, 6.21%),
and Education & Educational Research (119, 5.96%). As shown in Column F,
compared to the world average category distribution of SSCI publications, Chinese
researchers were much more active in Area Studies and Anthropology in the first
phase.
In the second phase, China‘s SSCI publications cover 195 categories. Economics
again leads with 985 publications and a share of 13.57%. Replacing Area Studies and
Anthropology, two new categories, Management and Operations Research &
Management Science, rose to the second and fourth places, respectively. When
compared with the global mean,13 the shares of China‘s SSCI publications in
Economics, Management, and Operations Research & Management Science are
much higher than those of the world average. This suggests that when measured by
relative publication share, China possesses comparative strengths in these domains.
In the last phase, China‘s SSCI publications has spanned to 228 categories.
Consistent with the previous phase, Economics and Management lead with 5,436
(12.94%) and 3,725(8.87%) publications. Public, Environmental & Occupational
Health roses to fourth place. Similar to the second phase, China‘s share of the top
four categories, Economics, Management, Operations Research & Management
Science, and Public, Environmental & Occupational Health are much higher than the
world averages, which indicates that China has relative competitiveness in these
domains. Psychiatry, which consistently appeared in the top-five lists, is the only
WoS category in which China has a relatively smaller share than that of the global
average. Overall our findings echoed the discovery of Zhou et al. (2010) that the
structure of social sciences remained sufficiently stable over time.
12 The percentage is computed by the number of Chinese articles in the category of Economics
divided by the total number of China's SSCI publications.
13 The global mean (%) is computed by the number of articles in the category of Economics
worldwide divided by the total number of global SSCI publications.
14
Figure 3 International co-authored rate of China, SCI vs SSCI
0.00
10.00
20.00
30.00
40.00
50.00
60.00
1978 1981 1984 1987 1990 1993 1996 1999 2002 2005 2008 2011
International co-authored rate(%)
Year
SCI Intl ratio
15
15
Table 2 Top 20 prolific institutions in China‘s SSCI publications
Period
1978-1989
1990-2001
2002-2013
Rank
Institution
Region
#
Institution
Region
#
Institution
Region
#
1
Univ Hong Kong
Hong Kong
492
Chinese Univ Hong Kong
Hong Kong
1634
Univ Hong Kong
Hong Kong
4851
2
Chinese Univ Hong Kong
Hong Kong
409
Univ Hong Kong
Hong Kong
1287
Chinese Univ Hong Kong
Hong Kong
4555
3
Chinese Acad Sci
Beijing
163
City Univ Hong Kong
Hong Kong
753
Hong Kong Polytech Univ
Hong Kong
3515
4
Chinese Acad Social Sci
Beijing
79
Hong Kong Univ Sci Technol
Hong Kong
702
City Univ Hong Kong
Hong Kong
2837
5
Peking Univ
Beijing
77
Hong Kong Polytech Univ
Hong Kong
528
Chinese Acad Sci
Beijing
2687
6
Fudan Univ
Shanghai
54
Hong Kong Baptist Univ
Hong Kong
297
Peking Univ
Beijing
2460
7
Hong Kong Polytech Univ
Hong Kong
23
Peking Univ
Beijing
253
Hong Kong Univ Sci Technol
Hong Kong
1496
8
Shanghai Jiao Tong Univ
Shanghai
23
Chinese Acad Sci
Beijing
250
Tsinghua Univ
Beijing
1466
9
Beijing Normal Univ
Beijing
22
Lingnan Univ
Hong Kong
117
Beijing Normal Univ
Beijing
1198
10
Cent S Univ
Hunan
18
Chinese Acad Social Sci
Beijing
91
Fudan Univ
Shanghai
1053
16
16
Fig 4. Rising trends of international collaboration
Note: Given the large variation of publication counts in the 36 years, the barcharts in Figure 4 are
drawn on logarithmic scale for the purpose of better demonstration
17
17
Table 3 Top 20 international collaborators
Period
1978-1989
1990-2001
2002-2013
Rank
Country
#
(%)
Country
#
(%)
Country
#
(%)
1
USA
287
59.05
USA
1701
57.84
USA
10700
52.61
2
UK
82
16.87
UK
394
13.40
UK
2820
13.86
3
Canada
39
8.02
Canada
357
12.14
Australia
2259
11.11
4
Australia
23
4.73
Australia
259
8.81
Canada
1911
9.40
5
Taiwan
14
2.88
Japan
115
3.91
Singapore
955
4.70
6
Japan
14
2.88
Singapore
70
2.38
Taiwan
893
4.39
7
Germany
13
2.67
Taiwan
66
2.24
Japan
829
4.08
8
France
9
1.85
Germany
63
2.14
Germany
728
3.58
9
Singapore
7
1.44
Netherlands
48
1.63
Netherlands
712
3.50
10
New Zealand
7
1.44
France
45
1.53
South Korea
521
2.56
11
Netherlands
5
1.03
New Zealand
41
1.39
France
426
2.09
12
Sweden
4
0.82
Sweden
40
1.36
New Zealand
349
1.72
13
India
4
0.82
Israel
37
1.26
Belgium
347
1.71
14
Switzerland
3
0.62
South Korea
32
1.09
Switzerland
341
1.68
15
Thailand
3
0.62
Switzerland
31
1.05
Spain
283
1.39
16
Philippines
3
0.62
India
26
0.88
Sweden
278
1.37
17
Indonesia
3
0.62
Finland
24
0.82
India
267
1.31
18
South Korea
2
0.41
South Africa
21
0.71
Italy
238
1.17
19
Italy
2
0.41
Nepal
18
0.61
Austria
166
0.82
20
Austria
2
0.41
Belgium
15
0.51
Israel
163
0.80
18
18
Table 4 China‘s SSCI publications by WoS categories
A
B
C
D
E
F
Phase
WoS Category
Number
Share%
China
Share%
Global
Diff
D-E
1978-1989
Economics
175
8.76
8.60
+0.16
Area Studies
138
6.91
1.40
+5.51
Psychiatry
127
6.36
7.26
-0.90
Anthropology
124
6.21
2.22
+3.99
Education & Educational Research
119
5.96
5.65
+0.31
1990-2001
Economics
985
13.57
9.22
+4.35
Management
784
10.80
4.01
+6.79
Psychiatry
435
5.99
9.10
-3.11
Operations Research & Management Science
421
5.80
1.56
+4.24
Education & Educational Research
420
5.79
4.47
+1.32
2002-2013
Economics
5436
12.94
9.78
+3.16
Management
3725
8.87
4.51
+4.36
Operations Research & Management Science
2398
5.71
1.47
+4.24
Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
2306
5.49
1.32
+4.17
Psychiatry
2170
5.17
7.84
-2.67
19
19
Content related to China
Intuitively, social science research is contextual and, as expected, highly related to
local social and political systems (Hicks, 2005; Zhou et al., 2009a; 2009b). In this
section we examine to what extent China‘s SSCI publications focus on Chinese issues.
Assuming social science research related to Chinese issues will contain texts of
Chinese geographical information in the fields of title, abstract, author keywords, and
keywords plus, we constructed a thesaurus that contains the names of China, its 33
provinces, and their name variations and applied it to the topic fields of downloaded
publications (Liu et al., 2014b).14
Our data shows that on average 55% of China‘s SSCI publications are China-related
in content. Figure 5 illustrates that the growth trend of China-related and
non-China-related SSCI publications almost overlapped until the end of phase 2.
Starting from 1997, more social science research dealt with Chinese issues. This
indicates that Chinese researchers conducted more social science research about
China than worldwide social sciences in general.
We further differentiated China-related articles by regional focus. We found that out
of 13,373 China regional related articles, less than 12% (1,550 articles) deal with
mid-China issues and about 7% (890 articles) focus on western China.15 Such a small
proportion of articles on inland China are furthermore unevenly distributed among
provinces. There are 13 provinces‘ issues discussed in less than 100 papers each
during 36 years of examination. Given that mid- and western China account for 61%
of China‘s population (0.85 billion out of 1.4 billion) and 70% of its geographical area
(6.7 million km2), we can conclude that Chinese social scientists‘ attention to and
knowledge of inland China is disproportionately low compared with those regions‘
demographics and rising economic importance.
Funding Analyses
An increasing number of researchers have begun to use funding acknowledgements
(FAs) to probe the driving forces behind research growth (Cronin et al., 2003; Shapira
& Wang, 2010; Wang & Shapira, 2011; Costas & Leeuwen, 2012 ). In this section, we
use FA to identify the key funding agencies in China SSCI publications during the
five-year period of 2009 to 2013.16
Three intriguing findings emerge from FA analysis. First, our data indicates that
11,280 (or about 38%) of China‘s social science research reported FA information.
14 See help for Advanced Search Field Tags, available at
http://images.webofknowledge.com/WOK46/help/WOS/h_advanced_fieldtags.html
15 We adopt the Chinese government‘s convention on definition of eastern, central, and western China.
Population and area data are based on information from the National Bureau of Statistics of China.
The data were accessed on August 10, 2014.
16 WoS began including funding acknowledgement data in their publication record in August of 2008.
20
20
Fig.5 Evolution of China-related papers
21
21
This number is only about half of China‘s nanotechnology funding rate (Wang &
Shapira, 2011), and 46% that of China‘s SCI research.17 One widely accepted
speculation is that China‘ rise in science is driven by the government‘s massive
research and development (R&D) spending. This hints that more allocation of R&D
on social science would be catalyst for future social science development.
Another interesting fact rising from FA analysis is the relationship of international
collaboration and international co-funding (Figure 6). As shown on the left panel,
about 41% of funded international co-publications are supported by Chinese funding
agencies only, 31% are co-funded by both domestic and foreign funders, and 29% are
supported solely by foreign funders.18 This indicates that both internal and external
funding resources support international collaborated social science research from
China. In sharp contrast, for papers authored by only Chinese researchers, about
94% of the funded papers are supported by domestic funders only and 4% of them are
co-funded by both domestic and foreign funders, while less than 2% of them are
funded solely by foreign funders. This indicates that without the participation of
international collaborators, it is not easy for Chinese social scientists to elicit external
funding.
Nationally there are two major funding agencies that support Chinese social science
research: National Social Science Foundation of China (NSSFC) and the Management
Science Branch of National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).19 Our data
shows the R&D funds for social sciences in China come from different levels of the
government and organizations. Table 5 lists the top 20 funding sources from 2009 to
2013. NSFC leads with 17% of China‘s SSCI papers, followed by Ministry of Science
and Technology of China (7%) and Ministry of Education of China (6%). Surprisingly,
only 1% of Chinese SSCI publications acknowledged financial support from NSSFC.
This discrepancy between NSSFC public funding and research output in the
international research community deserves further exploration.
Our data also discloses that economically affluent regions provide support for social
science research. As listed in Table 5, prolific regions such as Hong Kong, Beijing,
and Shanghai are also the places containing the top funding agencies. At the
institutional level, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hong Kong Polytechnic
University, and the University of Hong Kong are among the top funding sources. Two
17 The figure was calculated based on WoS online analysis too. We retrieved funded research articles
in SCI using the following searching strategy: FT=(A* OR B* OR C* OR D* OR E* OR F* OR G*
OR H* OR I* OR J* OR K* OR L* OR M* OR N* OR O* OR P* OR Q* OR R* OR S* OR T* OR
U* OR V* OR W* OR X* OR Y* OR Z*) AND CU=(CHINA OR HONG KONG OR MACAO))
AND DOCUMENT TYPES:(ARTICLE OR LETTER OR NOTE OR REVIEW)
18 The total is greater than 100% is due to rounding issues.
19 The R&D funding from these two funding sources increased 20 times from 2001 to 2012. The grants
support from NPOPSS(in charge of NSSFC) and the Management Science Branch of NSFC rose from
60 and 31.42 million Yuan in 2001 to 1195.89 and 661.9 million Yuan in 2012 respectively (NPOPSS,
2011; NSFC, 2013)
22
22
Fig 6 Funding sources of China‘s social science research, international vs domestic
23
23
Table 5 Top 20 funding agencies for China social science research, 2009-2013
Rank
Funding Sources
Countries
/Regions
Record
Share (%)
1
National Nature Science Foundation of China
China
5214
17.48
2
Ministry of Science and Technology of China
China
2014
6.75
3
Ministry of Education of China
China
1916
6.42
4
Hong Kong Government
HK
1241
4.16
5
US National Institutes of Health
US
792
2.65
6
Chinese Academy of Sciences
China
636
2.13
7
Shanghai Municipal Government
China
446
1.49
8
US National Science Foundation
US
398
1.33
9
Hong Kong Polytechnic University
HK
368
1.23
10
National Social Science Foundation of China
China
312
1.05
11
University of Hong Kong
HK
298
1.00
12
Beijing Municipal Government
China
293
0.98
13
Guangdong Provincial Government
China
269
0.90
14
China Postdoctor Science Foundation
China
238
0.80
15
Jiangsu Provincial Government
China
234
0.78
16
Zhejiang Provincial Government
China
216
0.72
17
China Scholarship Council
China
165
0.55
17
European Union
EU
165
0.55
19
City University of Hong Kong
HK
158
0.53
19
NSERC of Canada
Canada
158
0.53
24
24
foreign funding agencies, National Institutes of Health and National Science
Foundation, both from the U.S., are among the top 10 funding sources.
Discussion
We acknowledge that this study has some limitations. One caveat of the chosen data
set has been discussed by bibliometricians: WoS-SSCI is biased toward
Anglo-American publications and English-language journals (Lin & Zhang, 2007). In
our data, only 0.4 % of China‘s SSCI publications were written in languages other
than English. This suggests a highly possible underestimation of social science
research activities in China (Glänzel & Schoepflin, 1999; Hicks, 2005; Zhou et al.,
2009). Some scholars also pointed out the data bias when using international journal
articles to evaluate research performance in social science domains (Nederhof, 2006);
this might partially account for why very few studies have examined social science
research using bibliometric analysis
In addition, while FA analysis is an enhanced tool for disclosing the relationship
between research input and performance, it is highly possible that Chinese researchers
over-report or under-report their financial supporting information, either
unconsciously or deliberately, under the pressure of fulfilling specific funding
requirements. In this sense to what extent FA analysis can reflect the driving forces
behind research deserves a more detailed investigation.
In spite of these limitations, this article has some interesting findings. With more
recent data, our analyses update and extend an earlier investigation on China‘s social
science research. Our analyses reveal that Chinese social scientists are increasingly
active in publishing in international journals. The distribution of research output is
highly skewed at both regional and institutional levels. Hong Kong dominates China‘s
SSCI publications, but its leading role is declining over time with the rise of Beijing
and Shanghai. Without world leading minds China is still not a major contributor in
the social sciences yet. Given the scale and growth of Chinese R&D personnel,
especially the existence of overseas diaspora and reverse immigration (Wang et al.,
2014; Jin et al., 2007), we can reasonably believe that the increasing significance of
China in the social sciences, especially from mainland China, is not hard to gauge.
As reflected by the proportion of China-related publications, China‘s social science
research is equally nationally and globally oriented; its research structure has been
rather stable over the years. Our findings also indicate that the internationalization of
Chinese social science has incrementally improved with broadening collaborators,
with the dominating role of the U.S and growing relationships with Australia and
Singapore. International co-authored publications receive financial support from both
China and foreign sources.
Chinese government is struggling with is unbalanced development in natural and
25
25
social sciences. With the Ten-Year Culture Revolution and the 1989 Event, Chinese
social science research languished for a while. Yet with the deepening of China‘s
opening up and reform, social science research has been and will continue playing a
critical role in China‘s modernization in the context of globalization. This provides
both opportunity and challenge to China‘s social science development.
26
26
References
Arora, S. K., Porter, A. L., Youtie, J., & Shapira, P.(2013). Capturing new
developments in an emerging technology: an updated search strategy for
identifying nanotechnology research outputs. Scientometrics, 95(1): 351-370.
Chen D.X. (1919).‗Xin qingnian zuian zhi dabianshu‘ (New Youth's reply to charges
against the magazine). Xin Qingnian (New Youth), 6(1), 10-11.
Chen, Tzeng-Ji, et al. (2007). The contribution of Hong Kong to China‘s international
scientific publications." Scientometrics, 71(1), 151-154.
Costas, R., & Leeuwen, T. N. (2012). Approaching the "reward triangle": General
analysis of the presence of funding acknowledgments and "peer interactive
communication" in scientific publications. Journal of the American Society for
Information Science and Technology, 63(8), 1647-1661.
Cronin, B., Shaw, D., & La Barre, K. (2003). A cast of thousands: Coauthorship and
subauthorship collaboration in the 20th century as manifested in the scholarly
journal literature of psychology and philosophy. Journal of the American
Society for Information Science and Technology, 54(9), 855-871.
Cronin, B., Shaw, D., & Barre, K. L. (2004). Visible, less visible, and invisible work:
Patterns of collaboration in 20th century chemistry. Journal of the American
Society for Information Science and Technology, 55(2), 160-168.
Educational Statistics Yearbook of China (2013), Peoples Education Press pp:721-727
Educational Statistics Yearbook of China (2002), Peoples Education Press pp:404-405
Glänzel, W.(1996). A bibliometric approach to social sciences, national research
performances in 6 selected social science areas, 1990-1992. Scientometrics,
35(3): 291-307.
Glänzel, W., & Schoepflin, U. (1999). A bibliometric study of reference literature in
the sciences and social sciences. Information Processing & Management,
35(1), 31-44.
Glänzel, W., & Schubert, A. (2004). Analyzing scientific networks through
co-authorship. In H. F. Moed & et al. (Eds.), Handbook of quantitative science
and technology research (pp. 257-276): Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Gu, E. X. (2001). Who was Mr Democracy? The May Fourth discourse of populist
democracy and the radicalization of Chinese intellectuals (1915-1922).
Gulgoz, S., Yedekcioglu, O. A., & Yurtsever, E. (2002). Turkey's output in social
science publications: 1970-1999. Scientometrics, 55(1), 103-121.
He, Tianwei, Jinglin Zhang, and Lirong Teng.(2005). Basic research in biochemistry
and molecular biology in China: A bibliometric analysis." Scientometrics,
62(2),249-259.
Hicks, D. (2005). The Four Literatures of Social Science. in Moed, H. F., Glänzel, W.,
& Schmoch, U. (Eds.).. Handbook of Quantitative Science and Technology
Research: Springer.
Hicks, D., & Wang, J. (2011). Coverage and overlap of the new social sciences and
humanities journal lists. Journal of the American Society for Information
27
27
Science and Technology, 62(2), 284-294.
Ingwersen, P. (2000). The international visibility and citation impact of Scandinavian
research articles in selected Social Science fields: The decay of a myth.
Scientometrics, 49(1), 39-61.
International Social Science Council. (2010). World Social Science Report 2010:
Knowledge Divides: United Nations Educational Scientific Cultural
Organization (UNESCO).
International Social Science Council. (2013). World Social Science Report 2013:
Changing Global Environmens: United Nations Educational Scientific
Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
Jin, B., Rousseau, R., Suttmeier, R. P., & Cao, C. (2007). The role of ethnic ties in
international collaboration: the Overseas Chinese Phenomenon. Proceedings
of the ISSI 2007, D.Torres-Salinas & H.F. Moed (eds.), 427-436.
Kavunenko, L., Khorevin, V., & Luzan, K. (2006). Comparative analysis of journals
on social sciences and humanities in Ukraine and the world. Scientometrics,
66(1), 123-132.
Kishida, K., & Matsui, S. (1997). International publication patterns in social sciences:
A quantitative analysis of the IBSS file. Scientometrics, 40(2), 277-298.
Kostoff, R. N. (2012). China/USA nanotechnology research output
comparison—2011 update. Technological Forecasting and Social Change,
79(5), 986-990.
Lin, M. W., & Zhang, J. J.(2007). Language trends in nanoscience and technology:
The case of Chinese-language publications. Scientometrics, 70(3): 555-564.
Liu, W., Gu, M., Hu, G., Li, C., Liao, H., Tang, L., & Shapira, P.(2014). Profile of
developments in biomass-based bioenergy research: a 20-year perspective.
Scientometrics, 99(2): 507-521.
Liu, W., Hu, G., Gu, M., & Tang, L.(2014). Feature report on China: A bibliometric
analysis on China-related articles. Scientometrics, forthcoming. DOI:
10.1007/s11192-014-1371-y.
Leydesdorff, L. (2005). The scientific impact of China. Scientometrics, 63(2),
411-412.
Ma, F., Li, Y., & Chen, B. (2014). Study of the collaboration in the field of the
Chinese humanities and social sciences. Scientometrics, forthcoming. DOI:
10.1007/s11192-014-1301-z.
Nederhof, A. J. (2006). Bibliometric monitoring of research performance in the social
sciences and the humanities: A review. Scientometrics, 66(1), 81-100.
NPOPSS(2011). Source and growth of National Social Science Foundation.
http://www.npopss-cn.gov.cn/GB/219536/219537/14577987.html. Accessed
on 6th of March 2014.
NSFC(2013). Statistics of National Natural Science Foundation of China.
http://www.nsfc.gov.cn/nsfc/cen/xmtj/index.html. Accessed on 6th of March
2014.
Rao, Y.(2014) Is Mr. Science still a guest in China?
28
28
http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-2237-813471.html Accessed on 24th of July
2014.
Shao, J, & Shen, H. (2012). Research assessment and monetary rewards: the
overemphasized impact factor in China. Research evaluation, 21(3), 199-203.
Shapira, P., & Wang, J.(2010). Follow the money. Nature, 468(7324): 627-628.
Tang, L., and Shapira, P. (2011). Regional Development and Interregional
Collaboration in the Growth of Nanotechnology Research in China.
Scientometrics, 86(2), 299-315.
Tang, L., and Shapira, P. (2012). Effects of International Collaboration and
Knowledge Moderation on China‘s Nanotechnology Research Impacts.
Journal of Technology Management in China. 7(1), 94-110.
Tang, L. (2013). Does "Birds of a Feather Flock Together" Matter: Evidence from a
Longitudinal Study on the US-China Scientific Collaboration. Journal of
Informetrics, 7(2), 330-344.
Tang, L., Shapira, P., & Youtie, J. Is there a clubbing effect underlying Chinese
research citation increases? Journal of the Association for Information Science
and Technology. forthcoming.
Van Raan, A. F. (1988). Handbook of quantitative studies of science and technology:
North-Holland Amsterdam.
Wang, J., & Shapira, P.(2011). Funding acknowledgement analysis: an enhanced tool
to investigate research sponsorship impacts: the case of nanotechnology.
Scientometrics, 87(3): 563-586.
Wang, Q., Tang, L. & Li, H. (2014). Return Migration of the Highly-Skilled in Higher
Education Institutions: A Chinese University Case. Population, Space, and
Place, forthcoming. DOI: 10.1002/psp.1855.
Wang, Y., Wu, Y. S., Pan, Y. T., Ma, Z., & Rousseau, R. (2005). Scientific
collaboration in China as reflected in co-authorship. Scientometrics, 62(2),
183-198.
Wuchty, S., Jones, B. F., & Uzzi, B. (2007). The increasing dominance of teams in
production of knowledge. Science, 316(5827), 1036-1039.
Youtie, J., Shapira, P., & Porter, A. L.(2008). Nanotechnology publications and
citations by leading countries and blocs. Journal of Nanoparticle Research,
10(6): 981-986.
Zhai, L., Yan, X., Shibchurn, J., & Song, X.(2014a). Evolutionary analysis of
international collaboration network of Chinese scholars in management
research. Scientometrics, 98(2): 1435-1454.
Zhai, Q., Su, J., & Ye, M.(2014b). Focus on China: the current status of
entrepreneurship research in China. Scientometrics, 98(3): 1985-2006.
Zhang, N.M., & Zhou, Y.M., 2007. A few thoughts on the directions of reforms on
faculty promotions in our country). China Education Innovation Herald 9,
251–253. (in Chinese)
Zhou, P., & Glänzel, W.(2010). In-depth analysis on China's international cooperation
in science. Scientometrics, 82(3): 597-612.
Zhou, P., & Leydesdorff, L.(2006). The emergence of China as a leading nation in
29
29
science. Research Policy, 35(1): 83-104.
Zhou, P., & Leydesdorff, L.(2009). Chemistry in China - a bibliometric view.
Chimica Oggi-Chemistry Today, 27(6): 19-22.
Zhou, P., Su, X., & Leydesdorff, L. (2010). A comparative study on communication
structures of Chinese journals in the social sciences. Journal of the American
Society for information Science and Technology, 61(7), 1360-1376.
Zhou, P., Thijs, B., & Glänzel, W.(2009a). Is China also becoming a giant in social
sciences? Scientometrics, 79(3): 593-621.
Zhou, P., Thijs, B., & Glänzel, W. (2009b). Regional analysis on Chinese scientific
output. Scientometrics 81(3), 839-857.

Supplementary resource (1)

China's global growth in social science research
Data
October 2015
Weishu Liu · Guangyuan Hu · Li Tang · Yuandi Wang
... Whereas, citation analysis helps identify key research issues, trends and techniques, along with exploring the historical relevance of a discipline's main area of focus (Allahverdiyev & Yucesoy, 2017). Document co-citation analysis is one of the frequently applied bibliometric methods (Appio et al., 2016;Fahimnia et al., 2015;Liu et al., 2015) and its result is a map dependent on the network theory to identify the relevant structure of data (Liu et al., 2015). ...
... Whereas, citation analysis helps identify key research issues, trends and techniques, along with exploring the historical relevance of a discipline's main area of focus (Allahverdiyev & Yucesoy, 2017). Document co-citation analysis is one of the frequently applied bibliometric methods (Appio et al., 2016;Fahimnia et al., 2015;Liu et al., 2015) and its result is a map dependent on the network theory to identify the relevant structure of data (Liu et al., 2015). ...
Bibliometric Analysis of Adaptive Behavior Research: Advancing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for Children with Disabilities
Article
Full-text available
  • Dec 2024
Introduction: Adaptive behavior refers to the collection of skills and behaviors that individuals use to function independently in their daily lives, it encompasses the ability to meet personal needs and deal with the natural and social demands of one's environment. This includes a wide range of skills, such as communication, self-care, socialization, and practical skills needed to navigate one's environment. This is useful in providing references to support Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) initiatives, especially to improve access to quality education for children with disabilities. Objective: This study conducts a bibliometric analysis of research on adaptive behavior for children with disabilities from 2014 to 2024. It focuses on identifying patterns, trends, and gaps in the literature to understand the evolution and current state of the field. Theorical Framework: Adaptive behavior is often categorized into different domains, reflecting the various areas of functioning that are essential for independent living and social integration. The three primary domains of adaptive behavior commonly recognized in the literature are conceptual, practical and social domain. Method: The study employs advanced bibliometric techniques, including keyword co-occurrence and citation analysis, to explore the interconnectedness of topics and to forecast future directions in research. It underscores the critical need for reliable and inclusive assessment tools, comprehensive multi-informant evaluations, and interventions that can be integrated into educational settings to support the independence and social integration of children with disabilities. Results and Discussion: The findings of the study through article co-occurrence mapping analysis, four clusters representing adaptive behavior were identified, that is red cluster (psychological and social dimensions), green cluster (developmental and cognitive aspects of disability), blue cluster (adaptive functioning and behavioral outcomes) and yellow cluster (behavioral and diagnostic) portrays an interconnected landscape of research topics, where psychological, developmental, behavioral, and diagnostic themes converge, reflecting the complexity and interdisciplinary nature of research in disabilities. Research Implications: This study contributes practical implications, improving interventions, informing policies, and enhancing community understanding and support for individuals with varying needs in adaptive behavior. This holistic impact underscores the importance of such research in driving both theoretical and practical advancements in the field. Originality/Value: The exploration of adaptive behavior in children with disabilities has emerged as a critical area of study, integrating multifaceted approaches from diagnosis to intervention. The comprehensive review presented in this article not only captures the varied dimensions of adaptive behavior but also underscores the intricate interplay between intellectual, developmental, and social facets of disabilities in children.
View
... This research found that China occupies the fourth position with the most second-language learning publications in 2022. In 2015, China experienced increased publications, world share, and global ranking (Liu et al., 2015). In 2017, (Lei & Liao, 2017) also found that research in linguistics has propelled China to the position of only second place, after the United States. ...
Exploring trends and challenge on second language learning using bibliometric analysis
Article
Full-text available
  • Mar 2025
Second language learning is becoming a research trend. Unfortunately, there was a lack of research that sketched this field. In filling this gap, this study aims to map the research trends in second language learning in Scopus. This study was conducted by bibliometric analysis involving research articles on second language learning in 2013-2022. The data were collected from Scopus. The data were analyzed using the VOSviewer application to visualize research trends. The current study found that research clusters focused on students (motivation and emotions), second language learning, and linguistics elements (word, lexicon, and speech). Research focuses on school-based second language learning. Over the past decade, second language learning has combined education, psychology, neurology, and technology. From 2017, second language learning publications rose considerably. The United States has published the most second-language acquisition articles over the past decade. The United Kingdom is the second country with the most publications. Five of the ten top countries originate from the Europe, two from North America, and the remaining two from China and Hong Kong. The results benefit teachers in teaching, students in the learning process, and researchers in investigating second language learning.
View
... Previous science mapping studies show that authors' keywords point to a research focus and can help to map the research streams for any scientific study. 28,29 The analysis involves identifying the most prominent, emerging, and least popular research themes and evaluating the themes' dynamics to uncover any potential transition or transformation in research over the period covered in this study. The dataset in this study contains 3739 unique authors' keywords, which come from the 1413 published documents (Table 2), with a total unstemmed cumulative word frequency (f) of 5734. ...
Evolutionary Trends in Decision Sciences Education Research from Simulation and Games to Big Data Analytics and Generative Artificial Intelligence
Article
  • Feb 2025
Decision sciences (DSC) involve studying complex dynamic systems and processes to aid informed choices subject to constraints in uncertain conditions. It integrates multidisciplinary methods and strategies to evaluate decision engineering processes, identifying alternatives and providing insights towards enhancing prudent decision-making. This study analyzes the evolutionary trends and innovation in DSC education and research trends over the past twenty-five years. Using metadata from bibliographic records and employing the science mapping method and text analytics, we map and evaluate the thematic, intellectual, and social structures of DSC research. The results identify "knowledge management," "decision support systems," "data envelopment analysis," "simulation," and "artificial intelligence" (AI) as some of the prominent critical skills and knowledge requirements for problem-solving in DSC before and during the period (2000-2024). However, these technologies are evolving significantly in the recent wave of digital transformation, with data analytics frameworks (including techniques such as big data analytics, machine learning, business intelligence, data mining, and information visualization) becoming crucial. DSC education and research continue to mirror the development in practice, with sustainable education through virtual/online learning becoming prominent. Innovative pedagogical approaches/strategies also include computer simulation and games ('play and learn' or 'role-playing'). The current era witnesses AI adoption in different forms as conversational chatbot agent and generative AI (GenAI), such as Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (ChatGPT) in teaching, learning, and scholarly activities amidst challenges (academic integrity, plagiarism, intellectual property violations, and other ethical and legal issues). Future DSC education must innovatively integrate GenAI into DSC education and address the resulting challenges.
View
... The hegemony of the United States in international science is a well-known phenomenon 10 (Paasi, 2005). This is also underpinned by the fact that the United States is the most important collaborator for almost every country in the world, and in almost every discipline (see, for example, He & Guan, 2008;Liu, Hu, Tang, & Wang, 2015;Lu & Wolfram, 2010;Maisonobe, Eckert, Grossetti, Jégou, & Milard, 2016;Zitt, Bassecoulard, & Okubo, 2000). Table 4 shows that for 1,261 cities; i.e., for 57.5 percent of all cities, the most important collaborator is the United States. ...
A spatial scientometric analysis of the publication output of cities worldwide
Preprint
  • Sep 2017
In tandem with the rapid globalisation of science, spatial scientometrics has become an important research sub-field in scientometric studies. Recently, numerous spatial scientometric contributions have focused on the examination of cities' scientific output by using various scientometric indicators. In this paper, I analyse cities' scientific output worldwide in terms of the number of journal articles indexed by the Scopus database, in the period from 1986 to 2015. Furthermore, I examine which countries are the most important collaborators of cities. Finally, I identify the most productive disciplines in each city. I use GPS Visualizer to illustrate the scientometric data of nearly 2,200 cities on maps. Results show that cities with the highest scientific output are mostly located in developed countries and China. Between 1986 and 2015, the greatest number of scientific articles were created in Beijing. The international hegemony of the United States in science has been described by many studies, and is also reinforced by the fact that the United States is the most important collaborator to more than 75 percent of all cities. Medicine is the most productive discipline in two-thirds of cities. Furthermore, cities having the highest scientific output in specific disciplines show well-defined geographical patterns.
View
... Although the Chinese Physics C was a low impact factor journal, this journal has successfully bid on publishing the RPP (Barnett, 2014). Apart from having enough funding for publishing, the choice of a Chinese journal to publish this classical review may partly due to the rapid rising of China's scientific research (Liu, Hu, Tang, & Wang, 2015;Zhou & Leydesdorff, 2006) and growing global interests in China (Liu, Tang, Gu, & Hu, 2015). Apart from low impact factor, only about 200 citable items are published by this journal annually. ...
The effect of publishing a highly cited paper on journal's impact factor: a case study of the Review of Particle Physics
Preprint
  • Dec 2017
A single highly cited article can give a big but temporary lift in its host journal's impact factor evidenced by the striking example of "A short history of SHELX" published in Acta Crystallographica Section A. By using Journal Citation Reports and Web of Science's citation analysis tool, we find a more general and continuous form of this phenomenon in the Particle Physics field. The highly-cited "Review of Particle Physics" series have been published in one of the major Particle Physics journals biennially. This study analyses the effect of these articles on the Impact Factor (IF) of the host journals. The results show that the publication of Review of Particle Physics articles has a direct effect of lifting the IF of its host journal. However the effect on the IF varies according to whether the host journal already has a relatively high or low IF, and the number of articles that it publishes. The impact of these highly cited articles clearly demonstrates the limitations of journal impact factor, and endorses the need to use it more wisely when deciding where to publish and how to evaluate the relative impact of a journal.
View
Historical development and global standings: Charting the cartography of humanities and social sciences research in East Asia
Article
Full-text available
  • Feb 2025
The last three decades have witnessed a rapid development of research in East Asia. However, most research attention has been paid to sciences and engineering, overshadowing the progress made by the humanities and social sciences (HSS) research in the region. Meanwhile, there exist taken-for-granted assumptions that East Asian HSS research lags behind, which, we argue, are often made without comprehensive bibliometric evidence. As such, this study conducts a bibliometric investigation into the HSS research outputs produced by five East Asian research systems. It reveals the historical trend (between 2000-2023) and the current global standings of the HSS research in East Asia - including its quantity, global connectivity, quality, and impact - with reference to a few globally leading systems that are traditionally considered as the center of the world HSS research. The study shows that East Asia has become an important and powerful global player in the HSS research, as reflected in the large volume of the research outputs, the wide global network in research collaboration and East Asian researchers’ leading roles in collaboration, the good quality of journals where researchers publish their research, and the global impact of the outputs in terms of citations.
View
Investigating patterns of knowledge production in research on three UN sustainable development goals
Article
  • Jan 2025
Purpose In today’s knowledge societies, scientific research is tasked to contribute to solving crucial problems, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Epistemic inequality, both in terms of who is able to contribute, and whose voices are being heard, could hamper our ability to develop solutions that meet the needs of all. Design/methodology/approach We assembled a set of publications published from 2006 to 2019 related to three SDGs (Health/Well-Being, Climate Action, Zero Hunger) by mapping Fields of Study from Microsoft Academic Graph to SDGs. Across this set, we investigate patterns of knowledge production, investigating gender, levels of institutional resourcing and contributions by world region, as well as Open Access availability of research. Findings Research related to the three SDGs is primarily published by researchers from institutions situated in the global North. Well-resourced institutions contribute disproportionately to the study of the three SDGs. The share of authorships by women is rising, but still far away from equity. We find higher ranked institutions to produce more OA articles, with a declining relationship between institutional ranking and the share of OA. Finally, we find overall higher shares of OA publishing across low- and high-income countries, compared to lower and upper medium income countries. Originality/value Mapping research contributions to SDGs by leveraging the comprehensive data available from Microsoft Academic Graph adds an important perspective to the study of SDG-related research.
View
View
Unequal metrics in research publications: the impact of bibliometric databases and faculty size across academic disciplines on university rankings in South Korea
Article
  • Jan 2025
  • SCIENTOMETRICS
This study investigated the publication patterns of 46 Korean universities across various academic fields, publication databases, and faculty size. In addition, this study further examined how these factors are associated with university rankings. The study analyzed a total of 84,568 Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus-indexed journals, 61,883 Korean Citation Index (KCI)-listed journals, and 7186 books published by 36,478 full-time faculty members in 4980 departments across 46 universities in South Korea from 2017 to 2020. Two strategies were applied to incorporate field normalization into the publication analysis: fractional counting and weighting. By examining per-faculty productivity across fields, this study highlights a pronounced disparity in the representation of research productivity within global rankings. Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields, notably Bio & Health sciences and Physics & Engineering tend to be favored over Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH). The study identifies significant variations in research output based on institutional characteristics. Bio & Health sciences, especially at universities with medical schools, show the highest publication counts in WoS and Scopus. This highlights the role of specific disciplines and institutional structures in shaping university rankings. These findings emphasize inherent biases in current global ranking frameworks, which heavily prioritize publications in international journals, and advocate for a more nuanced approach that captures the diversity of research outputs across disciplines.
View
View
The Emergence of China as a Leading Nation in Science
Article
Full-text available
  • Nov 2009
China has become the fifth leading nation in terms of its share of the world's scientific publications. The citation rate of papers with a Chinese address for the corresponding author also exhibits exponential growth. More specifically, China has become a major player in critical technologies like nanotechnology. Although it is difficult to delineate nanoscience and nanotechnology, we show that China has recently achieved a position second only to that of the USA. Funding for R&D has been growing exponentially, but since 1997 even more in terms of business expenditure than in terms of government expenditure. It seems that the Chinese government has effectively used the public-sector research potential to boost the knowledge-based economy of the country. Thus, China may be achieving the ("Lisbon") objectives of the transition to a knowledge-based economy more broadly and rapidly than its western counterparts. Because of the sustained increase in Chinese government funding and the virtually unlimited reservoir of highly-skilled human resources, one may expect a continuation of this growth pattern in the near future.
View
The Leiden Manifesto for research metrics
Article
Full-text available
  • Apr 2015
  • NATURE
Use these ten principles to guide research evaluation, urge Diana Hicks, Paul Wouters and colleagues. were introduced, such as InCites (using the Web of Science) and SciVal (using Scopus), as well as software to analyse individual citation profiles using Google Scholar (Publish or Perish, released in 2007). In 2005, Jorge Hirsch, a physicist at the University of California, San Diego, proposed the h-index, popularizing citation counting for individual researchers. Interest in the journal impact factor grew steadily after 1995 (see 'Impact-factor obsession'). Lately, metrics related to social usage advice on, good practice and interpretation. Before 2000, there was the Science Citation Index on CD-ROM from the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), used by experts for specialist analyses. In 2002, Thomson Reuters launched an integrated web platform, making the Web of Science database widely accessible. Competing citation indices were created: Elsevier's Scopus (released in 2004) and Google Scholar (beta version released in 2004). Web-based tools to easily compare institutional research productivity and impact D
View
Study of the collaboration in the field of the Chinese humanities and social sciences
Article
Full-text available
  • Aug 2014
This paper probes into the current status of collaboration regarding the field of the Chinese humanities and social sciences in respects of the degree of collaboration and the status of the relationships. It researches the status quo in humanities, the growth of social development science and cross-disciplinary social science, and the maturity of applied social science. In addition, it further highlights the important roles of economics, management, and library and information science in the collaboration network of humanities and social science with their extensive intra-disciplinary cooperation and crucial roles in the whole collaboration network.
View
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
Chapter
  • Jan 2008
On behalf of Mr. Koïchiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO, it is my great pleasure to welcome you all to this international scientific conference. Drylands are often considered fragile ecosystems, yet they have a remarkable resilience to stress. They are home to unique and well-adapted plant and animal species that we need to conserve. Some of the world's greatest cultures and belief systems have originated in drylands. On the other hand, desertification and land degradation in drylands often result in poverty and cause environmental refugees to abandon their homes. These problems can only be addressed in a holistic manner, based on sound scientific research and findings. Solutions to the problems of dryland degradation need to be communicated as widely as possible through education at all levels.
View
Developing the Chinese social science citation index
Article
  • Jan 2001
  • ONLINE INFORM REV
The Chinese Social Citation Index (CSSCI) covers over 500 scholarly Chinese journals in the humanities and social sciences. CSSCI provides an efficient tool for people to obtain information about Chinese social science research. Its CD-ROM disks have been manufactured and a Web site has been set up for people to search for information about it. In this article the authors introduce the goals, significance and functions of CSSCI and a detailed explanation of the data structure and the direction of data flow is provided.
View
Chemistry in China - A bibliometric view
Article
  • Nov 2009
  • CHIM OGGI
Based on bibliometric analysis, this paper explores China's publication activity in chemistry. China develops fast in chemical research and has taken a leading position in publishing journal papers. International collaboration plays a role in the Chinese chemical community, but this role varies among subfields.
View
View
View
View
View