China's Scientific Journals See Resurgence on the Global Stage

BEIJING, CHINA - A recent report by the China Association for Science and Technology revealed significant improvements in academic influence and quality in China's scientific journals over the past decade. The Blue Book on China's Scientific Journal Development (2024), the latest installment in an annual series, highlights gains made in citation frequency, impact factors and staff qualifications.

Data shows a steady rise in citation frequency and impact factors, with annual growth rates of 4 percent and 8 percent respectively. This trend is attributed to the implementation of the Science and Technology Journal Excellence Action Plan launched in 2019, which aims to raise the global profile of Chinese journals through funding, resource support and personnel training.

Improvement in staff qualifications has also been observed. According to the report, about 81.07 percent of English-language journal staff members hold master's or doctoral degrees, compared to roughly 47.19 percent at Chinese-language journals.

English-language journals have seen a significant increase in publications and academic impact. The average number of papers published per English-language journal rose by 3.27 percent to 101 papers in 2022, while the citation frequency per journal grew 10.37 percent year-on-year and the average impact factor increased by 15.83 percent.

Despite these gains, there is a significant gap between the volume of Science Citation Index papers published by Chinese scholars globally and those published in domestic SCI journals. In 2023, Chinese scholars contributed 728,700 SCI papers, accounting for less than 5 percent of the global total.

However, there has been significant progress in terms of research quality. Over 60 percent of Chinese journal papers are now classified as Q1 category - the top 25 percent of their respective fields. The proportion of papers classified under this elite category rose sharply from 6.28 percent in 2014 to 65.7 percent in 2023.

Gao Fu, academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and editor-in-chief of Science Bulletin, called for continued efforts to foster innovation, address bottlenecks in research, strengthen intellectual property protection and promote science communication to the public.

The report concluded that while there is still work to be done, China's scientific journals are making significant strides towards global recognition.