“Over the past month, my Chinese social media feeds have been flooded with news, discussions, and research papers about the COVID-19 virus. But earlier this week, all my contacts in the academic community were discussing two government documents.

The first one is called “Some Suggestions on Standardizing the Use of SCI Paper Indexes in Higher Educational Institutes and Establishing Correct Evaluation Orientation”, and the second one is “Some Measures to Eliminate the Bad Orientation of “Papers Only” in Science and Technology Evaluation (Trial)”. Essentially these two documents mark an effort to largely reform the research and higher education evaluation systems in China. The first document is a set of guidelines and the second, marked as a “trial”, contains many detailed regulations. Here are the key takeaways from these policy documents, which could  potentially shift the landscape of global STM publishing, since China is now the world’s largest producer of scientific articles….

Currently, researchers, research teams, and organizations are required to supply lists of papers published in their applications for government grants and their reports on the results of those grants. Research papers have been a primary measuring stick used to determine funding and career advancement. Key considerations have been the quantity of papers produced, publishing those papers in journals listed in the Science Citation Index (SCI), and publishing in journals with high Journal Impact Factor (JIF) scores. Institutions in China have tailored their practices to meet these criteria, putting pressure on researchers to publish as many papers as possible.

The new policy states that publication of papers will only be used as a main evaluation indicator for basic science and technology research, and not for applied research and technological development. This removes the publication burden from clinicians and engineers and others working in more applied areas.

For the basic researchers, a “representative works” system will be used. Under this system, only a limited number of a researcher’s or an institution’s most important papers count. No less than one third of the representative papers must be published in domestic Chinese journals. The quantity of papers published and the JIFs of the journals that the representative works appear in are not going to be used as a measurement for performance or research ability….”

“Over the past month, my Chinese social media feeds have been flooded with news, discussions, and research papers about the COVID-19 virus. But earlier this week, all my contacts in the academic community were discussing two government documents.

The first one is called “Some Suggestions on Standardizing the Use of SCI Paper Indexes in Higher Educational Institutes and Establishing Correct Evaluation Orientation”, and the second one is “Some Measures to Eliminate the Bad Orientation of “Papers Only” in Science and Technology Evaluation (Trial)”. Essentially these two documents mark an effort to largely reform the research and higher education evaluation systems in China. The first document is a set of guidelines and the second, marked as a “trial”, contains many detailed regulations. Here are the key takeaways from these policy documents, which could  potentially shift the landscape of global STM publishing, since China is now the world’s largest producer of scientific articles….

Currently, researchers, research teams, and organizations are required to supply lists of papers published in their applications for government grants and their reports on the results of those grants. Research papers have been a primary measuring stick used to determine funding and career advancement. Key considerations have been the quantity of papers produced, publishing those papers in journals listed in the Science Citation Index (SCI), and publishing in journals with high Journal Impact Factor (JIF) scores. Institutions in China have tailored their practices to meet these criteria, putting pressure on researchers to publish as many papers as possible.

The new policy states that publication of papers will only be used as a main evaluation indicator for basic science and technology research, and not for applied research and technological development. This removes the publication burden from clinicians and engineers and others working in more applied areas.

For the basic researchers, a “representative works” system will be used. Under this system, only a limited number of a researcher’s or an institution’s most important papers count. No less than one third of the representative papers must be published in domestic Chinese journals. The quantity of papers published and the JIFs of the journals that the representative works appear in are not going to be used as a measurement for performance or research ability….”

“Chinese institutions have been told to stop paying researchers bonuses for publishing in journals, as part of a new national policy to cut perverse incentives that encourage scientists to publish lots of papers rather than focus on high-impact work.

In an order released last week, China’s science and education ministries also say that institutions must not promote or recruit researchers solely on the basis of the number of papers they publish, or their citations. Researchers are welcoming the policy, but say that it could reduce the country’s competitiveness in science.

In China, one of the main indicators currently used to evaluate researchers, allocate funding and rank institutions is metrics collected by the Science Citation Index (SCI), a database of articles and citation records for more than 9,000 journals. Since 2009, articles in these journals written by authors from Chinese institutions increased from some 120,000 a year to 450,000 in 2019. Some institutions even pay researchers bonuses for publishing in them….”

“Chinese institutions have been told to stop paying researchers bonuses for publishing in journals, as part of a new national policy to cut perverse incentives that encourage scientists to publish lots of papers rather than focus on high-impact work.

In an order released last week, China’s science and education ministries also say that institutions must not promote or recruit researchers solely on the basis of the number of papers they publish, or their citations. Researchers are welcoming the policy, but say that it could reduce the country’s competitiveness in science.

In China, one of the main indicators currently used to evaluate researchers, allocate funding and rank institutions is metrics collected by the Science Citation Index (SCI), a database of articles and citation records for more than 9,000 journals. Since 2009, articles in these journals written by authors from Chinese institutions increased from some 120,000 a year to 450,000 in 2019. Some institutions even pay researchers bonuses for publishing in them….”