Premium
Growth and quality of Chinese journals from 1949 to 2013
Author(s) -
Wang Yuandi,
Chen Yu,
Liu Meijun,
Hu Ruifeng
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
learned publishing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.06
H-Index - 34
eISSN - 1741-4857
pISSN - 0953-1513
DOI - 10.1002/leap.1162
Subject(s) - china , publishing , impact factor , quality (philosophy) , web of science , rank (graph theory) , annual growth % , political science , regional science , geography , agricultural economics , economics , medline , mathematics , law , philosophy , epistemology , combinatorics
In recent years, substantial investments in science and technology have led to an increase in Chinese academic journals. Previous investigations have used international indexes to track growth, but this article uses the China Academic Journal Network Publishing Database along with Web of Science and SCImago to avoid inclusion bias and analyse the complete landscape of Chinese academic journals (in all disciplines). This article investigated the rate of growth of new journals, the regional distribution of journals, and the quality of the journals (calculated domestically and internationally). Our results indicate that: (1) the average annual growth rate of Chinese academic journals has been 2.74%, but this might probably be affected by different periods of China’s economic and cultural development; (2) the number of journals published in Eastern China is higher than that in Central and Western China; (3) journal quality has improved somewhat in recent years; (4) 84.48% of journals demonstrate domestic impact factors below 1; and (5) China performs better than other developing countries when using the impact factor but equals them when using the SCImago Journal and Country Rank indicator.