Does the web of science accurately represent chinese scientific performance?

Abstract

With the significant development of China's economy and scientific activity, its scientific publication activity is experiencing a period of rapid growth. However, measuring China's research output remains a challenge because Chinese scholars may publish their research in either international or national journals, yet no bibliometric database covers both the Chinese and English scientific literature. The purpose of this study is to compare Web of Science (WoS) with a Chinese bibliometric database in terms of authors and their performance, demonstrate the extent of the overlap between the two groups of Chinese most productive authors in both international and Chinese bibliometric databases, and determine how different disciplines may affect this overlap. The results of this study indicate that Chinese bibliometric databases, or a combination of WoS and Chinese bibliometric databases, should be used to evaluate Chinese research performance except in the few disciplines in which Chinese research performance could be assessed using WoS only.

Measuring the scientific publications of double first‐class universities from mainland China

“…Compared to WoS, the discipline catalogue proposed by the Ministry of Education of China is more refined, and the classification method is more rigorous in determining the research subjects of papers (Hu et al ., ). Accordingly, the categories in China are also widely used in previous literature (Hu et al ., ; Shu, Julien, & Larivière, ).…”

“…There are significant differences in the coverage of international and Chinese domestic bibliometric databases, and some Education of China is more refined, and the classification method is more rigorous in determining the research subjects of papers (Hu et al, 2017). Accordingly, the categories in China are also widely used in previous literature (Hu et al, 2017;Shu, Julien, & Larivière, 2018). Table 4 shows the top 10 preferred research disciplines and the corresponding universities with the highest number of papers.…”

Analysing the research performance of province‐level administrative regions in China

“…Many differences exist between the coverage of domestic and international bibliometric databases: for example, the science of Chinese pharmacology and Chinese language and literature exist only in Chinese discipline catalogues. To better analyse the disciplinary differences in international and domestic journal papers published by these regions, this paper employs the discipline catalogue proposed by the Ministry of Education of China (http://www.moe.gov.cn/srcsite/A22/moe_833/201103/t20110308_116439.html), which has been extensively employed in the previous studies (Hu, Guo, & Hou, 2017; Shu, Julien, & Larivière, 2019; Wei & Zhang, 2020).…”

“…cn/srcsite/A22/moe_833/201103/t20110308_116439.html), which has been extensively employed in the previous studies (Hu, Guo, & Hou, 2017;Shu, Julien, & Larivière, 2019;Wei & Zhang, 2020). There are large differences in provinces' preferred research areas with regard to their international and domestic research…”

Ser ou não ser muito citado: fatores associados à citação de artigos científicos

“…Tang et al (2017) identificaram substanciais inconsistências em registros de artigos publicados em outros idiomas que não o inglês nos campos de financial acknowledgement. Shu et al (2019) encontraram tais limitações em estudo sobre a literatura científica chinesa presente na WoS. Com efeito, uma vez que os registros de financiamento dos artigos foram incorporados mais recentemente na base de dados WoS, é necessário avaliar se esses dados são confiáveis para inclusão nas análises de citações (Paul-Hus et al, 2016).…”