The Sleeping Dragon Wakes Up: A Scientometric Analysis of the Growth of Science and the Usage of Journals in China

Abstract

An overview of the journals used by scientists in post Cultural Revolution China is presented based on papers published by them in the 2649 journals indexed in Science Citation Index (SCI) for the period of 1981-85 as well as in journals covered by three editions of Current Contents (CC) for the second half of 1988. We have also looked at the frequency of citation of the papers indexed in SCI 1981-85, by way of cross-reference in other papers. Clearly, China's share of the world's journals literature and the share of Chinese language papers are increasing rapidly. However, Chinese work is infrequently cited. However, papers by Chinese scientists have rarely appeared in multidisciplinary journals such as Nature and Science. The data in the literature reinforce our conclusion that growth in China's share of the world's journal literature of science has not yet flattened off.