China to boost domestic science and technology journals

Chinese government agencies have announced plans to promote China’s science and technology journals. The agencies vowed to support locally published English-language journals to compete with international journal publishers, boost Chinese-language journals, increase the weight of Chinese-language articles in scientist promotion assessments, encourage the formation of domestic journal publishing groups, increase the digitization of journal content, and recruit globally for journal management. The announcement did not include a budget for the effort. Fan Jingqun, director of the center for journal management at Huazhong Agricultural University, which publishes several English and Chinese journals, expects that current government grants to support high-quality journals will be expanded. The government may also loosen restrictions on launching journals. Wei Ke, an atmospheric chemist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Atmospheric Physics, welcomes the plans but says it may take time for Chinese scientists to change their paper submission behaviors. “We will have to consider the publication speed, the journal impact, and the appropriateness of the target journals for the submitted study,” Wei says. “Many international journals do not have domestic substitutes.”