China ‘goes out’ in a centre–periphery world: Incentivizing international publications in the humanities and social sciences

Abstract

The current expansion of English language publishing by scholars from China is supported by national and university policies, including monetary and career incentives to publish in English. These incentives, which extend to work in the humanities and social sciences (HSS, the focus of this paper) as well as the sciences and technologies, are situated in evolving strategies of internationalization. China has moved from an internationalization strategy simply based on learning from the West, to a 'going out' strategy designed to both lift domestic research capacity and advance China's influence in the world. However, the 'going out' strategy nonetheless embodies ambiguities and dilemmas. The world of academic knowledge is not a level playing field but more closely approximates the centre-periphery dynamic described in world systems theory. This study explores the influence of publication incentives in the context of a centreperiphery world. It draws on analysis of 172 institutional incentive documents and interviews with 75 HSS academics, university senior administrators, and journal editors. The study identifies practices within China's HSS that reproduce centre-periphery relationships. By focusing on international publications, Chinese universities run the risk of downplaying Chinese-language publications and adopting standards and norms from global centres to assess domestic knowledge production. These could result in creating knowledge from and about China primarily in Western terms without adding a distinctive Chinese strand to the global conversation. Nonetheless, the study also identifies alternative dynamics that challenge the existing power hierarchies in global HSS, highlighting indigenous knowledge and the need to pluralize global knowledge production.

‘All things are in flux’: China in global science

“…No one knows the answer to that, but in February 2020 the government reduced the role of Web of Science indicators in academic assessment (Nature, 2020 ), opening the way to the development of more endogenous definitions of legitimate knowledge. This in turn makes more possible a ‘China going out’ (Xu, 2020 ) with new modes of thought.…”

“…He saw internationalisation as key to accelerated development, not as a source of borrowed science but as a guide to building China’s own capacity (Vogel, 2011 , p. 209). Development-oriented policies included invitations to foreign scientists, especially from the US, and the creation of collaboration agreements; the outward mobility of Chinese doctoral students and mature researchers for training and collaboration; fostering English language publishing in global science through incentives (Xu, 2020 ); adaptation of system and institutional models from North America and Europe; and the systematic benchmarking of research, academic units and institutions with high quality foreign comparators (Wang et al, 2011 ). While China’s scientists were extensively engaged in open sharing with international partners in global disciplinary networks, their activities were also embedded in the party-state governance of universities and other scientific institutions (Yang & Li, 2014 ), ensuring that they fulfilled national objectives.…”

Global science and national comparisons: beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics

“…'Global' social science in bibliometrics is mostly focused on Anglo-American countries (Marginson and Xu 2021). Using China again as the example, in 2018, Chinese social scientist scholars published 5,486 papers in English in Scopus, often using Anglo-American theories, concepts and topics (Xu 2020) and 53,300 papers in Chinese (CSTPCD 2021). The academic world knows US society much better than society in China or India, yet these countries are as important as the US.…”

The Impacts of Incentives for International Publications on Research Cultures in Chinese Humanities and Social Sciences

“…Language-wise, the concept of 'international publications' is interpreted in many countries as English language publications (Lillis and Curry 2010), or simply as SCI, SSCI, and A&HCI publications, as is the case in China (Xu 2020a). This is despite the widely acknowledged linguistic, geographical, disciplinary, epistemological, and ideological limitations or bias of those databases (Klein and Chiang 2004;Archambault et al 2006;Mongeon and Paul-Hus 2016).…”