Towards a paradigm for open and free sharing of scientific data on global change science in China

Authors : Changhui Peng, Xinzhang Song, Hong Jiang, Qiuan Zhu, Huai Chen, Jing M. Chen, Peng Gong, Chang Jie, Wenhua Xiang, Guirui Yu, Xiaolu Zhou

Despite great progress in data sharing that has been made in China in recent decades, cultural, policy, and technological challenges have prevented Chinese researchers from maximizing the availability of their data to the global change science community.

To achieve full and open exchange and sharing of scientific data, Chinese research funding agencies need to recognize that preservation of, and access to, digital data are central to their mission, and must support these tasks accordingly.

The Chinese government also needs to develop better mechanisms, incentives, and rewards, while scientists need to change their behavior and culture to recognize the need to maximize the usefulness of their data to society as well as to other researchers.

The Chinese research community and individual researchers should think globally and act personally to promote a paradigm of open, free, and timely data sharing, and to increase the effectiveness of knowledge development.

URL : Towards a paradigm for open and free sharing of scientific data on global change science in China

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ehs2.1225

How Does National Scientific Funding Support Emerging Interdisciplinary Research: A Comparison Study of Big Data Research in the US and China

Authors : Ying Huang, Yi Zhang, Jan Youtie, Alan L. Porter, Xuefeng Wang

How do funding agencies ramp-up their capabilities to support research in a rapidly emerging area?

This paper addresses this question through a comparison of research proposals awarded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) in the field of Big Data.

Big data is characterized by its size and difficulties in capturing, curating, managing and processing it in reasonable periods of time. Although Big Data has its legacy in longstanding information technology research, the field grew very rapidly over a short period.

We find that the extent of interdisciplinarity is a key aspect in how these funding agencies address the rise of Big Data. Our results show that both agencies have been able to marshal funding to support Big Data research in multiple areas, but the NSF relies to a greater extent on multi-program funding from different fields.

We discuss how these interdisciplinary approaches reflect the research hot-spots and innovation pathways in these two countries.

URL : How Does National Scientific Funding Support Emerging Interdisciplinary Research: A Comparison Study of Big Data Research in the US and China

DOI : 10.1371/journal.pone.0154509

Perish or Publish in China: Pressures on Young Chinese Scholars to Publish in Internationally Indexed Journals

To boost their research productivities, Chinese universities are putting great pressure on their research-active staff to publish in internationally indexed journals. However, the emerging publish-or-perish culture in China has seen little empirical investigation thus far.

In the research reported in this article, semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven young researchers in science and engineering disciplines at a research-centered university in central China.

The study showed that these young scholars faced great pressure to publish papers in internationally indexed journals. Consequently, the participants were reluctant to spend time on other academic activities, including teaching training.

They also reported considerable work time devoted to writing, which resulted in fatigue and negatively affected family relations. The participants admitted that they had to rush to publish, and therefore were less likely to produce papers of better quality or those with novel discoveries.

The research contributes to our reflection upon Chinese universities’ increasing use of the number of international publications as a major assessment and incentive measurement of their faculties’ academic performance.

URL : Perish or Publish in China: Pressures on Young Chinese Scholars to Publish in Internationally Indexed Journals

Alternative location : http://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/4/2/9

Development of institutional repositories in Chinese Universities and…

Development of institutional repositories in Chinese Universities and the open access movement in China :

“The number of research articles about Open Access (OA) and Institutional Repository (IR) has grown quickly in recent years, while Chinese universities move slower than their western counterparts. There are only a few experimental institutional repositories (IRs) now, and no explicit campus-wide policies towards open access have been proclaimed. This paper will describe the status of the OA movement in China, and mainly focus on institutional repositories in Chinese Universities. Factors that hinder the development of OA will be discussed; meanwhile we will give some suggestions for constructing IRs in Chinese Universities.”

URL : http://conferences.aepic.it/index.php/elpub/elpub2009/paper/view/97/44