Abstract
In order to improve the citation impact of Chinese journals, relevant Chinese government agencies have launched a program entitled Citation Impact Upgrading Plan (CIUP) with financial support. Only a few journals that perform better have been screened out for CIUP support. The current study tries to figure out if the screening results reflect the bibliometric status of the journals. We compare journals being supported by CIUP with unsupported ones. Journals supported by the CIUP have made progress in raising their JIF values and perform better in terms of JIF values. Journals citing CIUP journals have a spectrum of higher JIF values. Journals in a cited network of a CIUP journal are better integrated with one another. Wide gaps, however, still exist between Chinese and leading international journals. A network visualization of being-cited patterns can be used to measure a journal’s citation impact in relation to the JIF values of journals in the network. Policy suggestions on improving citation impact of Chinese journals will be proposed.
Highlights
Right after the United States, China has been the second largest producer of scientific publications since 2006 (Zhou and Leydesdorff, 2008; ISTIC, 2013)
Journals appearing in a cited network contribute at least 1% to the total citations of a seed journal
With limited options of journal samples defined by the Citation Impact Upgrading Plan (CIUP), two sets of journals in environmental sciences and mathematics were selected
Summary
Right after the United States, China has been the second largest producer of scientific publications since 2006 (Zhou and Leydesdorff, 2008; ISTIC, 2013). With citation impacts rising continuously, China jumped to the fifth position in 2013 in terms of national total citations from the eighth in 2010 (ISTIC, 2013). This position was reached 2 years earlier than targeted by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) of China in the 12th National Plan for the Development of Science and Technology (NPDST). International visibility of Chinese journals is still low but improving (Jin and Rousseau, 2004; Leydesdorff and Jin, 2005; Zhou and Leydesdorff, 2007a,b; ISTIC, 2013): in addition to a growing number of journals being included in Science Citation Index – Expanded (SCIE), the number of journals in the first and second quartiles of the journal impact factors (JIFs) have increased
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