Globalization and the Issue of Academic Publishing (the SSCI and the SCI)

Abstract

In 2003, the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Taiwan adopted international publication indicators such as the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), the Science Citation Index (SCI), and the Engineering Index (EI) as the standards for evaluating the performance of academics. The SSCI, the SCI, and the EI are citation index databases owned by Thomson Reuters, a for-profit private company in the United States. These standards have long been recognized by major Western English-speaking universities such as in Australia, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand. It was hoped that by promoting these standards, the overall competitiveness of higher-education institutions (HEIs) in Taiwan would be enhanced. The primary performance evaluation process involves counting the actual number of faculty publications in these three databases to determine the final rankings of each college and university. The academic faculties in higher-education institutions in Taiwan receive pressure to publish internationally in order to acquire SSCI, SCI and EI points.