Abstract
China's solar energy industry is developing rapidly and China's solar energy research is experiencing a high speed of development alongside it. Is China's solar energy research growth quantity-driven (paper-driven) or quality-driven (citation-driven)? Answering this question is important for China's solar research field and industrial sector, and has implications for China’s other renewable research programs. Applying statistical methods, the citation analysis method, and web of science data, this study investigated China’s solar energy research between 2007 and 2015 from two perspectives: quantity (numbers of papers) and quality (number of paper citations). The results show that the number of Science Citation Index Expanded（SCI-E）papers on solar energy in China has grown rapidly, surpassing the United States to become the world leader in 2015. However, the growth rate in scientific production was consistently higher than the growth rate of the number of times cited. When considering the average number of times a paper was cited among the top ten countries researching solar energy, China was in last place from 2007 to 2015. Further, the impact and effectiveness of China’s papers were below the world average from 2010 to 2015, and experienced a sharp decreasing trend. These results suggest that China's solar energy research is a quantitatively driven model, with a mismatch between quantity and quality. New policies should be introduced to encourage high-quality research and achieve a balance between quantity and quality.
Highlights
China has experienced tremendous progress in developing solar energy, with a cumulative installed photovoltaic power increasing from 19 MW in 2000 to 78,070 MW in 2016
From the perspective of basic research, this study highlights the need for a systematic evaluation of the scientific production, impact, and efficiency with respect to the growing body of literature related to solar energy in China
Cjt represents the total citations cited by publications published by country j in year t about solar energy; C represents the total citations cited by publications published by country j during a certain period about solar energy; TCt denotes the total citations cited by publications with respect to solar energy published globally in year t; TC denotes the total number of citations in publications published worldwide during the given period about solar energy
Summary
China has experienced tremendous progress in developing solar energy, with a cumulative installed photovoltaic power increasing from 19 MW in 2000 to 78,070 MW in 2016. Sanz-Casado et al analyzed scientific publications on solar energy published in Germany and Spain, and revealed a significant increase in solar research The study evaluated these papers from a citation point of view and further found evidence that these papers had a greater impact compared to publications on other renewable energy [20]. The study’s innovation is to reveal the development, impact, and efficiency of solar energy related literature derived from SCI-E database between 2000 and 2017 for China Answering these questions helps indicate and highlights policy implications for the healthy development of China’s solar research field and industrial sector. The remaining structures of the paper are organized as follows: Section 2 describes the research framework, data source and methods; Section 3 presents the analysis results; Section 4 discusses the results; Section 5 summarizes the main conclusions and presents the limitation and the boundaries of this paper, as well as the future study
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