The evolution of research evaluation in China

Abstract

Reforming the research evaluation system is essentially a struggle between the academic aristocracy, which professes expert approaches to evaluation, and the scientific bureaucracy, which seeks to ensure the dictate of numerical indicators. A representative example is the evolution of this confrontation in China, where a long-term commitment to international scientometric databases made it possible to achieve world leadership in terms of the number of publications. However, these achievements were accompanied by negative effects caused by deterioration in the personnel policy of universities, the reduction of academic freedoms, changes in the publication behavior of researchers, and violations of scientific ethics. This led to a reform of the national evaluation system, namely, the strengthening of the role of expertise, the priority dissemination of scientific information at the national level, and the restriction of open access publications. This considers the history of the formation of and changes in the research evaluation system in China, its positive and negative effects, as well as new scientific practices, their likely consequences, and the possibility to apply them in other countries.