Toward internationalization: A bibliometric analysis of the social sciences in Mainland China from 1979 to 2018

Yuanyuan Shang,Ying Huang,Lin Zhang,Gunnar Sivertsen

doi:10.1162/qss_a_00102

Abstract

Abstract The past 40 years have witnessed profound changes in the international competitiveness of Mainland China’s scientific research. Based on publication data from Chinese researchers in the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) from the Web of Science (WoS), this study aims to provide a bird’s-eye view of how social science research in Mainland China has internationalized over the past four decades. The findings show that the number of social science articles published by Chinese authors in international journals has experienced a noticeable increase, and the collaboration networks of researchers from Mainland China have broadened, with the number of articles with a Chinese first author showing a strong upward trend. In addition, findings show that Chinese scholars are published in a wider range of journals, and there has been a steady increase in their appearance in higher impact journals (influenced in part by certain journals). Finally, different social science disciplines show various degrees of internationalization. This study provides a broad view from which to examine the internationalization process in Mainland China’s social science landscape in the last four decades, while also noting some of the possible explanations for these changes, thereby deepening our understanding of social science research stemming from the region.

Highlights

The era of reform inaugurated by Deng Xiaoping in 1978 and Mainland China’s subsequent opening to the outside world has led to rapid advances in China, in the areas of economics, education, science, and technology
Apart from the observations reported in the previous literature (Liu et al, 2015; Zhou et al, 2009), this study focuses on a thorough analysis of the long-term internationalization process (1979–2018) in Mainland China’s social science research from a comprehensive bibliometric perspective
The results are presented in three subsections, focusing on different dimensions of Mainland China’s social science research publication performance from the perspective of internationalization

Summary

Introduction

The era of reform inaugurated by Deng Xiaoping in 1978 and Mainland China’s subsequent opening to the outside world has led to rapid advances in China, in the areas of economics, education, science, and technology. Mainland China has been recognized as one of the leading nations for scientific research due to the “exponential growth” of its publication output (Foland, 2010; Jin & Rousseau, 2004). As part of this development, internationalization— the exchange of information and intellectual collaboration across national boundaries—has emerged as a distinctive component in Mainland China’s emergence as a pacesetter in scientific research. Internationalization is important for ensuring research quality and the development of specialization (Sivertsen, 2016) and for enhancing the prestige, visibility and competences of the country, institution or individual (Altbach & Knight, 2007). The social sciences would lose their raison d’être and support from society by

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Conclusion