Nation top in high-level journal papers, citations

China ranked first in terms of the number of high-level international journal papers published and the number of citations received last year, according to statistics released by the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China on Friday.

According to the report on China's science and technology paper statistics, in the 161 high-impact journals covering 178 disciplines worldwide, China published over 14,000 papers last year, accounting for 27.7 percent of the global total and ranking first in the world.

Among the international journals — Science, Nature and Cell — Chinese researchers published 395 papers last year, moving to second place from fourth in 2022.

As of July, China's number of influential papers accounted for almost half of the world's total, maintaining the top position and surpassing the number of such papers in the second-placed United States by 27 percent.

"Through statistics, we hope to guide research management departments and researchers to shift their focus from the quantity of papers to the quality and impact of papers, in order to stimulate the enhancement of innovative capabilities," said Zhao Zhiyun, researcher of the ISTIC.

Zhao said that the above statistical results are based on rigorous methods. For example, papers published in the past two years that receive a significant number of citations during the statistical period, with citation frequencies ranking in the top one per thousand in the field, are considered "hot" papers.

The continuous growth in China's research output and the improvement in the papers' quality are closely related to the country's sustained investment in basic research and development, experts at the ISTIC said.

Since 1987, the ISTIC has been conducting statistical analysis of Chinese scientists' publication of papers domestically and internationally. According to the latest data for the past decade, Chinese researchers' international papers are cited an average of 16.20 times per paper, surpassing the global average for the first time. In 10 disciplines such as botany and zoology, mathematics, agricultural science and materials science, the impact of China's papers exceeds the global average.

Last year, the average citation frequency of environmental and ecological papers in China exceeded the global average for the first time.

Yang Weikang, a researcher at the Sino-Tajikistan Joint Laboratory for Conservation and Utilization of Biological Resources at the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that the frequency of citations indicates the level of recognition of research results, which reflects their scientific value.

"While this is an important indicator for evaluating the achievements of researchers in various fields, it does not equate to the ranking of scientific research levels," he said.

He said that the three top journals also conduct their own evaluations each year, such as selecting the 10 most influential articles.

"We hope to see more research achievements from Chinese scientists in such lists, making more core contributions to the development of world science and technology," Yang said.