Asian nations are catching up with Europe and the United States in terms of scientific output, says a US report. If current trends continue, publications from the Asia–Pacific region may outstrip those from the United States within six or seven years. In 2004, the report shows, countries from the Asia–Pacific region, including China, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and India, produced 25% of the world’s research papers. In 1990, Asia's share of the scientific output was just 16%....One reason for the higher Asian publication share is strong economic growth and the resulting increase in research funding, says Mu-Ming Poo, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley, who spends part of every year as director of the Institute of Neuroscience in Shanghai. What's more, Poo says, research performance in Asia is now increasingly evaluated in terms of the publications in journals that are indexed by Thomson Scientific. In China, some institutions even pay researchers extra for publications in indexed journals, especially ones that carry widely cited articles.
Comment. China's rapid growth in scientific research gives it a chance to become a world leader in OA. It could leapfrog over the university policies and publishing models that evolved in the era of print. Moreover, the high percentage of publicly-funded research in China is a natural for OA dissemination. On the other hand, China's conservative method for spurring productivity is to encourage conventional publication. While this fails to seize the opportunity to nurture OA journals, it is entirely compatible with OA archiving. To maximize the benefits of their growing output, for themselves and for others, the Chinese must see the connection between OA and impact. If they provide OA to their research output as it grows, then they will not only maximize its impact, they will minimize the difficulties of the transition.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/26/2005 08:17:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
