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Trends in Publishing Chinese Research
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Trends in Publishing Chinese Research
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Segment:0 .
DAVID MYERS: Thank you, and welcome to today's Ask the Experts panel. We are pleased you can join our discussion on trends in publishing Chinese research. I'm David Myers, SSP Education Committee member and lead publisher at Wolters Kluwer. Before we start, I want to thank our 2022 education sponsors-- ARPHA, J&J Editorial, OpenAthens, Silverchair, and Taylor & Francis, F1000. We are grateful for your support.
DAVID MYERS: A few housekeeping items-- phones have been muted, so please use Q&A panel to enter questions for the panelists. Our agenda is to cover whatever questions you have, so please don't be shy about participating. This one-hour session will be recorded and available following today's broadcast. A quick note on SSP's code of conduct in today's meeting-- we are committed to diversity, equity, and providing an inclusive meeting environment, fostering open dialogue free of harassment, discrimination, and hostile conduct.
DAVID MYERS: We ask all participants, whether speaking or in chat, to consider and debate relevant viewpoints in an orderly, respectful, and fair manner. It's now my pleasure to introduce our moderator, Adrian Stanley, general manager JMIR Publications. Adrian has a wealth of experience in the global scholarly publishing industry, having lived and worked on three continents, with four years in China.
DAVID MYERS: He has held numerous volunteer posts within SSP, including past-president, International Task Force chair, and current co-chair of the Funder Task Force. Adrian is an ambassador with DOAJ and former associate editor for Learned Publishing. And now over to you, Adrian.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Thank you. And welcome, everyone, for joining this excellent webinar. I'm personally really excited about the pre-discussions we've been having as a panel. I know many of these panelists. I've worked together with them, worked closely. And the depth and breadth of experience they have is really amazing. So we're really looking forward to all your questions. David and myself will be moderating them.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Please feel free to put them in. We have a number of seed questions and put them in the Q&A section, but we have a number of seed questions too, and discussions. I'm going to try and keep this on track because I think there's a lot to get through, so we're asking the speakers to try and be as precise as they can with some of their answers. But one of the first questions and one of the items we put in the outline for the event was, what do international publishers need to know about research trends in China?
ADRIAN STANLEY: Certainly, a lot of things are moving fast in different directions. I'm going to go to each of the speakers now, one by one, to do a very brief introduction of themselves with their background, and then just, first of all, answer that first question while we're waiting for other questions to come in. So I'm first going to go to Donna, who I know and worked with well.
ADRIAN STANLEY: But Donna, over to you first.
DONNA MINTON: OK, well, thank you, Adrian. Yeah, it's really a pleasure to be here. I guess, first of all, I'll give a little, very, very brief introduction about myself. I started my publishing career after a PhD in physical chemistry at the American Chemical Society. And that was quite a while ago. And since then, I have also spent time working at Science China Press in Beijing, and Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics.
DONNA MINTON: And then I came back to the US and did a stint at Human Kinetics as their publications director. And now I am the director of publications at the Chinese Chemical Society, where we launched, in 2019, the society's first journal and started their publishing program basically from the ground up. So it's really been quite an exciting adventure. And then I've spent quite a bit of time in China.
DONNA MINTON: I've got very familiar with the culture and the people and really enjoy interacting with them. So anyway, that's just my-- a little bit of background. As for the question, which is, I think, what most people are more interested in hearing about, is, what international publishers need to know about research trends in China-- I would say, just very briefly to get things kicked off, I think one of the most important things to recognize is that China's been moving from a manufacturing-based economy to more innovation and science and technology.
DONNA MINTON: And so they're investing a lot more money in research in science and innovation, which is both basic research and applied research. And they have been putting quite a lot of emphasis recently on the basic research component, too. So I think that we're going to continue to see, just in general, healthy funding and the basic research and applied research, which is good news for international publishers because a lot of us publish the work that comes out of that.
DONNA MINTON: And I know that's kind of a 30,000 view of that answer, but I also want to give the other panelists an opportunity to pipe in and perhaps expand on what I'm saying. So I'll stop there. And Adrian, I guess I'll hand it over to Nicko. Is that--
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah, Nicko.
DONNA MINTON: OK.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: Hi. Nicko Goncharoff. I'm currently running my own business, Osmanthus Consulting Limited. I've spent the past 25 years in research, data analytics, software, and scholarly publishing. Prior to that, I actually spent about 10 years living and working in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China. And during that time, learned a lot about the language, the culture, and doing business in China.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: And for the past four years, I've focused on helping scholarly publishing companies with their business strategy, their go-to market. I'm currently acting country manager for AIP Publishing, so that's the nature of the work I've been doing of late. So the only problem I have with that question is that the answer is an incredibly long list of things. I think, if we start with a high level, Donna, I think that's a good kick-off point.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: China is just fundamentally different. I mean, China has-- even before this process of decoupling, where China wants to reduce its dependence on either services or technologies from the US and the EU and other areas, there has always been a very independent way in which China has handled its approach to any type of business that is international in scope. So for example, a lot of people on this call will know China has its own journal index system called the Journal Partition Table.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: This is a compliment at the moment to the Clarivate SCI, Science Citation Index Expanded. And it's more like the JCR. But eventually, I think there's a goal to supplant that. This doesn't mean that foreign businesses can't thrive in China, but it does require effort, time, and most importantly, sustained commitment, because it's a difficult market to navigate. It can be very rewarding.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: And I think-- Donna and Tao, I think we can all address this through our own experiences. But you have to have some people who are living this full-time if you want to succeed there. You really need to-- that is a key thing. And some of my clients have done that successfully. Others haven't and are trying to again.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: But really, the market does require commitment and, at least, a group of people who are dedicated to understanding that market, and most importantly, clear communication and accountability channels between the China operation and the head office, wherever that may be. And I'll leave it at there.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Thanks. Tao.
TAO TAO: Hi. My name is Tao, [INAUDIBLE] Tao Tao. And I've been working for scholar and publishing for over 20 years. Can't count how many years. I started as managing editor in Chinese Medical Association. Later, I joined the Charlesworth Group, and doing all kinds of publishing surveys to libraries, and also to scholars and publishers.
TAO TAO: And I worked for two years as an independent consultant. And I'm working for the American College of Cardiology as managing editor of JACC Asia, which is the new journal we launched last year. So I've been working for both Chinese Society Publisher and American Society Publisher, and also for the production side, our production side, the marketing and sales side, sales of subscription.
TAO TAO: So it's almost every sector of publishing. For the questions, which is a very big question, I think, depending on who you are, the answer could be very different. But whenever, I think-- when you think about China, remember two things. You remember, first of all, it's a highly centralisation of powers. And second, it's a large population.
TAO TAO: So whenever there is a policy, there could be many variation of interpretation, and resulted in different implementation. So the answer-- that's why the answer could be very different. Whenever you want to start something in China, my suggestion is to do research. Collect as much information as you can, and analyze the data. Even after that, you could still make a wrong decision.
TAO TAO: But it's much better than making decisions just based on one trend or one policy. You do need to dig deep into that. I'll stop here.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah, thanks. Well, it's good to see we've got questions coming in. Keep them flowing in the Q&A. One other quick-- well, broad seed question I'll do-- there's been many posts and talks. And if you do follow The Scholarly Kitchen, you'll know Tao Tao is one of the scholar Kitchen Chefs who writes some excellent pieces on China. But one of the questions we've got up is that there are government policy changes about encouraging Chinese authors to publish in local Chinese journals.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Some data and estimates say that could be up to a third of publications being published more in Chinese journals. So I'm going to ask the panelists-- is it still important for Chinese researchers to publish in international journals? And how do they see that trend, data, or other things? And I'll probably start with Nicko first, then Donna and Tao, if that's OK?
NICKO GONCHAROFF: So the answer is, absolutely. So Chinese Intel is spot on, but you can't look at any one policy. You have to look at that how the policies together have a collective impact. But also, Intel is very knowledgeable about this. There's a policy that can be passed, but then how it's implemented is actually up to the various institutions and other research community stakeholders.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: And they're left on their own to sort that out. So the rule to publish one third of your representative works, which are titles that are used for promotion, for tenure, for funding-- that's fairly clear cut. But for example, the number of representative works for a researcher is five. And of course, as everybody knows, the rate of publications in China is massive.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: And Tao has made a good point about this in the past. I think, basically, the advent of more competition from Chinese publishers means that the rate of growth in foreign publications by Chinese authors may slow slightly. But the total amount will continue to grow just because there is so much demand to publish. And in China, there is significant prestige associated with publishing in high-impact factor journals, publishing in journals that may not have a high impact factor, but have a great international reputation and are respected by the community.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: There are many cases where a Chinese author publishes is determined by what their PI or department head recommends in terms of publications. But the prestige and the value of publishing in an International journal remains, as far as I'm concerned, pretty much the same. I'm happy to hear other thoughts. But I do think that Chinese journals will become more viable and significant competitors to foreign journals, but it's taking some time.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: And like I said, the simple fact of the volume of output and the importance of impact factor means there's still demand.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah, yeah. And Donna, do you have a perspective, running a Chinese society journal and anything--
DONNA MINTON: Yeah, well, I mean, basically I think Nicko makes a lot of good points about that. There is definitely still going to be significant demand to publish in international journals. And I think that, to Nicko's point, the rate of increase might change. But I still think the volume is still so high that we'll see a lot of authors choosing to publish in international journals. I do think the prestige of Chinese journals will increase, and I think that that's something that they're taking really seriously.
DONNA MINTON: And also that, some Chinese authors may choose to publish-- like in the past, maybe they just didn't think about it. And they would have just chosen an international journal. But now they'll actually choose to publish in a Chinese journal. And that could be for a number of reasons. And as Nicko was mentioning, the different evaluation processes for the different institutions varies really widely.
DONNA MINTON: And so if, for example, the people evaluating a group of researchers has a particular interest in a particular Chinese journal, [CHUCKLES] then you publish in that journal. And so there's some politics and stuff that goes on that's beyond what we can really sort out at this level. But in general, though, I think that there's definitely still the attachment to impact factor that's-- and citations are becoming more a buzzword-- citations, citations, citations.
DONNA MINTON: And so journals that are strong in those areas as well will basically always be strong. I think that the journals that may be more in the range of where the Chinese journals are reaching-- there'll be more competition. But again, there's enough volume that I don't think that you're going to see a major decline, for example, in submissions.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah. Tao, did you have anything to add to that? Do you want to--
TAO TAO: Yeah, I agree with Nicko and Donna, that is, the short answer is, yes. Chinese researchers will still publish in international journals. But it's not all international journals. I think, if you are a good publisher, you stick to the high standards of publishing, then you shouldn't worry about getting [? mass ?] papers from China. But if you are one of those predator journals, then you should really worry.
TAO TAO: So depending on which journal or what type of international journal you are, the answer could be different. But the general answer is, yes, they will continue to publish.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah. Yeah, that's good. So I'm going to move over to the questions now. And I think, here, really, we'll take the-- each of the panelists just [? ought ?] to put their hand up and claim any of these questions. But we had one question from Chris Ascher just saying, recently he's noticed that corresponding authors designated by Chinese authors have been recently asking to be changed.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Have there been recent changes in institutional policies for these requests? So does anybody want to take that? I don't know what journal Chris publishes in, but--
DONNA MINTON: Yeah, I could definitely take a stab at that because we have a lot of experience with dealing with a lot of Chinese authors and corresponding authors. And I mean, basically the author list is really important. So for many of the institutions, they'll say it that way. Like, who is first author, second author, third author, fourth author, [CHUCKLES] or whatever corresponding author? Those things matter in a lot of the evaluations.
DONNA MINTON: And so I had one researcher tell me that, if the first author gets credit for 100% of the impact factor, the second author gets 50% of the credit for the impact factor, and so on. And so the author list really matters. And so I could see how that could be playing a role, and also in terms of the corresponding author, who, in the end, they decide maybe made more of the contribution.
DONNA MINTON: So these things-- I think that the author list is-- I've seen it at least in our experience-- is definitely more dynamic. And we see changes not all the time, but definitely regularly. And we have our staff in China correspond directly with the authors to understand the issues. And I would say, pretty much in every case, it's a reasonable request.
DONNA MINTON: And we usually just go with it. But I don't really think it's a policy thing. I think it's more of a cultural thing. That would be my experience with that.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah. I think I agree. And sticking to the author point, unless anybody wanted to add to that, there's another question from Alison Brown here--
NICKO GONCHAROFF: A point-- I might just add one thing.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah, go for it.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: There have been-- as part of broader policy initiatives around research integrity, there have been some rules or guidelines that are trying to crack down on spurious additions of corresponding authors, so people signing on who haven't been actively involved. So I think there is a little bit more effort to verify that the corresponding authors have actually made a valid contribution.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: That, I don't think, is important as what Donna-- it's not as big as a factor as what Donna noted, but it is there. I don't know how much of an impact it's having, but it's something worth noting.
DONNA MINTON: Yeah, that's a great point, Nicko.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah.
TAO TAO: Yeah, my experience is, why get papers from other countries I don't see that much? But the corresponding author is normally the most senior author. Of papers from China, sometimes the corresponding author are not really corresponding with you. They don't receive emails, and sometimes they don't even know they are author there. So that sounds unique to China.
TAO TAO: Maybe that's a cultural thing.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah. Maybe someone with English language helped them make the submission, but they were the author.
TAO TAO: Mm-hmm.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah. Just keeping on the Chinese author theme and the questions from Alison Brown, she sees a lot of Chinese authors submit journals with personal emails, cnet.com 163. Some of our kids, not all, they ask for institutional email addresses. So I'd love for some of you to say that-- I think I know the answer to this. But I'd love for either of you to say what's happening with Chinese institutional addresses.
ADRIAN STANLEY: And there is really the use of personal addresses more common and prevalent. Any takers? Yeah, Tao.
TAO TAO: Yes, I think sometimes when they use email address, sometimes it's because the institutional addresses are blocked. They can't open the block. And it's more commonly to use personal email address. That's one reason I know. I don't know whether there are other concerns they use personal email addresses instead of the institutional email address. But the Great Wall-- firewall is definitely one of the reasons.
TAO TAO:
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah.
DONNA MINTON: Yeah, that's definitely something that we see all the time. And it's normal. I mean, it's normal there. So it's not something to be alarmed about. We ask. We ask. We do the same thing. Or even a Chinese publisher-- whenever we ask for the institutional email addresses, and we get the same thing.
DONNA MINTON: So I think it's just because that's just normal, accepted practice there, and it's not really worth fighting, because it's just kind of how they do things there. So yeah.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah.
TAO TAO: That's not just for Chinese authors. I think many of Asian authors-- they actually use all professional email address-- Gmail. But you can also see many nicknames, like good doctors and things, something. So [CHUCKLES] I think that's an Asian culture. It's more an Asian culture to me than any of the other things.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah, that's good. I'm moving on now to Rob Cookson's question about current thinking in China about open access and funding for publications in OA Journals. Publishing agreements have been signed with OUP and ACM recently, for instance, which is a new development. Do you see this sort of expanding? Or how do you see the payment for OA fees? Any takers?
ADRIAN STANLEY:
NICKO GONCHAROFF: I'll-- given the silence from my colleagues here, I'll-- so China is slowly exploring read and publish agreements. The thing for China is that most Chinese institutions, through the main Chinese purchasing consortium, DRAA, have actually really great, pretty preferential subscription licenses in terms of fees, subscription payments.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: Were China to flip to all OA, the amount of money China would have to pay would greatly exceed what it's paying collectively in subscription agreements across the country. So I think that read and publish is something China is exploring. But every Chinese institution and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which is itself a major subscriber, are all pursuing cost-neutral read and publish agreements.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: The problem for the publisher is that this could represent a 70% drop in opportunity cost versus what they could get if all of those publications switch to OA. The other thing is that China has unofficially-- and this is just my opinion. But I believe China has unofficially set $1,200 US as the ideal target for an APC, Article Processing Charge. And that's something that Chinese publications should be able to manage, given that they have some backing.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: Although, a lot of them do struggle for funding. But that's going to be very difficult for a lot of foreign publishers to make. So I think OA policy, OA mandates, and read and publish deals in China are still evolving. I've heard rumors a few months ago about an OA mandate for China, but I just don't think that that's in China's best interests on a national scale. So I mean, look, if you work in China, you have to prepare to be surprised.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: And you have to prepare to be wrong as well. But that's just my viewpoint on OA nationally in China.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah.
DONNA MINTON: Yeah, I mean, I think you make some really great points, Nicko. And I think that the other thing to just mention with the OA discussion is that the authors-- like, when we started our flagship journal back in 2019, a lot of people were not sure about open access. A lot of the authors are like, I don't know if I like open access. I don't know if I want to really publish an open access journal. And we were at open access journal.
DONNA MINTON: So I mean, I think even since then, in the past three years, there's been a lot more acceptance within the Chinese community about open access, understanding what it means. I think that they understand more that, oh, if it's open access, they'll get more citations potentially, and more visibility. And these things are important to them. So like I said, even in the past three years, I think that there's been an evolution in the acceptance of open access as a credible-- [CHUCKLES] open access journals as credible places to publish, and not just sort of lesser-tiered journals.
DONNA MINTON: So I think, in general, there's more of an acceptance. And this is more from, like I said, the author/researcher point of view. But I think that's going to continue to grow, and I think open access is going to continue to be considered more average and normal in China, too. And in terms of the APCs, in general, what I'm hearing and seeing is that they don't really mind paying them.
DONNA MINTON: There might be, at some point, the government-- like Nicko, was saying, a limit, saying you can only pay this much. And I think the amount that you gave, Nicko, was a very reasonable amount. That's about what I've heard in talking to people, was that that's kind of what they're comfortable with. But much more than that, it starts seeming a little bit excessive. So anyway, I think open access is just going to continue to expand in China as it is globally.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah. And Tao, do you want to add anything? I know you did some work, I think, on one of the Chinese publications, and looking at the growth of OA areas, didn't you? So is there anything you want to add to that?
TAO TAO: Yeah. Yes. Just like Donna says, there is a slow change of opinion over open access. A few years back, it was, the researchers would get the opinion from their professors. The professors-- if they are too old, they could say that open access is just pay to publish, is bad. So that's really wrong conception of open access.
TAO TAO: But you can barely hear any official or government's opinion about open access [? back. ?] But now, in recent years, there are any official [? lies ?] about to support open access. So you can see that the behavior of the researchers are changing. Now they don't care too much about whether it's open access.
TAO TAO: And actually, open access means your paper could get more exposure, and it's welcome. What they really care about is whether pay or not, whether the paper will be counted easier evaluation. So that's the key point. The researchers don't really care. And if they need to pay, even pay out of their own pockets, they will do that. So money isn't really the key things.
TAO TAO: The key thing is whether the journal is [? recruitable ?] and will be copied. But I think, in general, China will go for open access. It's just not ready to go into open access, because China's publishing, academic publishing is so weak. It only has 300, or maybe now 400, English journals. If they go open access, all the money goes outside. They don't get a penny for that. So I think that the general trend is China will go for open access.
TAO TAO: It's not just ready yet. When it will be ready, we don't know. But some want to talk about 1,000-- 1,000 English journals, right? Nicko, you mentioned that. 1,000 English titles-- that's aim. I mean 1,000 English titles published by Chinese publishers-- when that's achieved, maybe it's time to get more open access.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah. And one question relating to that is also that just the emergence of blacklists and publishing in reputable journals approved. I know, at some point, there was this post both on national blacklists, but then even at an institutional level. And some of the big OA mega journals were certainly flagged, I think, if they had a lot of retractions and other areas.
ADRIAN STANLEY: But I'd love to hear what everybody thinks about the blacklist situation. And if you do get on those, what can you do to get off them, and things like that?
DONNA MINTON: I think that's a tricky business. That's getting into-- like we talked about, every institution will have its own list. And it's sometimes hard, even for my colleagues, to find out from an institution what that list is. So it's really difficult. I think the best thing to do is just be a reputable publisher, and stay in good graces, I guess, if you will, because it's just really hard.
DONNA MINTON: It's very finicky and hard to predict, hard to know. And I think it's hard to even know if you're on one, I think, I mean, unless you have someone tell you, which I think would be-- I mean, that can happen. But it may not happen that much, because the only people that might know are the people like the leaders, like the evaluators. Average researchers may not necessarily know what the list is.
DONNA MINTON: They may not know a list-- a journal is on there or not on there, but they may not know this list. So anyway, it's a really difficult question, and that's just going to be one of those hard things that is going to be hard for international publishers to really understand. But I think that the good point to make here is to understand that a lot of things that happen in China are at the institutional, individual-- it could be at the city level, the province level, the central government level, the individual institution level, the research lab level.
DONNA MINTON: So I mean, things happen at different levels. And so it makes some of these things a little bit intractable. And I would say that this is one of those cases, in my experience. I don't know if Nicko and [AUDIO OUT]..
TAO TAO: Yeah, I just want to add that, while every institution has a list, and the researcher in the institution-- they really care about what's their institution want. But the institution-- when they make their lists, they do refer to other lists. The most influential ones is Chinese Academy of Science. They start to make a blacklist. And the other one is the CAST, the Chinese Association of Science and Technology.
TAO TAO: They don't make blacklists, but they make a good journal list. So those lists are referred-- when the institutions are making their own list, yes, they do listen to their professors, their faculty. But they also refer to those major lists. So it's not possible to track every institution. You can't even get the information in many cases. But you can watch for those two major lists.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: I've done a significant amount of-- so I've worked with clients who've been on the Chinese Academy of Science International Journal Early Warning List. And I've done a lot of analysis of that. And as Tao says, the journals on the CAST Early Warning List-- they propagate down to the warning lists of the individual institutions because it's easier, right? It's just easy to do that.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: I think there's more variation in terms of the recommended journal lists. The CAST approach of having recommended journal lists-- they used a peer review approach, where they assembled peers whose job was to pick top journals in a wide range of different disciplines. I think, at the end of the day, it'll be 200 major and subdisciplines. And again, it's easy for an institution to just borrow from that.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: But the variation there, to witch Tao and Donna have referred, is that the institution will then have its own opinions on recommended journals. They're less likely to have their own opinions on journals you shouldn't publish in. For those publishers who've been on the Early Warning List, the drop in submissions after being listed was significant. It was worse than I had expected, I mean, 30% to 50%.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: Journals that have been taken off of it-- because there have been two years now, this, 2020, and 2021. A lot of the journals that were on the 2020 list have been removed, and I think it will be instructive to look, I think, by about September, just to even out all the fluctuations in publishing cycles-- by September to see how their submission numbers have improved.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: Anecdotally, it seems like there is a slow improvement in submissions compared to 2021 when they had been posted on the 2020 list.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yep. Thanks. I'm going to change topics now a little bit. We have one question in here about Chinese publishers have been on a shopping spree globally, the acquiring of EDP by CSPM. Is this driven by a goal to become a global and more towards getting global content into the local markets? Or any thoughts how that sort of trend may progress or not?
ADRIAN STANLEY: Will China buy Elsevier one day? Anyone want to take that? It's quietness.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: Um--
ADRIAN STANLEY: Go on, Nicko.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: I just went last. I'm reluctant, but I do have an opinion on it. So from what I've seen in all my discussions with Chinese publishers and institutions that are looking to publish, that is seen-- so the purchase of EDP by China Science Press-- that was an idea of a quick way to get international-level journals owned by China. So I think the goal is more to find a way to quickly increase the number of international-level journals by Chinese publishers.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: I don't think-- I think it's as straightforward as that, but I invite any contrasting viewpoints.
DONNA MINTON: Oh, I certainly don't have a contrasting viewpoint. But I think you're right on, Nicko. And I think that part of it, too, was to even allow Science China Press to have international exposure for their own journals. So it's just like an international platform. I think one interesting problem is that the local journals in China have trouble getting international recognition, and the international journals have trouble getting local recognition.
DONNA MINTON: And so I think purchasing international journals is one way to work around that problem. And so to your point, that's partly one of the things that is accomplished there. And yes, I do think we're going to see more of that. I don't know if they'll buy also here. That would be quite a goal. But I do think that there's going to be more interest in perhaps Chinese publishers acquiring international titles.
TAO TAO: Yeah, I fully agree with you, Nicko. And to answer that question, I think the answer is, it's not to get more global content into local markets. It's more going more global. So we still need to look at the big imbalance between the number of papers published by Chinese authors and by Chinese publishers.
TAO TAO: It's so imbalanced, and China really wants to get a fair share of that market, the international journal publishing market. But to publish journal and to grow it, it takes years. So to buy a company is the easy way. I don't know how easy it is to acquire a company, but it's definitely, to me, a good approach, easier approach by Chinese publishing groups.
TAO TAO: What I am just not surprised is the biggest Chinese publishers are not their. The science publisher or academic publishers are not the top publishers in China. It's unlike the global publishers. When you look at the top ones, they are Elsevier, Springer. They're all academic publishers. But in China, it's not. The top ones-- they don't even publish journals.
TAO TAO: So if they go into the global market-- I don't know why they don't, but I see they will have a better chance.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yep. I'm Just keeping an eye on time, and we've got a number of questions. Do keep sending them in. I'm going to put a couple of questions together here. Hannah Harwood asked, what else is important to Chinese authors when deciding on a journal apart from impact factor citations, e.g. familiar names on headboards, speed of publication, any anecdotal experiences.
ADRIAN STANLEY: And as an adult question, just to get you thinking, too, of two things, are researchers in China also actively encouraged to participate in peer review, as well as publishing their own work. So anyone want to take that?
TAO TAO: Yeah, I can have a quick [INAUDIBLE] Germany's service companies, service providers-- this help Chinese authors to select journals. And they have many criteria. Like, they will look at whether it's a good journal. But what the criteria of a good journal is, besides the impact factor, citations, they also look at the percentage of Chinese authors.
TAO TAO: They don't like journal with very high percentage of Chinese authors, for example. So if you look at those service providers, look at the criteria they used, you will have a pretty good idea of how they select journals. But for authors, some of them, especially the young authors, they depend on those companies to help them select journals.
TAO TAO: Yes, they--
DONNA MINTON: I--
TAO TAO: Both are a service company, a lot of them.
DONNA MINTON: I've also talked to a lot of researchers who-- some of their decisions come from students. Like, their students want to publish in a certain journal, or they're aware of a certain journal. Or they need a certain type of journal to publish in order to graduate. Of course, students have pretty high publication requirements that are for graduation. And so a lot of times, that can drive what journal they shoot for, anyway, so choose, I guess, to start with.
DONNA MINTON: And again, I think politics can play a role. At particular institutions, there might be journals that are just viewed better. So when it goes to their evaluation, if they published in journal X versus journal Y, it'll look better, even though maybe they have comparable impact factors or comparable citations. So there's that playing role, but I would definitely say that the dominant issue is the impact factor and citations.
DONNA MINTON: I think that the international feel of the journal makes a difference. And that's something that we've struggled with a little bit as a actual Chinese journal, is helping the journal feel international. But most international journals don't need to worry about that because they already feel pretty international by definition. But the author list, like Tao Tao was mentioning, can make a difference, and EAB board members.
DONNA MINTON: But I would say that's less so than some of these other factors.
TAO TAO: Yes. Oh, you have remind me something. The answer, really, is like many questions' answers, different. So they do have the [INAUDIBLE] University students-- they need to publish to graduate. So for them, the speed to publish is the number-one factor. So depending on which number of the researcher they are, the answer is different. The criteria is different.
ADRIAN STANLEY: And do you see Chinese researchers also actively being involved in peer review? Certainly in Western journals.
DONNA MINTON: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I would say that their main-- a lot of them are pretty anxious. Even the postdocs and stuff like that want to be included because they want to participate in the peer review. I would say that, with that, especially some of the younger researchers and postdocs could use education in terms of what is a good review because we've seen a lot of variability-- and I have throughout my career-- in the review quality.
DONNA MINTON: And I don't think it's necessarily laziness. It's just not really understanding how to review a paper or what really is needed in a good review. So I think that reaching out and trying to include more Chinese reviewers is-- I think that's a really good thing. And I think it'll be received well, with the caveat that perhaps include in your review request-- or if they accept the review, just send some documentation perhaps in Chinese maybe about just some of minimum things that you would want in your review.
DONNA MINTON: I think something like that could be really helpful. Otherwise, they may just say, accept as is. And it's like, well, that's not really that helpful. But if you really want to help them learn the review process better, I think you'll have a better experience from the publishers end.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: Yeah, I worked at-- when I was at Clarivate, we were rolling out Publons into China. And so everything-- Donna, I completely agree. And it's a minor point, but I might even say, there are increasingly webinars or seminars about peer review mainly put on by China Academy of Science, National Science Library, and foreign publishers. Maybe a link to a particularly good one of those webinars is also potentially useful ideally in Chinese, again, because it really is more a matter of education.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: It's not unwillingness. The other issue is that nobody in China reads email, hardly at all. And that's how foreign publishers recruit peer reviewers. So you may send 15 emails to an author, and it's not that that person is unwilling to peer review. It's just that she or he may-- maybe they haven't checked their email in three weeks, because they're doing everything via WeChat.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yep. I'm going to move through the questions because we still got a few to get to, but they're great answers we're getting. Is there a trend for authors to be rewarded for from their institutions when they publish in prestigious journals? Is this going up or down? Or I know I've read various different articles. I think there was a nature one saying how much certain authors got paid.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Any thoughts on that?
DONNA MINTON: Well, I'll just jump in. From my understanding, that's basically been eliminated. So the reality could be one thing. But I think, in terms of policy, that's been done away with. But of course, you can get benefits as in a better evaluation, more funding. So there are these side benefits of having publications in high-impact factor journals that aren't direct payment of sorts.
DONNA MINTON: I even think, at the lower tier-- maybe Nicko and Tao Tao can comment on that-- it's basically not allowed anymore to pay a researcher for having their article published in a high-impact factor journal. That was definitely a practice in the past, but I think that's pretty much been eliminated. But then these other-- just like everywhere else in the world, these other factors sort of come in, like, OK, you're more likely to get funding or things like that.
DONNA MINTON: So I don't know, Nicko, Tao Tao, if you guys have some other perspectives on that?
TAO TAO: I think maybe the direct payment is removed. But there's always, like you said, always other ways to reward them. I can't-- of course, I don't know whether they get paid. But whenever an institution publish a paper in a high-impact factor journal, they will promote that. They're so proud of that, especially like major science. So if it published in those journals, it will just propaganda.
TAO TAO: [? Fortunately, ?] [INAUDIBLE]. Still I can't imagine they don't reward the researcher for publishing that. They may find another way to do that. Maybe there's no direct payment, but there must be a way.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: Because a senior department head at a very prestigious University in China told me directly, yes, we don't pay people directly anymore. But there's always a way. So people are still getting incentivized. It's just the direct payment. I mean, the direct payments-- that's one of the policy reforms that was actually quite clear cut. But there's always a way, and those are all brilliant examples.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Just talking about the policy reforms, there's a question from Lisa Hinchcliffe here about what's the uptake of DORA and efforts to move away from the impact factor in China? I believe some of the goals were to try and enhance the different ways of evaluation, how that was done. But I'd love to hear your takes on that. I'm sure Lisa would, too.
DONNA MINTON: I mean, I think that it's-- I think that the core idea-- the seed is there, but I think that it's going to just take a lot of time for these non-numerical, I guess, evaluation processes to take hold. It's just really convenient. I talked to one department head, who basically said he's got so many people to evaluate, he just-- he needs numbers. He needs some way to evaluate, and these are convenient measures.
DONNA MINTON: And so that's really-- I mean, that's, of course, not everyone's perspective. But I think that it's going to take time. I think they see what's happening. And there's an enormous emphasis right now on citations. I just cannot tell you. I mean, citing each other's-- a researcher will-- all of their friends will cite their work so they can have more citations.
DONNA MINTON: This is a thing. This is a real thing happening on China, which is great for publishers because that means there are articles and your journals get more citations. But it's not ideal for publishing-- I guess, scholarly-- scholarly-ness in publishing. And it's just the volume of people, the volume of decisions that need to make.
DONNA MINTON: I think it's just hard to move away from these numerical sort of evaluative metrics. So I don't know if Nicko and Tao Tao have some other comments.
ADRIAN STANLEY: It's OK if we don't. We can move on. That's a great answer, I think, Donna. A quick follow-up question from Alison Brown was, if people are not reading emails and not really reading, replying them as much, is there a better way to contact them?
DONNA MINTON: WeChat, [LAUGHS] which is not convenient. I mean, I'm sort of joking. But now that is the one platform that they will respond to. I mean, I personally don't use WeChat. My colleagues do. I mean, I use it when I have to. But maybe having an office WeChat-- if you work with a lot of Chinese authors and this is a big problem for you, then it might be worth investigating that as a potential communication platform addition, which-- like I said, there's some overhead to it.
DONNA MINTON: But it'll definitely get their attention.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: But the problem is, it's important to remember that you can't market through WeChat. So what you have to do is assemble a group of existing authors, and that group can be massive. But they all have to opt in, and it's more like an academic exchange. So saying, for example, if you had a WeChat group with a thousand authors, you could propose special issues that way.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: The best way to do it is to have an active, really well-run, really well-curated WeChat official public channel and try and generate interest or draw people to your publications that way, because WeChat does not-- you can't just go search for a number of types of individuals like you do with email mailing lists, like Clarivate's Author Connect service. You can't use WeChat for that. But unfortunately, that's the contradiction.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: It's because that is the way people are communicating. But in order to leverage it, you actually have to know the people. You have to forge the connections directly.
DONNA MINTON: Yeah, I mean, if you have an individual author, I think you could ask for their WeChat information. Or I don't know if it's easy to find it, or if you have it on their website, or something like that. And then you can connect with them. That was one way, Nicko, I was thinking. But you're exactly right that you just can't directly send someone a blind WeChat. [CHUCKLES] They have to be your contact, so that's another level of, I guess, the complication.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah. I think we're down to the last few minutes, unless, Gon, Tao-- have you anything to add to that? But we're still a few questions I'm trying to get to. And we will try to answer them after. If not, then.
TAO TAO: Yeah, I just want to add some quick comments to the WeChat. People do read email. But English email-- they tend to ignore them. The one way is try to put a short Chinese title subject in the line, and make sure catch their eyes because they will regard both of them as rubbish, as junk mail. If you really want to use email, try to do that now.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah. One other question I had just related back, I think, to recruiting editors. And there's been a challenge doing that, where they've had some feedback that some of the editors have concerns about professional repercussions then if they're rejecting papers. Do you have any advice-- certainly Chinese papers and peers.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Do you have any advice for helping potential editors feel more comfortable with the role? Or how have you gone about recruiting Chinese editors?
DONNA MINTON: Yeah, that's a really tough one. I mean, even with our journal, I've had some of the editors be very uncomfortable. I mean, they'll still reject papers. But it's clearly not comfortable for them to reject some papers, which you don't really want. You want the peer review to be honest and not politically motivated, or whatever. And all I can say is I feel like this has shifted a little bit.
DONNA MINTON: And the editors that I'm working with anyway-- they've become a little bit more comfortable with rejecting a senior peer's manuscript, as long as the reviews are solid. I mean, I think that that's one thing to maybe make sure that your editors that are making these decisions and need to make difficult decisions like that, like rejecting a senior peer's manuscript, that they feel comfortable, that the review is-- they have-- maybe instead of just having two rejects, maybe you'll get three.
DONNA MINTON: Get some really solid reviews behind it, and that could potentially make that editor feel more comfortable. But this is always going to be a difficult issue for Chinese editors, especially because it just depends on where their status is compared to the authors that are submitting. So it's going to be uncomfortable, and, I guess, as long as they know that, and if they know that, if they maybe beef up the reviews and make sure they're very comfortable with their decision.
DONNA MINTON: Or maybe-- we've asked-- I've had the editor in chief weigh in. And if it was a really uncomfortable situation, they have the associate editor recommend to the editor in chief, give them the reviews and have them make the final decision. So then it doesn't rest on the associate editor. That's another approach that you can take. But these are things-- it's not something that is easy to surmount.
DONNA MINTON: But I think that maybe those are a couple just suggestions to make it more comfortable for these editors.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah. Any last advice for people on here? How do people feel about traveling back into China with COVID? Should people be thinking to go to the Beijing Book Fair. Or is travel still a little restricted as-- or what else would you be doing? We haven't really touched on marketing or other ideas.
TAO TAO: I think it's not depending on how brave you are to travel. You won't even get the visa to get into China, not now. We don't know when it will be more open, but not now. I think, with the Book Fair, the best scenario would be a hybrid meeting.
DONNA MINTON: If you do have a visa, I've been informed by some of Chinese friends that it takes-- if you go, which you can-- you have to quarantine for at least one or two weeks-- yeah, in Beijing, if you're flying through. If you reach your final destination, yeah, it's like three weeks. But if you have a layover, you have to quarantine for a period, and then quarantine for another-- I thought it was two weeks in Beijing and then one week at your final destination.
DONNA MINTON: But you see Nicko's right that it's a total of three weeks. That's just to get there, and that's in a hotel. So it's just really not that convenient right now to go to China. And we're all keeping up and seeing how this changes. But hopefully, it will change soon. I know I miss visiting with my colleagues in Beijing, and so I'm hoping it gets lifted. But that's the current status these days.
ADRIAN STANLEY: And is that the same for people coming out of China, too, then? It's just hard for them to travel--
DONNA MINTON: When they go back, yeah. So that's why a lot of them don't want to come to the US right now, or to Europe, or what have you, because then, when they go back, they have to quarantine. Yeah, it's kind of a tough thing.
DAVID MYERS: Well, this has been a great discussion, and it could clearly have gone on for another hour. But we are at the end of the time. So I need to thank everybody for participating. Thank you all for the great questions that came in. This is a huge number of questions. It was really great to see, and it shows the interest in this topic. Again, thanks to our 2022 education sponsors-- ARPHA, J&J Editorial, OpenAthens, Silverchair, and Taylor & Francis, F1000.
DAVID MYERS: Just to note that evaluations are going to be sent by email. Please fill those out, and hopefully they'll show the enthusiasm that we saw from the questions that came in. And please visit the SSP website for information on upcoming programs. Just to pitch for two more webinars, on the 21st, there'll be a webinar on Journal Brand Strategy. The next Ask the Experts webinar will be on July 20 on publication ethics.
DAVID MYERS: And a reminder that today is the early bird registration deadline for SSP Annual Meeting. So please go ahead and register. This discussion was recorded. Everybody will receive a link, and this session is now concluded. Thank you.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Thanks, all.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: Thank you.
Segment:0 .
DAVID MYERS: Thank you, and welcome to today's Ask the Experts panel. We are pleased you can join our discussion on trends in publishing Chinese research. I'm David Myers, SSP Education Committee member and lead publisher at Wolters Kluwer. Before we start, I want to thank our 2022 education sponsors-- ARPHA, J&J Editorial, OpenAthens, Silverchair, and Taylor & Francis, F1000. We are grateful for your support.
DAVID MYERS: A few housekeeping items-- phones have been muted, so please use Q&A panel to enter questions for the panelists. Our agenda is to cover whatever questions you have, so please don't be shy about participating. This one-hour session will be recorded and available following today's broadcast. A quick note on SSP's code of conduct in today's meeting-- we are committed to diversity, equity, and providing an inclusive meeting environment, fostering open dialogue free of harassment, discrimination, and hostile conduct.
DAVID MYERS: We ask all participants, whether speaking or in chat, to consider and debate relevant viewpoints in an orderly, respectful, and fair manner. It's now my pleasure to introduce our moderator, Adrian Stanley, general manager JMIR Publications. Adrian has a wealth of experience in the global scholarly publishing industry, having lived and worked on three continents, with four years in China.
DAVID MYERS: He has held numerous volunteer posts within SSP, including past-president, International Task Force chair, and current co-chair of the Funder Task Force. Adrian is an ambassador with DOAJ and former associate editor for Learned Publishing. And now over to you, Adrian.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Thank you. And welcome, everyone, for joining this excellent webinar. I'm personally really excited about the pre-discussions we've been having as a panel. I know many of these panelists. I've worked together with them, worked closely. And the depth and breadth of experience they have is really amazing. So we're really looking forward to all your questions. David and myself will be moderating them.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Please feel free to put them in. We have a number of seed questions and put them in the Q&A section, but we have a number of seed questions too, and discussions. I'm going to try and keep this on track because I think there's a lot to get through, so we're asking the speakers to try and be as precise as they can with some of their answers. But one of the first questions and one of the items we put in the outline for the event was, what do international publishers need to know about research trends in China?
ADRIAN STANLEY: Certainly, a lot of things are moving fast in different directions. I'm going to go to each of the speakers now, one by one, to do a very brief introduction of themselves with their background, and then just, first of all, answer that first question while we're waiting for other questions to come in. So I'm first going to go to Donna, who I know and worked with well.
ADRIAN STANLEY: But Donna, over to you first.
DONNA MINTON: OK, well, thank you, Adrian. Yeah, it's really a pleasure to be here. I guess, first of all, I'll give a little, very, very brief introduction about myself. I started my publishing career after a PhD in physical chemistry at the American Chemical Society. And that was quite a while ago. And since then, I have also spent time working at Science China Press in Beijing, and Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics.
DONNA MINTON: And then I came back to the US and did a stint at Human Kinetics as their publications director. And now I am the director of publications at the Chinese Chemical Society, where we launched, in 2019, the society's first journal and started their publishing program basically from the ground up. So it's really been quite an exciting adventure. And then I've spent quite a bit of time in China.
DONNA MINTON: I've got very familiar with the culture and the people and really enjoy interacting with them. So anyway, that's just my-- a little bit of background. As for the question, which is, I think, what most people are more interested in hearing about, is, what international publishers need to know about research trends in China-- I would say, just very briefly to get things kicked off, I think one of the most important things to recognize is that China's been moving from a manufacturing-based economy to more innovation and science and technology.
DONNA MINTON: And so they're investing a lot more money in research in science and innovation, which is both basic research and applied research. And they have been putting quite a lot of emphasis recently on the basic research component, too. So I think that we're going to continue to see, just in general, healthy funding and the basic research and applied research, which is good news for international publishers because a lot of us publish the work that comes out of that.
DONNA MINTON: And I know that's kind of a 30,000 view of that answer, but I also want to give the other panelists an opportunity to pipe in and perhaps expand on what I'm saying. So I'll stop there. And Adrian, I guess I'll hand it over to Nicko. Is that--
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah, Nicko.
DONNA MINTON: OK.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: Hi. Nicko Goncharoff. I'm currently running my own business, Osmanthus Consulting Limited. I've spent the past 25 years in research, data analytics, software, and scholarly publishing. Prior to that, I actually spent about 10 years living and working in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China. And during that time, learned a lot about the language, the culture, and doing business in China.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: And for the past four years, I've focused on helping scholarly publishing companies with their business strategy, their go-to market. I'm currently acting country manager for AIP Publishing, so that's the nature of the work I've been doing of late. So the only problem I have with that question is that the answer is an incredibly long list of things. I think, if we start with a high level, Donna, I think that's a good kick-off point.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: China is just fundamentally different. I mean, China has-- even before this process of decoupling, where China wants to reduce its dependence on either services or technologies from the US and the EU and other areas, there has always been a very independent way in which China has handled its approach to any type of business that is international in scope. So for example, a lot of people on this call will know China has its own journal index system called the Journal Partition Table.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: This is a compliment at the moment to the Clarivate SCI, Science Citation Index Expanded. And it's more like the JCR. But eventually, I think there's a goal to supplant that. This doesn't mean that foreign businesses can't thrive in China, but it does require effort, time, and most importantly, sustained commitment, because it's a difficult market to navigate. It can be very rewarding.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: And I think-- Donna and Tao, I think we can all address this through our own experiences. But you have to have some people who are living this full-time if you want to succeed there. You really need to-- that is a key thing. And some of my clients have done that successfully. Others haven't and are trying to again.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: But really, the market does require commitment and, at least, a group of people who are dedicated to understanding that market, and most importantly, clear communication and accountability channels between the China operation and the head office, wherever that may be. And I'll leave it at there.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Thanks. Tao.
TAO TAO: Hi. My name is Tao, [INAUDIBLE] Tao Tao. And I've been working for scholar and publishing for over 20 years. Can't count how many years. I started as managing editor in Chinese Medical Association. Later, I joined the Charlesworth Group, and doing all kinds of publishing surveys to libraries, and also to scholars and publishers.
TAO TAO: And I worked for two years as an independent consultant. And I'm working for the American College of Cardiology as managing editor of JACC Asia, which is the new journal we launched last year. So I've been working for both Chinese Society Publisher and American Society Publisher, and also for the production side, our production side, the marketing and sales side, sales of subscription.
TAO TAO: So it's almost every sector of publishing. For the questions, which is a very big question, I think, depending on who you are, the answer could be very different. But whenever, I think-- when you think about China, remember two things. You remember, first of all, it's a highly centralisation of powers. And second, it's a large population.
TAO TAO: So whenever there is a policy, there could be many variation of interpretation, and resulted in different implementation. So the answer-- that's why the answer could be very different. Whenever you want to start something in China, my suggestion is to do research. Collect as much information as you can, and analyze the data. Even after that, you could still make a wrong decision.
TAO TAO: But it's much better than making decisions just based on one trend or one policy. You do need to dig deep into that. I'll stop here.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah, thanks. Well, it's good to see we've got questions coming in. Keep them flowing in the Q&A. One other quick-- well, broad seed question I'll do-- there's been many posts and talks. And if you do follow The Scholarly Kitchen, you'll know Tao Tao is one of the scholar Kitchen Chefs who writes some excellent pieces on China. But one of the questions we've got up is that there are government policy changes about encouraging Chinese authors to publish in local Chinese journals.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Some data and estimates say that could be up to a third of publications being published more in Chinese journals. So I'm going to ask the panelists-- is it still important for Chinese researchers to publish in international journals? And how do they see that trend, data, or other things? And I'll probably start with Nicko first, then Donna and Tao, if that's OK?
NICKO GONCHAROFF: So the answer is, absolutely. So Chinese Intel is spot on, but you can't look at any one policy. You have to look at that how the policies together have a collective impact. But also, Intel is very knowledgeable about this. There's a policy that can be passed, but then how it's implemented is actually up to the various institutions and other research community stakeholders.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: And they're left on their own to sort that out. So the rule to publish one third of your representative works, which are titles that are used for promotion, for tenure, for funding-- that's fairly clear cut. But for example, the number of representative works for a researcher is five. And of course, as everybody knows, the rate of publications in China is massive.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: And Tao has made a good point about this in the past. I think, basically, the advent of more competition from Chinese publishers means that the rate of growth in foreign publications by Chinese authors may slow slightly. But the total amount will continue to grow just because there is so much demand to publish. And in China, there is significant prestige associated with publishing in high-impact factor journals, publishing in journals that may not have a high impact factor, but have a great international reputation and are respected by the community.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: There are many cases where a Chinese author publishes is determined by what their PI or department head recommends in terms of publications. But the prestige and the value of publishing in an International journal remains, as far as I'm concerned, pretty much the same. I'm happy to hear other thoughts. But I do think that Chinese journals will become more viable and significant competitors to foreign journals, but it's taking some time.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: And like I said, the simple fact of the volume of output and the importance of impact factor means there's still demand.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah, yeah. And Donna, do you have a perspective, running a Chinese society journal and anything--
DONNA MINTON: Yeah, well, I mean, basically I think Nicko makes a lot of good points about that. There is definitely still going to be significant demand to publish in international journals. And I think that, to Nicko's point, the rate of increase might change. But I still think the volume is still so high that we'll see a lot of authors choosing to publish in international journals. I do think the prestige of Chinese journals will increase, and I think that that's something that they're taking really seriously.
DONNA MINTON: And also that, some Chinese authors may choose to publish-- like in the past, maybe they just didn't think about it. And they would have just chosen an international journal. But now they'll actually choose to publish in a Chinese journal. And that could be for a number of reasons. And as Nicko was mentioning, the different evaluation processes for the different institutions varies really widely.
DONNA MINTON: And so if, for example, the people evaluating a group of researchers has a particular interest in a particular Chinese journal, [CHUCKLES] then you publish in that journal. And so there's some politics and stuff that goes on that's beyond what we can really sort out at this level. But in general, though, I think that there's definitely still the attachment to impact factor that's-- and citations are becoming more a buzzword-- citations, citations, citations.
DONNA MINTON: And so journals that are strong in those areas as well will basically always be strong. I think that the journals that may be more in the range of where the Chinese journals are reaching-- there'll be more competition. But again, there's enough volume that I don't think that you're going to see a major decline, for example, in submissions.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah. Tao, did you have anything to add to that? Do you want to--
TAO TAO: Yeah, I agree with Nicko and Donna, that is, the short answer is, yes. Chinese researchers will still publish in international journals. But it's not all international journals. I think, if you are a good publisher, you stick to the high standards of publishing, then you shouldn't worry about getting [? mass ?] papers from China. But if you are one of those predator journals, then you should really worry.
TAO TAO: So depending on which journal or what type of international journal you are, the answer could be different. But the general answer is, yes, they will continue to publish.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah. Yeah, that's good. So I'm going to move over to the questions now. And I think, here, really, we'll take the-- each of the panelists just [? ought ?] to put their hand up and claim any of these questions. But we had one question from Chris Ascher just saying, recently he's noticed that corresponding authors designated by Chinese authors have been recently asking to be changed.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Have there been recent changes in institutional policies for these requests? So does anybody want to take that? I don't know what journal Chris publishes in, but--
DONNA MINTON: Yeah, I could definitely take a stab at that because we have a lot of experience with dealing with a lot of Chinese authors and corresponding authors. And I mean, basically the author list is really important. So for many of the institutions, they'll say it that way. Like, who is first author, second author, third author, fourth author, [CHUCKLES] or whatever corresponding author? Those things matter in a lot of the evaluations.
DONNA MINTON: And so I had one researcher tell me that, if the first author gets credit for 100% of the impact factor, the second author gets 50% of the credit for the impact factor, and so on. And so the author list really matters. And so I could see how that could be playing a role, and also in terms of the corresponding author, who, in the end, they decide maybe made more of the contribution.
DONNA MINTON: So these things-- I think that the author list is-- I've seen it at least in our experience-- is definitely more dynamic. And we see changes not all the time, but definitely regularly. And we have our staff in China correspond directly with the authors to understand the issues. And I would say, pretty much in every case, it's a reasonable request.
DONNA MINTON: And we usually just go with it. But I don't really think it's a policy thing. I think it's more of a cultural thing. That would be my experience with that.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah. I think I agree. And sticking to the author point, unless anybody wanted to add to that, there's another question from Alison Brown here--
NICKO GONCHAROFF: A point-- I might just add one thing.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah, go for it.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: There have been-- as part of broader policy initiatives around research integrity, there have been some rules or guidelines that are trying to crack down on spurious additions of corresponding authors, so people signing on who haven't been actively involved. So I think there is a little bit more effort to verify that the corresponding authors have actually made a valid contribution.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: That, I don't think, is important as what Donna-- it's not as big as a factor as what Donna noted, but it is there. I don't know how much of an impact it's having, but it's something worth noting.
DONNA MINTON: Yeah, that's a great point, Nicko.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah.
TAO TAO: Yeah, my experience is, why get papers from other countries I don't see that much? But the corresponding author is normally the most senior author. Of papers from China, sometimes the corresponding author are not really corresponding with you. They don't receive emails, and sometimes they don't even know they are author there. So that sounds unique to China.
TAO TAO: Maybe that's a cultural thing.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah. Maybe someone with English language helped them make the submission, but they were the author.
TAO TAO: Mm-hmm.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah. Just keeping on the Chinese author theme and the questions from Alison Brown, she sees a lot of Chinese authors submit journals with personal emails, cnet.com 163. Some of our kids, not all, they ask for institutional email addresses. So I'd love for some of you to say that-- I think I know the answer to this. But I'd love for either of you to say what's happening with Chinese institutional addresses.
ADRIAN STANLEY: And there is really the use of personal addresses more common and prevalent. Any takers? Yeah, Tao.
TAO TAO: Yes, I think sometimes when they use email address, sometimes it's because the institutional addresses are blocked. They can't open the block. And it's more commonly to use personal email address. That's one reason I know. I don't know whether there are other concerns they use personal email addresses instead of the institutional email address. But the Great Wall-- firewall is definitely one of the reasons.
TAO TAO:
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah.
DONNA MINTON: Yeah, that's definitely something that we see all the time. And it's normal. I mean, it's normal there. So it's not something to be alarmed about. We ask. We ask. We do the same thing. Or even a Chinese publisher-- whenever we ask for the institutional email addresses, and we get the same thing.
DONNA MINTON: So I think it's just because that's just normal, accepted practice there, and it's not really worth fighting, because it's just kind of how they do things there. So yeah.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah.
TAO TAO: That's not just for Chinese authors. I think many of Asian authors-- they actually use all professional email address-- Gmail. But you can also see many nicknames, like good doctors and things, something. So [CHUCKLES] I think that's an Asian culture. It's more an Asian culture to me than any of the other things.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah, that's good. I'm moving on now to Rob Cookson's question about current thinking in China about open access and funding for publications in OA Journals. Publishing agreements have been signed with OUP and ACM recently, for instance, which is a new development. Do you see this sort of expanding? Or how do you see the payment for OA fees? Any takers?
ADRIAN STANLEY:
NICKO GONCHAROFF: I'll-- given the silence from my colleagues here, I'll-- so China is slowly exploring read and publish agreements. The thing for China is that most Chinese institutions, through the main Chinese purchasing consortium, DRAA, have actually really great, pretty preferential subscription licenses in terms of fees, subscription payments.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: Were China to flip to all OA, the amount of money China would have to pay would greatly exceed what it's paying collectively in subscription agreements across the country. So I think that read and publish is something China is exploring. But every Chinese institution and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which is itself a major subscriber, are all pursuing cost-neutral read and publish agreements.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: The problem for the publisher is that this could represent a 70% drop in opportunity cost versus what they could get if all of those publications switch to OA. The other thing is that China has unofficially-- and this is just my opinion. But I believe China has unofficially set $1,200 US as the ideal target for an APC, Article Processing Charge. And that's something that Chinese publications should be able to manage, given that they have some backing.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: Although, a lot of them do struggle for funding. But that's going to be very difficult for a lot of foreign publishers to make. So I think OA policy, OA mandates, and read and publish deals in China are still evolving. I've heard rumors a few months ago about an OA mandate for China, but I just don't think that that's in China's best interests on a national scale. So I mean, look, if you work in China, you have to prepare to be surprised.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: And you have to prepare to be wrong as well. But that's just my viewpoint on OA nationally in China.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah.
DONNA MINTON: Yeah, I mean, I think you make some really great points, Nicko. And I think that the other thing to just mention with the OA discussion is that the authors-- like, when we started our flagship journal back in 2019, a lot of people were not sure about open access. A lot of the authors are like, I don't know if I like open access. I don't know if I want to really publish an open access journal. And we were at open access journal.
DONNA MINTON: So I mean, I think even since then, in the past three years, there's been a lot more acceptance within the Chinese community about open access, understanding what it means. I think that they understand more that, oh, if it's open access, they'll get more citations potentially, and more visibility. And these things are important to them. So like I said, even in the past three years, I think that there's been an evolution in the acceptance of open access as a credible-- [CHUCKLES] open access journals as credible places to publish, and not just sort of lesser-tiered journals.
DONNA MINTON: So I think, in general, there's more of an acceptance. And this is more from, like I said, the author/researcher point of view. But I think that's going to continue to grow, and I think open access is going to continue to be considered more average and normal in China, too. And in terms of the APCs, in general, what I'm hearing and seeing is that they don't really mind paying them.
DONNA MINTON: There might be, at some point, the government-- like Nicko, was saying, a limit, saying you can only pay this much. And I think the amount that you gave, Nicko, was a very reasonable amount. That's about what I've heard in talking to people, was that that's kind of what they're comfortable with. But much more than that, it starts seeming a little bit excessive. So anyway, I think open access is just going to continue to expand in China as it is globally.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah. And Tao, do you want to add anything? I know you did some work, I think, on one of the Chinese publications, and looking at the growth of OA areas, didn't you? So is there anything you want to add to that?
TAO TAO: Yeah. Yes. Just like Donna says, there is a slow change of opinion over open access. A few years back, it was, the researchers would get the opinion from their professors. The professors-- if they are too old, they could say that open access is just pay to publish, is bad. So that's really wrong conception of open access.
TAO TAO: But you can barely hear any official or government's opinion about open access [? back. ?] But now, in recent years, there are any official [? lies ?] about to support open access. So you can see that the behavior of the researchers are changing. Now they don't care too much about whether it's open access.
TAO TAO: And actually, open access means your paper could get more exposure, and it's welcome. What they really care about is whether pay or not, whether the paper will be counted easier evaluation. So that's the key point. The researchers don't really care. And if they need to pay, even pay out of their own pockets, they will do that. So money isn't really the key things.
TAO TAO: The key thing is whether the journal is [? recruitable ?] and will be copied. But I think, in general, China will go for open access. It's just not ready to go into open access, because China's publishing, academic publishing is so weak. It only has 300, or maybe now 400, English journals. If they go open access, all the money goes outside. They don't get a penny for that. So I think that the general trend is China will go for open access.
TAO TAO: It's not just ready yet. When it will be ready, we don't know. But some want to talk about 1,000-- 1,000 English journals, right? Nicko, you mentioned that. 1,000 English titles-- that's aim. I mean 1,000 English titles published by Chinese publishers-- when that's achieved, maybe it's time to get more open access.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah. And one question relating to that is also that just the emergence of blacklists and publishing in reputable journals approved. I know, at some point, there was this post both on national blacklists, but then even at an institutional level. And some of the big OA mega journals were certainly flagged, I think, if they had a lot of retractions and other areas.
ADRIAN STANLEY: But I'd love to hear what everybody thinks about the blacklist situation. And if you do get on those, what can you do to get off them, and things like that?
DONNA MINTON: I think that's a tricky business. That's getting into-- like we talked about, every institution will have its own list. And it's sometimes hard, even for my colleagues, to find out from an institution what that list is. So it's really difficult. I think the best thing to do is just be a reputable publisher, and stay in good graces, I guess, if you will, because it's just really hard.
DONNA MINTON: It's very finicky and hard to predict, hard to know. And I think it's hard to even know if you're on one, I think, I mean, unless you have someone tell you, which I think would be-- I mean, that can happen. But it may not happen that much, because the only people that might know are the people like the leaders, like the evaluators. Average researchers may not necessarily know what the list is.
DONNA MINTON: They may not know a list-- a journal is on there or not on there, but they may not know this list. So anyway, it's a really difficult question, and that's just going to be one of those hard things that is going to be hard for international publishers to really understand. But I think that the good point to make here is to understand that a lot of things that happen in China are at the institutional, individual-- it could be at the city level, the province level, the central government level, the individual institution level, the research lab level.
DONNA MINTON: So I mean, things happen at different levels. And so it makes some of these things a little bit intractable. And I would say that this is one of those cases, in my experience. I don't know if Nicko and [AUDIO OUT]..
TAO TAO: Yeah, I just want to add that, while every institution has a list, and the researcher in the institution-- they really care about what's their institution want. But the institution-- when they make their lists, they do refer to other lists. The most influential ones is Chinese Academy of Science. They start to make a blacklist. And the other one is the CAST, the Chinese Association of Science and Technology.
TAO TAO: They don't make blacklists, but they make a good journal list. So those lists are referred-- when the institutions are making their own list, yes, they do listen to their professors, their faculty. But they also refer to those major lists. So it's not possible to track every institution. You can't even get the information in many cases. But you can watch for those two major lists.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: I've done a significant amount of-- so I've worked with clients who've been on the Chinese Academy of Science International Journal Early Warning List. And I've done a lot of analysis of that. And as Tao says, the journals on the CAST Early Warning List-- they propagate down to the warning lists of the individual institutions because it's easier, right? It's just easy to do that.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: I think there's more variation in terms of the recommended journal lists. The CAST approach of having recommended journal lists-- they used a peer review approach, where they assembled peers whose job was to pick top journals in a wide range of different disciplines. I think, at the end of the day, it'll be 200 major and subdisciplines. And again, it's easy for an institution to just borrow from that.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: But the variation there, to witch Tao and Donna have referred, is that the institution will then have its own opinions on recommended journals. They're less likely to have their own opinions on journals you shouldn't publish in. For those publishers who've been on the Early Warning List, the drop in submissions after being listed was significant. It was worse than I had expected, I mean, 30% to 50%.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: Journals that have been taken off of it-- because there have been two years now, this, 2020, and 2021. A lot of the journals that were on the 2020 list have been removed, and I think it will be instructive to look, I think, by about September, just to even out all the fluctuations in publishing cycles-- by September to see how their submission numbers have improved.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: Anecdotally, it seems like there is a slow improvement in submissions compared to 2021 when they had been posted on the 2020 list.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yep. Thanks. I'm going to change topics now a little bit. We have one question in here about Chinese publishers have been on a shopping spree globally, the acquiring of EDP by CSPM. Is this driven by a goal to become a global and more towards getting global content into the local markets? Or any thoughts how that sort of trend may progress or not?
ADRIAN STANLEY: Will China buy Elsevier one day? Anyone want to take that? It's quietness.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: Um--
ADRIAN STANLEY: Go on, Nicko.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: I just went last. I'm reluctant, but I do have an opinion on it. So from what I've seen in all my discussions with Chinese publishers and institutions that are looking to publish, that is seen-- so the purchase of EDP by China Science Press-- that was an idea of a quick way to get international-level journals owned by China. So I think the goal is more to find a way to quickly increase the number of international-level journals by Chinese publishers.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: I don't think-- I think it's as straightforward as that, but I invite any contrasting viewpoints.
DONNA MINTON: Oh, I certainly don't have a contrasting viewpoint. But I think you're right on, Nicko. And I think that part of it, too, was to even allow Science China Press to have international exposure for their own journals. So it's just like an international platform. I think one interesting problem is that the local journals in China have trouble getting international recognition, and the international journals have trouble getting local recognition.
DONNA MINTON: And so I think purchasing international journals is one way to work around that problem. And so to your point, that's partly one of the things that is accomplished there. And yes, I do think we're going to see more of that. I don't know if they'll buy also here. That would be quite a goal. But I do think that there's going to be more interest in perhaps Chinese publishers acquiring international titles.
TAO TAO: Yeah, I fully agree with you, Nicko. And to answer that question, I think the answer is, it's not to get more global content into local markets. It's more going more global. So we still need to look at the big imbalance between the number of papers published by Chinese authors and by Chinese publishers.
TAO TAO: It's so imbalanced, and China really wants to get a fair share of that market, the international journal publishing market. But to publish journal and to grow it, it takes years. So to buy a company is the easy way. I don't know how easy it is to acquire a company, but it's definitely, to me, a good approach, easier approach by Chinese publishing groups.
TAO TAO: What I am just not surprised is the biggest Chinese publishers are not their. The science publisher or academic publishers are not the top publishers in China. It's unlike the global publishers. When you look at the top ones, they are Elsevier, Springer. They're all academic publishers. But in China, it's not. The top ones-- they don't even publish journals.
TAO TAO: So if they go into the global market-- I don't know why they don't, but I see they will have a better chance.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yep. I'm Just keeping an eye on time, and we've got a number of questions. Do keep sending them in. I'm going to put a couple of questions together here. Hannah Harwood asked, what else is important to Chinese authors when deciding on a journal apart from impact factor citations, e.g. familiar names on headboards, speed of publication, any anecdotal experiences.
ADRIAN STANLEY: And as an adult question, just to get you thinking, too, of two things, are researchers in China also actively encouraged to participate in peer review, as well as publishing their own work. So anyone want to take that?
TAO TAO: Yeah, I can have a quick [INAUDIBLE] Germany's service companies, service providers-- this help Chinese authors to select journals. And they have many criteria. Like, they will look at whether it's a good journal. But what the criteria of a good journal is, besides the impact factor, citations, they also look at the percentage of Chinese authors.
TAO TAO: They don't like journal with very high percentage of Chinese authors, for example. So if you look at those service providers, look at the criteria they used, you will have a pretty good idea of how they select journals. But for authors, some of them, especially the young authors, they depend on those companies to help them select journals.
TAO TAO: Yes, they--
DONNA MINTON: I--
TAO TAO: Both are a service company, a lot of them.
DONNA MINTON: I've also talked to a lot of researchers who-- some of their decisions come from students. Like, their students want to publish in a certain journal, or they're aware of a certain journal. Or they need a certain type of journal to publish in order to graduate. Of course, students have pretty high publication requirements that are for graduation. And so a lot of times, that can drive what journal they shoot for, anyway, so choose, I guess, to start with.
DONNA MINTON: And again, I think politics can play a role. At particular institutions, there might be journals that are just viewed better. So when it goes to their evaluation, if they published in journal X versus journal Y, it'll look better, even though maybe they have comparable impact factors or comparable citations. So there's that playing role, but I would definitely say that the dominant issue is the impact factor and citations.
DONNA MINTON: I think that the international feel of the journal makes a difference. And that's something that we've struggled with a little bit as a actual Chinese journal, is helping the journal feel international. But most international journals don't need to worry about that because they already feel pretty international by definition. But the author list, like Tao Tao was mentioning, can make a difference, and EAB board members.
DONNA MINTON: But I would say that's less so than some of these other factors.
TAO TAO: Yes. Oh, you have remind me something. The answer, really, is like many questions' answers, different. So they do have the [INAUDIBLE] University students-- they need to publish to graduate. So for them, the speed to publish is the number-one factor. So depending on which number of the researcher they are, the answer is different. The criteria is different.
ADRIAN STANLEY: And do you see Chinese researchers also actively being involved in peer review? Certainly in Western journals.
DONNA MINTON: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I would say that their main-- a lot of them are pretty anxious. Even the postdocs and stuff like that want to be included because they want to participate in the peer review. I would say that, with that, especially some of the younger researchers and postdocs could use education in terms of what is a good review because we've seen a lot of variability-- and I have throughout my career-- in the review quality.
DONNA MINTON: And I don't think it's necessarily laziness. It's just not really understanding how to review a paper or what really is needed in a good review. So I think that reaching out and trying to include more Chinese reviewers is-- I think that's a really good thing. And I think it'll be received well, with the caveat that perhaps include in your review request-- or if they accept the review, just send some documentation perhaps in Chinese maybe about just some of minimum things that you would want in your review.
DONNA MINTON: I think something like that could be really helpful. Otherwise, they may just say, accept as is. And it's like, well, that's not really that helpful. But if you really want to help them learn the review process better, I think you'll have a better experience from the publishers end.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: Yeah, I worked at-- when I was at Clarivate, we were rolling out Publons into China. And so everything-- Donna, I completely agree. And it's a minor point, but I might even say, there are increasingly webinars or seminars about peer review mainly put on by China Academy of Science, National Science Library, and foreign publishers. Maybe a link to a particularly good one of those webinars is also potentially useful ideally in Chinese, again, because it really is more a matter of education.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: It's not unwillingness. The other issue is that nobody in China reads email, hardly at all. And that's how foreign publishers recruit peer reviewers. So you may send 15 emails to an author, and it's not that that person is unwilling to peer review. It's just that she or he may-- maybe they haven't checked their email in three weeks, because they're doing everything via WeChat.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yep. I'm going to move through the questions because we still got a few to get to, but they're great answers we're getting. Is there a trend for authors to be rewarded for from their institutions when they publish in prestigious journals? Is this going up or down? Or I know I've read various different articles. I think there was a nature one saying how much certain authors got paid.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Any thoughts on that?
DONNA MINTON: Well, I'll just jump in. From my understanding, that's basically been eliminated. So the reality could be one thing. But I think, in terms of policy, that's been done away with. But of course, you can get benefits as in a better evaluation, more funding. So there are these side benefits of having publications in high-impact factor journals that aren't direct payment of sorts.
DONNA MINTON: I even think, at the lower tier-- maybe Nicko and Tao Tao can comment on that-- it's basically not allowed anymore to pay a researcher for having their article published in a high-impact factor journal. That was definitely a practice in the past, but I think that's pretty much been eliminated. But then these other-- just like everywhere else in the world, these other factors sort of come in, like, OK, you're more likely to get funding or things like that.
DONNA MINTON: So I don't know, Nicko, Tao Tao, if you guys have some other perspectives on that?
TAO TAO: I think maybe the direct payment is removed. But there's always, like you said, always other ways to reward them. I can't-- of course, I don't know whether they get paid. But whenever an institution publish a paper in a high-impact factor journal, they will promote that. They're so proud of that, especially like major science. So if it published in those journals, it will just propaganda.
TAO TAO: [? Fortunately, ?] [INAUDIBLE]. Still I can't imagine they don't reward the researcher for publishing that. They may find another way to do that. Maybe there's no direct payment, but there must be a way.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: Because a senior department head at a very prestigious University in China told me directly, yes, we don't pay people directly anymore. But there's always a way. So people are still getting incentivized. It's just the direct payment. I mean, the direct payments-- that's one of the policy reforms that was actually quite clear cut. But there's always a way, and those are all brilliant examples.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Just talking about the policy reforms, there's a question from Lisa Hinchcliffe here about what's the uptake of DORA and efforts to move away from the impact factor in China? I believe some of the goals were to try and enhance the different ways of evaluation, how that was done. But I'd love to hear your takes on that. I'm sure Lisa would, too.
DONNA MINTON: I mean, I think that it's-- I think that the core idea-- the seed is there, but I think that it's going to just take a lot of time for these non-numerical, I guess, evaluation processes to take hold. It's just really convenient. I talked to one department head, who basically said he's got so many people to evaluate, he just-- he needs numbers. He needs some way to evaluate, and these are convenient measures.
DONNA MINTON: And so that's really-- I mean, that's, of course, not everyone's perspective. But I think that it's going to take time. I think they see what's happening. And there's an enormous emphasis right now on citations. I just cannot tell you. I mean, citing each other's-- a researcher will-- all of their friends will cite their work so they can have more citations.
DONNA MINTON: This is a thing. This is a real thing happening on China, which is great for publishers because that means there are articles and your journals get more citations. But it's not ideal for publishing-- I guess, scholarly-- scholarly-ness in publishing. And it's just the volume of people, the volume of decisions that need to make.
DONNA MINTON: I think it's just hard to move away from these numerical sort of evaluative metrics. So I don't know if Nicko and Tao Tao have some other comments.
ADRIAN STANLEY: It's OK if we don't. We can move on. That's a great answer, I think, Donna. A quick follow-up question from Alison Brown was, if people are not reading emails and not really reading, replying them as much, is there a better way to contact them?
DONNA MINTON: WeChat, [LAUGHS] which is not convenient. I mean, I'm sort of joking. But now that is the one platform that they will respond to. I mean, I personally don't use WeChat. My colleagues do. I mean, I use it when I have to. But maybe having an office WeChat-- if you work with a lot of Chinese authors and this is a big problem for you, then it might be worth investigating that as a potential communication platform addition, which-- like I said, there's some overhead to it.
DONNA MINTON: But it'll definitely get their attention.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: But the problem is, it's important to remember that you can't market through WeChat. So what you have to do is assemble a group of existing authors, and that group can be massive. But they all have to opt in, and it's more like an academic exchange. So saying, for example, if you had a WeChat group with a thousand authors, you could propose special issues that way.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: The best way to do it is to have an active, really well-run, really well-curated WeChat official public channel and try and generate interest or draw people to your publications that way, because WeChat does not-- you can't just go search for a number of types of individuals like you do with email mailing lists, like Clarivate's Author Connect service. You can't use WeChat for that. But unfortunately, that's the contradiction.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: It's because that is the way people are communicating. But in order to leverage it, you actually have to know the people. You have to forge the connections directly.
DONNA MINTON: Yeah, I mean, if you have an individual author, I think you could ask for their WeChat information. Or I don't know if it's easy to find it, or if you have it on their website, or something like that. And then you can connect with them. That was one way, Nicko, I was thinking. But you're exactly right that you just can't directly send someone a blind WeChat. [CHUCKLES] They have to be your contact, so that's another level of, I guess, the complication.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah. I think we're down to the last few minutes, unless, Gon, Tao-- have you anything to add to that? But we're still a few questions I'm trying to get to. And we will try to answer them after. If not, then.
TAO TAO: Yeah, I just want to add some quick comments to the WeChat. People do read email. But English email-- they tend to ignore them. The one way is try to put a short Chinese title subject in the line, and make sure catch their eyes because they will regard both of them as rubbish, as junk mail. If you really want to use email, try to do that now.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah. One other question I had just related back, I think, to recruiting editors. And there's been a challenge doing that, where they've had some feedback that some of the editors have concerns about professional repercussions then if they're rejecting papers. Do you have any advice-- certainly Chinese papers and peers.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Do you have any advice for helping potential editors feel more comfortable with the role? Or how have you gone about recruiting Chinese editors?
DONNA MINTON: Yeah, that's a really tough one. I mean, even with our journal, I've had some of the editors be very uncomfortable. I mean, they'll still reject papers. But it's clearly not comfortable for them to reject some papers, which you don't really want. You want the peer review to be honest and not politically motivated, or whatever. And all I can say is I feel like this has shifted a little bit.
DONNA MINTON: And the editors that I'm working with anyway-- they've become a little bit more comfortable with rejecting a senior peer's manuscript, as long as the reviews are solid. I mean, I think that that's one thing to maybe make sure that your editors that are making these decisions and need to make difficult decisions like that, like rejecting a senior peer's manuscript, that they feel comfortable, that the review is-- they have-- maybe instead of just having two rejects, maybe you'll get three.
DONNA MINTON: Get some really solid reviews behind it, and that could potentially make that editor feel more comfortable. But this is always going to be a difficult issue for Chinese editors, especially because it just depends on where their status is compared to the authors that are submitting. So it's going to be uncomfortable, and, I guess, as long as they know that, and if they know that, if they maybe beef up the reviews and make sure they're very comfortable with their decision.
DONNA MINTON: Or maybe-- we've asked-- I've had the editor in chief weigh in. And if it was a really uncomfortable situation, they have the associate editor recommend to the editor in chief, give them the reviews and have them make the final decision. So then it doesn't rest on the associate editor. That's another approach that you can take. But these are things-- it's not something that is easy to surmount.
DONNA MINTON: But I think that maybe those are a couple just suggestions to make it more comfortable for these editors.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Yeah. Any last advice for people on here? How do people feel about traveling back into China with COVID? Should people be thinking to go to the Beijing Book Fair. Or is travel still a little restricted as-- or what else would you be doing? We haven't really touched on marketing or other ideas.
TAO TAO: I think it's not depending on how brave you are to travel. You won't even get the visa to get into China, not now. We don't know when it will be more open, but not now. I think, with the Book Fair, the best scenario would be a hybrid meeting.
DONNA MINTON: If you do have a visa, I've been informed by some of Chinese friends that it takes-- if you go, which you can-- you have to quarantine for at least one or two weeks-- yeah, in Beijing, if you're flying through. If you reach your final destination, yeah, it's like three weeks. But if you have a layover, you have to quarantine for a period, and then quarantine for another-- I thought it was two weeks in Beijing and then one week at your final destination.
DONNA MINTON: But you see Nicko's right that it's a total of three weeks. That's just to get there, and that's in a hotel. So it's just really not that convenient right now to go to China. And we're all keeping up and seeing how this changes. But hopefully, it will change soon. I know I miss visiting with my colleagues in Beijing, and so I'm hoping it gets lifted. But that's the current status these days.
ADRIAN STANLEY: And is that the same for people coming out of China, too, then? It's just hard for them to travel--
DONNA MINTON: When they go back, yeah. So that's why a lot of them don't want to come to the US right now, or to Europe, or what have you, because then, when they go back, they have to quarantine. Yeah, it's kind of a tough thing.
DAVID MYERS: Well, this has been a great discussion, and it could clearly have gone on for another hour. But we are at the end of the time. So I need to thank everybody for participating. Thank you all for the great questions that came in. This is a huge number of questions. It was really great to see, and it shows the interest in this topic. Again, thanks to our 2022 education sponsors-- ARPHA, J&J Editorial, OpenAthens, Silverchair, and Taylor & Francis, F1000.
DAVID MYERS: Just to note that evaluations are going to be sent by email. Please fill those out, and hopefully they'll show the enthusiasm that we saw from the questions that came in. And please visit the SSP website for information on upcoming programs. Just to pitch for two more webinars, on the 21st, there'll be a webinar on Journal Brand Strategy. The next Ask the Experts webinar will be on July 20 on publication ethics.
DAVID MYERS: And a reminder that today is the early bird registration deadline for SSP Annual Meeting. So please go ahead and register. This discussion was recorded. Everybody will receive a link, and this session is now concluded. Thank you.
ADRIAN STANLEY: Thanks, all.
NICKO GONCHAROFF: Thank you.
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