Name:
The Future of STM Journal Publishing in China: Learnings, Challenges, and New Opportunities
Description:
The Future of STM Journal Publishing in China: Learnings, Challenges, and New Opportunities
Thumbnail URL:
https://cadmoremediastorage.blob.core.windows.net/f146c4cb-d0a9-4ffa-804e-a0ffa003f69b/thumbnails/f146c4cb-d0a9-4ffa-804e-a0ffa003f69b.png
Duration:
T00H54M04S
Embed URL:
https://stream.cadmore.media/player/f146c4cb-d0a9-4ffa-804e-a0ffa003f69b
Content URL:
https://cadmoreoriginalmedia.blob.core.windows.net/f146c4cb-d0a9-4ffa-804e-a0ffa003f69b/AM21 Session 1B - The Future of STM Journal Publishing in Ch.mp4?sv=2019-02-02&sr=c&sig=OfbKtKME6UAMq3KY8opW69tXcW5D5lcyXkUGo8z8t6w%3D&st=2024-09-08T02%3A20%3A29Z&se=2024-09-08T04%3A25%3A29Z&sp=r
Upload Date:
2024-02-02T00:00:00.0000000
Transcript:
Language: EN.
Segment:0 .
DON SAMULACK: Hello, welcome everyone around the world to the 43rd annual meeting of the Society for Scholarly Publishing. We have an extraordinary session for you today titled, The Future of STM Journal Publishing in China-- Learnings, challenges, and new opportunities. Hi, I'm Don Samulack, Head Global Stakeholder Engagement for Cactus Communications. And I'm proud-- actually no, in fact I'm honored to moderate this year's China session.
DON SAMULACK: Some may recall that Cactus organized a China session a couple of years back at the SSP meeting in San Diego. And this is intended as a continuation of that session, addressing the business of doing business in China. For some housekeeping statements first. Please use the hashtag SSP 2021 when posting social comments about the session. It's very important.
DON SAMULACK: It keeps the conversation going beyond the conference session. Please, also feel free to liberally use the chat function of the conference platform. I will be monitoring it throughout the session, and I'll be looking for questions. I'll be looking for comments. And we hope to have a fair amount of time at the end of the session to address these questions and comments.
DON SAMULACK: In the chat room now, or soon will be a link for a recently released white paper by Cactus about the China landscape, titled Navigating China's Academic and Research Landscape, a guide for academic publishers and societies. Please look for it, and download a copy when you get a chance. It's packed-full of information. Also because of the time difference between the US and China being 12 hours, this session is taking place at
2: 00 in the morning in China.
2: Hence we opted to prerecord many of the presentations. But there will be an opportunity for attendee questions to be addressed at the end, rest assured. This session will last for about an hour. This educational session is structured first with a recording of a formal interview, followed by a series of short presentations and discussion among the panel members with a live Q&A at the end. Now, it is my honor to introduce the first segment of this conference session, where my colleague Christine Hu, general manager of Greater China, for Cactus communications, has arranged an interview with a very special guest-- Dr. Zhaoping Lyu, the executive secretary of the Chinese Association for science and technology, which we commonly know as CAST.
2: Over to you, Christine.
CHRISTINE HU: Good morning, doctor Lyu. We're very happy to be able to facilitate bringing your voice to the audience of SSP annual meeting. So this year, the theme of China Panel is the future of STM General Publishing in China. So what do you think are the most important landscape changes that have taken place over the past 10 years, that fuel the development of China STM publishing?
DR ZHAOPING LYU: you, Christine for that question. It is important to discuss the growth of China's scholarly publishing programs in terms of both internal and external factors. According to the China Institute of Science and Technology Information, the total number of science citation index STM papers in 2010 was 1.24 million globally, While in 2019, it was 2.3 million, an increase of 60% over nine years.
DR ZHAOPING LYU: EI papers in 2010 Lambert 480,000. However, in 2019, it was 800,000-- an increase of 67%. Today, the state vigorously promotes the specialization, digitalization, combination, and the International Organization of STM Journals. Many journals have gained recognition and become an internationally trusted publication platforms.
DR ZHAOPING LYU: In 2010, the SCI index contained only 128 Chinese esteemed journals. However, number increased to 241 in 2019, demonstrating acceleration in international presence for Chinese STM Journals. China's STM Journals still have a long way to go before achieving the highest quality of content.
DR ZHAOPING LYU: And they face two main challenges in the process of internationalization. First, Chinese journals have grown for a short time. It is a single Journal development level. And they need more time to create a brand presence. Significant efforts are necessary to attract high-level international scientists as Editors in Chief's, Editorial Board Members, or Scientific Editors.
DR ZHAOPING LYU: And to publish truly innovative research results in Chinese journals. Second, there remains a lack of a long-term, sustainable business model for Chinese Journals. Most of the Chinese international journals are published in collaboration with international publishers. In recent years, the cost of cooperation and the running of the journals has been rising.
DR ZHAOPING LYU: We recognize that state funded financial support is not a long wait term solution. In addition, the international dynamic in the past few years, has also raised concerns in the Chinese academic and the publishing community. In some cases, there have been restrictions imposed on China's scientists from reviewing manuscripts in certain scholarly domains.
DR ZHAOPING LYU: There are concerns of how international publishers will handle Chinese Journals in certain transformative agreements as better English language scientific journals in China are published on international platforms where there be a pushback. And finally, we need to address how China can issue a published international presence for its researchers.
DR ZHAOPING LYU: All of these factors bring uncertainty for the internationalization of Chinese scientific Journals. They repeated development of a Chinese STM Jones. Has benefited from open cooperation with international publishers international publishers have brought advanced journal concepts publishing technologies and international dissemination platforms to Chinese STM Journals-- allowing our focus on high quality and influential academic content.
DR ZHAOPING LYU: We understand that international publishers allow charging increasingly higher fees for publishing and dissemination. But they are not upgrading their services simultaneously. Chinese publishers are concerned about this. And they must consider the costs of running journals and the long-term development. While cooperating with foreign publishers, domestic publishers are also actively exploring a more autonomous development model.
DR ZHAOPING LYU: First is to give more autonomy to Chinese publishing institutions. Second, is to strengthen the assessment and analysis of the development of a journals, and to present opinions and countermeasures, to enhance their influence. Third, is to increase promotion and the publicity efforts.
DR ZHAOPING LYU: As some Chinese journals observe that these services have fallen off in recent years. Finally, the force is providing copywrite or formation and approving systems in multiple languages to increase convenience for Chinese officers that's a good question. First, let it be emphasize that in recent years, international cooperation has contributed significantly to the open development of Chinese STM Journals.
DR ZHAOPING LYU: In the future, China will create more high quality English language STM Journals. And simultaneously will enhance the internationalization and the crea's digital publishing, an analogy service platforms. And integrate more deeply into the global innovation leatherwork. We hope that an increasing number of international scholars will become authors and readers of Chinese journals, serve as editorial board members and the reviewers participate in the academic exchange activities of Chinese Journals.
DR ZHAOPING LYU: And we welcome the collaboration between professional platforms, technologic service providers, and Chinese academic and publishing institutions. Lastly Chinese STM journal publishers are also accelerating their digital transformation, and increasing the capacity of international dissemination services and then there is a significant room for future cooperation on these fronts China has always focused on the global progress of Open science, and has actively participated in it.
DR ZHAOPING LYU: The excellence action plan led by CAST hazard ratio of 81% for new joiners which shows that Chinese journeys are becoming an important force on the open access landscape Because of the large pool of Chinese researchers, the many research institutions involved and a huge number of papers and the scientific data.
DR ZHAOPING LYU: Promoting sustainable OA requires designing a complex mechanism of coordinated efforts. China, of course, will are learning from the experience of other countries, and make pragmatic and positive contributions to the United Nations initiative to promote Open science worldwide.
DON SAMULACK: That was wonderful. All of us at Cactus and all the panel members as well as the SSP and conference organizers are very appreciative of the time that Dr. Lyu had provided us to be able to participate in this conference. I offer a special thanks to CAST for their participation and for making this interview possible. Now, let me introduce for you the speakers we'll hear from next, as the formal panel of this session.
DON SAMULACK: First, Christine Hu, who I introduced prior to the interview segment. Christine is not only a friend and colleague. She oversees all of China operations for Cactus communications. Next to speak will be Vise President Bing Liu of the Chinese Medical Association Publishing House, followed by Mr Tieming Zhang, President of the Society of China University Journals.
DON SAMULACK: And then, Professor Zong Ming Cheng, professor at the University of Tennessee, as well as China's Nenjing Agricultural University. He is also Editor Chief of the Journal Horticultural Research, and Founder President of Maximum Academic Press. Take it away once again, Christine.
CHRISTINE HU: Thank you. Thank you Don for introduction. I'm very happy to be here, to exchange points of view with all of our counterparts on this topic. So just now, from what Dr. Lyu has shared, and also the feedbacks of the past few years, It is clear that China is able to contribute more high quality journals to the global academic ecosystem. And at the same time, at the end of January this year, among the 12,856 SCI and SSCI journals indexed by web of science, only 255 were published in China.
CHRISTINE HU: Accounting for only 1.98 percent. As the world's largest producer of scientific articles, China ranks sixth in the number of SCI and SSCI journals it has, which is 5.7 of the world's top ranked in US. So China is not yet among the highest output countries in terms of the high quality papers. It is still a long way to go for China STM Journals to significantly increase its international impact.
CHRISTINE HU: Meanwhile, we all recognize that China is in the midst of transitioning from a manufacturing-based economy, to one that's driven by innovation and science and technology. So China has seen huge investment in basic research in the high-tech development in recent decades. So in March of 2020, the Ministry of Science and Technology and five other ministries jointly issued the plan for strengthening 0 to 1 basic research.
CHRISTINE HU: And it has been listed as part of 14th five-year plan in March of this year. So this plan supports higher education institutions and scientific research institutions, combined the construction of world-class academic institutions, universities and also with first class disciplines. So later last year, president Xi also pointed out the need to run first class academic journals, and the various academic platforms and strengthen domestic and international academic exchange.
CHRISTINE HU: And the proposal of the 14th five-year plan and the visionary goes for 2035. And proposed to build a national platform for high-end exchange of scientific research papers and scientific and technological information. As you may know, led by 7 ministries and also CAST, the STM journal excellence action plan will fund 240 new English language journals by 2023.
CHRISTINE HU: And meanwhile last year, we see that quite a few provinces also released their local STM Journal excellence action plan with details of implementation. So this year, we will also see more local government action plans coming out. All of these show the strong determination and the firm support from government for building Chinese STM Journals. So just now, in the interview with Doctor Lyu, he mentioned that the action plan that the CAST, has an OA result of 81% for new journals, which is much higher than the other countries.
CHRISTINE HU: Although the result is influenced by various factors, It also shows the Chinese government attitude towards OA publishing. In the latest survey-- so on the screen, you can see-- the latest survey on Chinese research has perceptions of use of OA journals. A quite positive attitude towards OA journals was common. The 3/4 of scholars had published in OA Journals.
CHRISTINE HU: And the Chinese research to has now trust, read, and cite OA journals very frequently. So the survey found that most respondents do not think OA Journals publish pool content. And furthermore, the top three factors influencing the decision to publishing OA Journals includes being indexed by major databases-- journals with high impact factors and more citations.
CHRISTINE HU: So we believe that publishing in this format will keep growing more quickly than the average publishing rate in China. So now, I'd like to share some trending topics here in China. China is a very exciting and complex market. So for Chinese STM journals, as you can see on the left side of the screen, the elevation of local-- of global, requests both creative, inspiration, and International spirit.
CHRISTINE HU: So now, they are focusing on their international impact. But for global publishers, keeping up with China's STM growing, and proactively engaging with Chinese officers will be required for them to build and enhance their long term relationship, and branding in China. It's kind of from global to local. So you can see-- when the Chinese journals are focusing on increasing their global impact and the global publishers and academic societies, they are investing more on their engagement with Chinese authors on China's social media platform.
CHRISTINE HU: So in the past two years, more and more global publishers created their We Chat calls. And they even have more and more mini-programs. Because I believe they have already seen the benefit and also the huge potential that We Chat had been Tic Tock can bring to them. OK. So finally, I would say that in the past decades, international cooperation was global publishers contributed a lot to China's STM Journals development.
CHRISTINE HU: Now, we see Chinese publishers hope to grow faster, which we believe is vital to ensure our future prosperity of research. So here, I just list what opportunities we have seen. So that's why we want to step up or upgrade our cooperation in research-- STM publishing in innovative ways, based on mutual interest. So back to my topic today.
CHRISTINE HU: We expect more collaboration between China. And the global publishers. So together, we can do better and achieve more. OK Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all.
PROF BING LIU: PROF BING LIU : Hello, everyone. I'm Liu Bing. I come from the Chinese Medical Association Publishing House. Grenache Chinese Medical Association Publishing House-- CMAPH for short, harness a series of top medical journals in China. We are constantly expanding medical research, promote medical science and technology-- all widely consequently enhanced. Firstly, I'd like to introduce our journals.
PROF BING LIU: During the past 134 years, CMAPH under the guidance of the CMA, have developed a systematic mechanism in editing and publishing medical journals. Out of June, 2020, over 147 Journals are published by CMAPH. So English journals are cited by [INAUDIBLE].. 26 are included by [INAUDIBLE]. For Journals published by CMAPH accounted for 15% of the total medical journals in China.
PROF BING LIU: CMAPH is developing integrated academic journal surveys [INAUDIBLE] in dealing with the collaborative work ability among different platforms. Systems and the tools in the manuscripts lifecycle, so as to make the circulation more efficient along with better production and the wider dissemination. CMA Publishing House has helped developed digital products, including websites, medical database, medical kids reports database APP and STK for sort of party app.
PROF BING LIU: I represent the Digital Publishing platform of CMAPH page and was 192 journals. 1.18 million articles who are a 250,000 RXML page And the result of that and the 90,000 charge page. Digital resources scale rents in Chinese IgM journals we will make com verse and a great effort on switching from the content provider to the knowledge services supplier and to keep promoting the development of medical science and technology in China In the beginning of the February, 2020 we have built a COVID-19 economic exchange platform which has been linked by important international databases and international organizations said articles and the information while serving our country and global in the forefront in the fight against the pandemic.
PROF BING LIU: It can be accessed globally. The statistics showed that a high volume with AIDS is consistent with the peak period of the international epidemic. Based on Atyptons literature page is pursuing our own journal publishing platform, changing the situation and the DMA item publisher can only dependent on other publishers digital publishing platform.
PROF BING LIU: My essential don't match. We'll host more than 60 English medical journals and release in the coming winter 2021. The slogan of the platform is Chinese thinking, Chinese experience, global sharing. We'll continue to work hard to embrace the [INAUDIBLE] of the digital era to conduct an excellent job in digital is mention of Chinese medical journals and to share research results with peer colleges around the world that's all from me.
PROF BING LIU: Thank you for listening
ZHANG TIEMING: Dear colleagues and friends in scholarly publishing around the world. My name is Zhang Tieming from the Society of Chinese University Journals. Today, I'm going to introduce you to some information about STM Journals by Chinese universities. My topic is STM Journals by Chinese Universities, Vibrant Landscape and Growing Impact. I will start from the current status about the STM Journals in China first.
ZHANG TIEMING: We note that the China STM Journal Excellence Action Plan is undergoing now. This is a five-year project started in 2019, including 22 leading journals and 29 key journals. 199 emerging journals. And 30 new high potential English journals each year. It aims to develop high quality domestic STM journals. Policy environment in China encourages publicly funded research papers, publishing high-quality domestic STM journals.
ZHANG TIEMING: Representative policies such as the first one, several measures to eliminate the inappropriate orientation of papers only SNT evaluation issued by the Ministry of Science and Technology, on February, 2020. The second is guidelines on standardizing the use of STM paper related indicators in universities for establishing correct evaluation guidelines, jointly issued by the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Science and Technology, also on February 2020.
ZHANG TIEMING: In China, universities are the main strength of academic output. According to statistics from China Institute of science and technology information, the number of NCI papers published by universities from 2018 to 2020, accounted for more than 75% of the total number of NCI papers in China. Now, there are about 5,000 STM journals in Chinese mainland, among which more than 1,500 published by universities.
ZHANG TIEMING: And there are about 400 English STM journals in Chinese mainland. Nearly half of them are published by universities. The situation is that the English STM journals in China are mainly co-published with the international publishers. And these publishers simply provide publishing service, and they cannot give enough academic support. Secondly, let us see the vibrant landscape.
ZHANG TIEMING: Now, China has become the largest producer of scientific articles in the world. Chinese universities contribute the dominant part. We know the double first class initiative by Chinese government is a big spur, both for research and academic output. This is the construction plan of world class universities and first class disciplines. The double first class initiated by Chinese government is a big spur, both for research and academic output.
ZHANG TIEMING: This is the construction plan of world class universities and first class disciplines. 42 universities were selected, aiming into first class educational institutions and 95 universities focus on building their preponderant disciplines into first rate ones. This will provide a number of high-quality articles.
MAX CHENG: Good afternoon, everyone. First of all, I would like to thank the conference organizer for inviting me to give a talk on this 43rd SSP annual conference. My Presentation today is on Chinese STM Journal Market, opportunities and challenges viewed from my EiC and starter publisher. I'm Cheng. You can contact me at any of these methods.
MAX CHENG: I'm a Professor at the University of Tennessee, also journal editor at Nanjing Agriculture University. I have started three journals, Horticulture Research Journal, published by Springer Nature and Plant phenomics and biodesign research by AAAS. All owned by Nanjing Agriculture University. I also started my own business called Maximum Academic Press.
MAX CHENG: First of all, let's look at some numbers. The first-- the Chinese research and development funds in 2019 has reached 2.23% of the GDP, which is almost equal to what the United States has invested in. The web of science indexed the research papers. China has output of 520,000 papers in 2020, which is 20% more than US's output.
MAX CHENG: However, Chinese Web of science index STM journals, only has 2% of the global shares. And each year, roughly published about 25,000 to 30,000 papers per year, which dwarfs into the US;s or UK's. It's only fifth in the globe. Because of this, 95% of the research papers published in China has been published in the Western journals.
MAX CHENG: This created tremendous opportunities and challenges for both sides. So first of all, it's a great opportunity because based on the numbers, I just presented that China will need more than 3,000 new web of science indexed STM journals to meet its own publishing demand. And also 90% of the journal-- STM journals or SCI journals are partnered with Western established publishers and societies.
MAX CHENG: So for the established the publishers and the service providers, you can expanded the portfolio as well as expanding new services. So like Springer Nature's Wiley, Teller-Francis, Elsevier, OUP, et cetera- and Clarivate-- I mentioned Atypon, EM, editorial managers. All these publishers and service providers are actively participating in Chinese market.
MAX CHENG: For the independent and small publishers, you can start a new business and provide pieces of services. I have taken this opportunity by launching maximum academic press. So now, I have 10 new journals under launching. And we are also providing services and consulting to all. But also, there are some problems and the challenges viewed by myself and as well as what I have heard from my colleagues complaints to the Western publishers that seem to just provide a basic publishing service, not quite matching their brand names and the services.
MAX CHENG: And some of the responses and the requests and processes have been quite slow, compared to the Chinese speed. Yes, also recent acquisitions have caused some brand dilutings. The challenges to the Western publishers, primarily is on the possible policy changes by the Chinese government.
MAX CHENG: And we have seen this has been changed to some. But this may continue to change. The outcome may not be quite sure. And also there's tremendous competition among Western publishers. This created the challenges also. For the Chinese, they're wondering, when can we have 3,000 new journals? Because Chinese government only issues about 30 in numbers per year.
MAX CHENG: So this one would take over 100 years to reach. What's the solution for this? And also how to compete with Western publishers has been one of the primary questions that I've been asked frequently. So my advice to Western publishers, for the established ones, we need to lobby our government not to decouple with China. I consider this is the biggest landmine for the standard Journal publishing market.
MAX CHENG: Not to take the Chinese business for granted, because we see Samsung cell phone has gone from the number one market shares to almost zero right now. And not just to provide a basic publishing service, but need to help Chinese journals to succeed, to create a win-win situation. For the start publishers and the Newcomers need to have a strong plan before entering this seemingly an opportunity everywhere market.
MAX CHENG: And they need to focus on quality, specialise journals not on the mega journals and not on the multidisciplinary journals. And they also need to provide quality and professional services. So this will be a very brief presentation. Thank you very much.
DON SAMULACK: Wonderful. Some very interesting insights through the presentations made. Now, we're going to enter into a formal question and answer session with the panelists. And let me just get right down to it. There's clearly a lot of different dynamics at play in the domestic Chinese internal market. How does the current state financial support for domestic Chinese journals get distributed? And when does this domestic support run out?
DR ZHAOPING LYU: Thank you. Financial support for domestic Chinese journals from the state is only a short term solution, as part of the current five-year plan. Ultimately, it is hoped that this report will allow the journal to cultivate its own development and sustaining capability. Some support is mainly used for platform, construction, talent training, quality improvement of journal content, publicity, and promotion, et cetera.
ZHANG TIEMING: The state financial support is mainly used for the construction of academic capacity and the communication capacity of journals, such as building an international editorial committee. Selecting excellent reviewers. Attracting good authors and papers. Standardizing the publishing process. Complying with publishing ethics. Choosing the appropriate publishing modes and platform.
ZHANG TIEMING: Improving the efficiency of publishing, and communication. Of course, these also benefits for training a high-level editor's team. Personally, I also agree that this kind of financial support will gradually decrease, and won't be a long-term project. Thank you.
MAX CHENG: The Chinese government supporting the journal programs is similar to supporting other programs when the industry or the sectors of business is not to the part of the Western standard or in the level of competition. So, I feel that supporting would be temporary. But for how long, that I don't know. Maybe, currently it's five years.
MAX CHENG: My personal-- only personal speculation is probably going to run another five years, but purely speculations. Don't quote me on this when it changes. In this program actually, it's not only supporting the English style journals, but also Chinese language journals.
MAX CHENG: So traditionally, Chinese language journals are mostly serving the Chinese. But now, the globalization and China is coming into play in the global research development stage. I think the Chinese language journals, should move forward.
MAX CHENG: So the Chinese government is supporting both English language as well as Chinese language professional journals normal process. So I don't feel that the Western publishers should worry too much about this program. And I feel like it's a great opportunity for Western publishers because a majority of the journals are using Western publishers as partners.
DON SAMULACK: Thank you to everyone for that insight. I'll move on to the second question. Throughout the presentations today, there have been calls for Western publishers and platform vendors to alter their pattern of support. I'm sure these calls for better or greater support have been made before, since the challenges faced are not new in the last year. What is new? What has changed?
DON SAMULACK: Are there greater needs now? Are there greater incentives for this support to increase from these people?
DR ZHAOPING LYU: We represent the development of scientific research capabilities. More and more English journals will be established in China. The publishing of STM journals in China is adapting to the Western publishing party. Support by international publishers and the distribution platforms to China's domestic journals could be reflected in the following ways. First, introduce and promote the latest technologies and concepts to the country as soon as possible, such as the influence of new models of open science and open data publishing in the publication of future STM journals.
DR ZHAOPING LYU: Second, in the process of cooperation, improve the efficiency of publishing services. Thank you.
ZHANG TIEMING: In the past few years, international publishers and platforms were the dominant party were the dominant party in the corporation with Chinese STM journals. We hope international publishers can provide more academic service choices for Chinese STM journals, in order to meet their customized needs. We know that China has a huge academic population market. And a huge demand for academic exchanges.
ZHANG TIEMING: I think good brand, and also ever improving service will be in China's market share in the future.
MAX CHENG: This is a very interesting question. And over the years, actually the Chinese always wanted the best the services. But at the beginning, the English language journals in China is sort of relatively new things. So the people don't really know what Western style publishing includes. So a lot of sense, they don't know. So when Western publishers introduced themselves to Chinese journal editors and societies, universities, they tell them what Western style of publishing is or was.
MAX CHENG: And now, after several years, they got to know more and more like, myself being an editor in chief at the beginning of knowing nothing about publishing, except as serving as editors in the journals. But it's not in running the journals. So but once you know more, and you know some of them-- some parts of the operations.
MAX CHENG: Then you want to know more. And once you try to know, more and you demand more, and I feel that some of the Western publishers are not providing those services or not to their expectations. Some of them may not, should it be their business. But the Chinese would like to know exactly what should it be, and how to do this, how to do that.
MAX CHENG: So that's part of the reason is that many more, including myself. And so when I started the launching journal, I started with nature publishing group. And they have editor in chief Sumit. So I attended several years. So I learn a lot of things. But later, I got to know how to do this. Then I still have other things I don't know then I try to ask them.
MAX CHENG: Yeah, but sometimes they may or may not tell me, and so, I have to figure those out. So I think it's a calling for better service, or I would not say the better service, but probably more services and expanding services are a normal call by a Chinese standard journalist employees editors and including some of the Chinese supervising agencies.
MAX CHENG: So I don't feel that this is something new. But just like any other business, improving service. Improving operation Providing more goods, products to your clients are normal calls in its regular operation. And I feel this can be future opportunities, but also it's a challenge for Western publishers.
DON SAMULACK: That's great. Christine would you like to add anything?
CHRISTINE HU: Yes, I totally agree with our speakers' points of view. And at the same time, I read it to describe this is kind of corporation or this kind of-- we can say concerns, is something like dynamic and symbiotic process. Because I think both sides should keep open and inclusive attitude towards these new things. Even new conflicts if we can [INAUDIBLE] kind of conflict.
CHRISTINE HU: And finally, we put our author first. So here, when Professor Cheng mentioned his feelings, I just recall the automaker Henry Ford. You just describe into this way. Coming together is the beginning. Keeping together is process-- keeping together is progress. And working together is success. So I think it's very perfect to describe current China STM journal development and the cooperation with our global partners.
CHRISTINE HU: Thank you.
DON SAMULACK: I agree. And that was really quite a relevant quote. It fits perfectly I think. So we'll move on to the third question. The third question for this session panelist is one of the trends that I don't think is really being talked about by anyone-- at least I don't hear of it is regarding the influx of international scholarly talent into China. And the return of Chinese scientists from their training abroad.
DON SAMULACK: Surely, if this is true-- and I believe it to be true-- it will have a huge impact on the quality of research output from China in the coming years, including an increase in international collaborations. Is this really happening in significant numbers? And I'll start off again with Dr. Lyu.
DR ZHAOPING LYU: OK China's investment in scientific research is gradually increasing. And many institutions have various industrial policies for returning overseas personnel. Indeed, more and more overseas Chinese scientists are returning to China to train students and to carry out scientific research in China. Of course, there are also many overseas scientists participating in China's scientific research system through international collaborations.
DR ZHAOPING LYU: More scientists are directly involved in the publication of Chinese STM journals than they were before. For example, the launch of journals by the science channel applies now requires editors who have scientific research experience. That's all.
DON SAMULACK: Actually, that's quite an interesting point that you make the professor Lyu because I hadn't thought of that. The influx of Chinese researchers back to China. And the incorporation of them into actual editorial tools of the journals is going to be a real game changer in the sense that now the editorial pulls within Chinese journals actually do have hands on scientific experience. I think that's going to really raise the caliber of what is being published and how it's being published.
DON SAMULACK: So I thank you for making that point. Professor Zhang, would you like to
ZHANG TIEMING: Due to the academic situation and changes in international political environment, Chinese scientists with overseas study backgrounds, I think will continue to return to China. On the other hand, I believe China's potential for openness, inclusiveness, friendliness, and stability will attract some international academic talents too. Although we can see some uncertainties in international environment-- in the future, I believe the overall situation and quality of scientific research in China will certainly continue to improve.
ZHANG TIEMING: That's it. Thank you.
DON SAMULACK: Great. So professor Cheng?
MAX CHENG: So actually, the talent return to China is the ongoing process. It has been for a long time, maybe over 10, 20, 30 years. But it seems to be-- it's accelerating in the last several years, partially or mostly because the international relations-- some of the political geographical competitions in part by some countries in the world, and you know which one.
MAX CHENG: And so this is an ongoing process. And this is actually very positive for global STM journal publishing and research output because the returning Chinese talents as well as many other Western scholars working in China, help the research quality. And a lot of those papers published in the Western journals as well as some of the new journals started in China.
MAX CHENG: And many of those are also serving as editor in chief and editors. The global research experience and editorial editing experience will help improve the quality overall in the global STM journal publishing. So I feel that it's a very positive movement.
CHRISTINE HU: If you ask me, I would also like to take this opportunity to call for more talent for scientific communication because I think it would be a huge potential market for scientific communication, who can help us to bring all the scientific results to go global, and get much bigger impact. I
MAX CHENG: Have one last comment. For the STEM publishing business globally and in doing business in China, The worst scenario would be decoupling of China and the Western societies. So we try to prevent that.
DON SAMULACK: Well, that's great. Let me bring closure to this session now. First, thanking from the depths of my soul all the participants from CAST, and all the panel session speakers. It was a great opportunity and honor for me to host this event. And I thank you all for taking time from your busy schedules to participate in this event. And we look forward to the ongoing changes that are taking place in China.
DON SAMULACK: And interactions with the rest of the world. It's exciting times. And again, I thank you all for participating. Bye for now, and take care, stay safe.