This article presents the life story of "Profile." The story is based on an ethnographic case study that aimed to understand the viewpoints of Profile's new writers and reviewers regarding the role of scientific journals in fostering communities in the knowledge society. To gather information, I relied on personal reflections from my…

The preeminence of English as the lingua franca in global science has led to English-dominant publication practices, even in non-English-speaking countries. We examine the complex dynamics of language use in scientific publications in China, a major contributor to global scientific output, and the tensions between English and the native language.…

Author-based metrics (ABMs) and journal-based metrics (JBMs), as well as citations, are the dominant currency of intellectual recognition in academia. These metrics and citations continue to be dominated by the Clarivate Analytics Journal Impact Factor (JIF) and are still widely used as a surrogate to determine prestige, scientific credit, and…

Industry standards are used in many disciplines, including science and technology areas. To date, little research has been conducted regarding the citing of standards in scholarly publications. The aim of this study was to answer two questions: Are standards being cited in scholarly publications? And, if so, what are the characteristics of the…

Liberal Studies (LS), a high-stakes senior secondary school subject in Hong Kong, has evoked widespread debate in recent years concerning the curriculum content about Mainland China. Highlighting the deregulated textbook policy on this subject as adopted by the Hong Kong Education Bureau (EDB), this paper compares how specific socio-political…

This study aimed to investigate the statuses on the publishing and usage of college biochemistry textbooks in China. A textbook database was constructed and the statistical analysis was adopted to evaluate the textbooks. The results showed that there were 945 (~57%) books for theory teaching, 379 (~23%) books for experiment teaching and 331 (~20%)…

The global spread of English has made it the dominant language in academic publishing (Hyland, Ken. 2015. "Academic Publishing: Issues and Challenges in the Construction of Knowledge." Oxford: Oxford University Press). Influenced by enterprise culture, scholars from peripheral non-Western countries face mounting pressure to publish in…

Selecting the eight big and small changes in Beida's history and describing them in chronological order provides the needed background for today's discussions on the Beida reform. I have already amply commented on the hundred years' of successes and failures of China's universities in my book "Ten Discourses on China's Universities"…

A GENERAL STUDY WAS MADE OF THE ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK PUBLISHING INDUSTRY IN COMMUNIST CHINA. FIRST THE PAPER REVIEWS BRIEFLY THE PRIVATE INDUSTRY OF PUBLISHING IN PRE-COMMUNIST CHINA. NEXT THE COMMUNIST NATIONALIZATION OF THE PUBLISHING ENTERPRISE IS DESCRIBED. THEN THE AUTHOR DISCUSSES THE PUBLISHING OF THE FOLLOWING CATEGORIES OF…

An American editor of children's books describes his interview with three Chinese editors. (PF)

The superficial reason for the existence of the thesis black market is the glut of theses and the shortage of publishing space; behind that is the skewed academic assessment system. Today, the following circumstances can be found in virtually all institutions of higher education in China: (1) A master's degree student must, during the two or…

As a symptom of globalization and the marketization of the universities, more and more scholars, many or most, of whom use English as an additional language (EAL), are being required to published in English. This article presents some qualitative data which highlights some of the difficulties encountered by such writers. It first discusses a…

This paper presents a perspective of the various types of academic corruption that is currently running rife in society, a theoretical analysis of the roots of academic corruption, and proposals for a number for countermeasures to put a stop to academic corruption. (Contains 3 notes.) [This article was translated by Ted Wang.]

Against the backdrop of the grave academic crisis in China, editors have become the objects of wooing, favor-currying, connections-seeking, and collusions; they have been targeted for attacks, plots, extortions, and encroachments. Editing and publishing have become avenues for academic irregularities and academic corruption. Editors have the power…

Describes a program established between the United States and China for exchange of government publications through their national libraries, the Library of Congress and the National Library of China. Challenges to the program, including the shift to electronic formats in the United States and government Internet censorship in China, are…