China News Service:

Over the past decade, China's hard power in science and technology has developed rapidly. The major projects mentioned by CAS President Mr. Hou and CAE President Mr. Li are of great international influence. In contrast, our sci-tech soft power, embodied by sci-tech journals, grows slowly. Many sci-tech personnel choose to submit their research papers to Western journals such as Nature and Science. I'd like to know your opinions on this, as well as what kind of progress has China made in terms of developing its sci-tech journals? Is there a detailed plan to improve our sci-tech soft power? Thank you.

Zhang Yuzhuo:

I'd like to take your questions. They are very professional, thank you. In recent years, the number of papers published by Chinse sci-tech personnel has skyrocketed, and as many as 680,000 were published in English journals in 2021. However, relatively few papers were published in domestic English journals, which has severely concerned the CPC Central Committee. In November 2018, General Secretary Xi Jinping presided over a meeting of the Central Commission for Comprehensively Deepening Reform, and a guideline on fostering world-class sci-tech journals was adopted. Since then, domestic sci-tech journals have witnessed notable development. The number of domestic sci-tech journals indexed in global influential retrieval systems has jumped from 152 to 257, with the average impact factor increased 2.9 times, from 1.13 to 4.42. A batch of journals have ascended to the top global rankings. Among them, 25 are listed in the top 5% of their respective subjects in terms of impact factor, 20 are top three in subject ranking, and three are among the global top 100. Despite noteworthy growth in domestic English journals, which have increased from 244 to 436, we still lag far behind, nowhere near satisfying the demand of Chinese sci-tech personnel in getting their papers published in journals of much higher impact factor. 

We have implemented an action plan for nurturing the finest sci-tech journals with the aims of increasing the quantity of leading journals, improving the quality of reserve journals, and ultimately producing more world-class journals. More than 50 new journals will be launched this year, and some English journals registered abroad can be registered at home if they meet certain requirements. Our next step is to speed up the cluster development and digitalization of sci-tech journals. We will cultivate a certain number of competitive publishing agencies and establish a digital publishing service platform of international stature as well as an open resource platform so as to attract more prominent scientists to contribute to the development of China's sci-tech journals and promote thesis and data sharing. Thank you. 

Li Xiaohong:

Mr. Zhang has made a very good point. I'd like to take the CAE's journals as an example to illustrate the development of China's sci-tech journals in the past decade. The structure of CAE's journals is "1+9+1." We have one flagship journal Engineering; nine affiliated journals covering such areas as energy, machinery, and information; and one Chinese journal. Our ambition is to make Engineering an equivalent to Science and Nature. Its impact factor has grown from less than one to close to 12 by the first half of 2022, the first among the world's comprehensive journals on engineering science and technology. It is remarkable progress widely acknowledged by the world. The nine affiliated journals also played their roles in their respective areas. Like what Mr. Zhang has said, we will endeavor to refine these journals to excellence. Thank you.

Shou Xiaoli:

Due to time constraints, we will take the last question.

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