Use of Open Access Electronic Journals by Chinese Scholars, and an Initiative to Facilitate Access to

Chinese Journals

Ruoxi Li, Fytton Rowland, Zichuan Xiong and Junping Zhao

ELPUB 2007, Wien, 13-15 June 2007

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Chinese scientific journals

Chinese science has a rising reputation There are a lot of Chinese scientific journals,

many of them published only in Chinese Many of them are published by universities,

rather than publishers or national societies These have little visibility in the West, or

among non-readers of the Chinese language

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Open Access for Chinese Journals?

An increasing proportion of Chinese journals is available electronically. Their subscription prices are fairly low, matching Chinese costs. Some of them are Open Access (OA) already

Some of these are available in the West through various commercial aggregators, who charge quite high prices

Few Western university libraries buy these aggregations, however

More use of OA might improve this situation

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Our research

One of us (Ruoxi Li), when a Visiting Scholar in England, conducted a survey on the use of Chinese journals by Chinese researchers in China compared with use of them by overseas Chinese researchers working in England.

The results were compared with those of the CIBER group at University College London, who had surveyed an international group.

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Key results (1)

Most of our respondents were engineers, computer scientists or mathematicians; they were young, and mostly were in universities

About a third had never heard of OA, but twice as many of the group in China said they knew ‘quite a lot’ about OA as in the UK-based overseas Chinese group.

The younger ones knew less about OA than the older ones – the opposite of CIBER’s result, and quite surprising

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Key results (2)

75% of the UK-based group knew OA meant ‘free to access’ but only 45% of the China- based group knew that this is what OA implies

Only a quarter of our samples didn’t think OA meant ‘author pays’, whereas nearly half of CIBER’s sample were of this view.

Only 15% of our China-based sample said they had published in an OA journal, versus 25% of CIBER’s sample who said they had.

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Key results (3)

Only 17.5% of our China-based group and 14% of our UK-based group had posted a paper in an OA repository, versus 32% of CIBER’s group. Speed of communication and increased impact were the most important reasons for doing so.

Our samples were more positive in attitude towards an OA-oriented future than CIBER’s, but 78% of CIBER’s sample thought print journals would disappear against only 20% of our China-based group

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Key results (4)

60% of the UK-based group said publishing in China should go wholly OA, but only 30% of those in China said so. However, over 70% of both groups thought a partly OA system would be feasible for China

85% of the China-based group had paid page charges but only 35% of the UK-based group had. This is in spite of the fact that only 30% of the China-based group had all of their research funded, and 20% said none of their research was funded. The page charges are low, though

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Key results (5)

Who should pay the costs of publishing, then? 65% said the research funder or the author’s university should pay, and 30% said government should pay; 80% were opposed to either the author or the reader paying personally

Overseas Chinese scholars make little use of the Chinese-language literature either as readers or as authors, even if they used it earlier, when resident in China

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Conclusions

Chinese-language journals are little-known in the West, and little-used, even by Chinese-born scholars resident in the West. They are inexpensive but few Western institutions buy them. OA might increase their visibility

Chinese views on OA are broadly favourable but somewhat contradictory, possible reflecting incomplete knowledge of the OA concept. For example, the overseas Chinese group was more favourable than the China-based group towards OA, but less willing to pay author charges.

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A proposal to improve access

Chinese University journals should be accessible free of charge through an English-language website. Links to other Chinese journals could be added later.

Informative English-language abstracts of the papers in the Chinese journals should be provided via this website, which should also have search facilities

The owners should solicit links from Western website owners to improve access to content

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A prototype

A prototype IT system for this website was set up at Loughborough during late 2006, with technical work undertaken by Zichuan Xiong

It was named EJUNIC (Electronic Journals of Universities in China)

A registration system for publishers to register their journals with EJUNIC was created and several journals, mostly those edited by Junping Zhao, were registered as proof of concept

It is hoped that further progress on this concept can be made now that R.L and J.Z. are back in China