Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
of Chinese research. In addition, a step change is occurring in the
command of English. Reversal of the prohibition on learning English
that was imposed during the Cultural Revolution and that created a
barrier to the publication of Chinese work in international
(predominantly English language) journals will eliminate the language
barrier for 21st-century Chinese scholars. By 2003 English was
compulsory in Chinese schools, and now more than 10 million
elementary school pupils and 60 million high school students are
learning English. According to Wang Ying (2007), more than 200
million Chinese were learning English in 2007.
The impact of these changes is already being seen. Chinese research
output in ISI-ranked
1
journals has been doubling every five years since
1980 and currently stands at over 100,000 papers (roughly the same as
in the UK), and the total number of citations to these articles and the
average cites per paper are also increasing rapidly. In the near future, as
a result of increased R&D expenditure, the returning tide of Chinese
academics, Western research methods and the disappearing language
barrier, we can expect a truly dramatic increase in the quantity, quality
and impact of Chinese research. Many observers believe that India is
around five years behind China.
The scholarly communication system is going to struggle to absorb
this material, both in terms of paying for it (under either a subscription
business model or any emerging new model) and in terms of the
academy dealing with a huge increase in material. It seems obvious that
researchers need more and better ways of determining what to read first
and of being guided to trustworthy information - surely the
raison d'être
of publishers and librarians alike.
Provenance on the web
We all know that the internet has revolutionized the dissemination of
information. The world wide web has made it possible for an amateur
to make content available to a huge potential audience quickly,
conveniently, without any particular specialist knowledge or skill and at
a cost which, while not zero, is within easy reach of most. While
publishing professionally does incur additional costs, the point remains
valid that the barrier to entry has been dramatically reduced.
This, of course, is largely a good thing, but the relatively modest cost
