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The other side of the coin: The declining of Chinese social science

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Abstract

This article aims to study the other side of the coin under the background of skyrocketing of Chinese natural science papers: the anomaly phenomenon in which Chinese social science papers are getting fewer and fewer. After analysis through the cross-efficiency DEA (Data envelopment analysis) and Malmquist index, we find that: (1) Although there are fewer and fewer published papers on social science in China, the number of social science full-time teachers and PhD students in Chinese universities, the number of fund grants and grant funding from National Science Foundation of China and National Social Science Foundation of China are in increasing trends. (2) The number of gross natural science papers per capita increased while the number of gross social science papers per capita decreased. However, the number of Chinese papers per capita published in domestic journals of CSCD (Chinese science citation database)/CSSCI (Chinese social science citation index) decreased from 2009 to 2018 both in natural science and social science. (3) From 2009 to 2018, the efficiency of the publication of Chinese social science papers in every subject declined, with an average decrease of 13.5%, which is mainly caused by the regression of the production frontier. Sport Science gained the largest decrease by 45.5% while Economics gained the smallest decrease by 11.2%. After an investigation of almost all CSSCI journals, we conclude that the reason for the decline in the publication of Chinese social science papers may be that China's unique journal system could not handle the problem that the average article length increased due to the improvement of scientific research, where the increase of 19.89% in average CSSCI journal pages is much smaller than the increase of 55.10% in average paper length during 2009–2018, causing the decrease in the publication and publication efficiency of Chinese social science papers. Therefore, the academic journal system of a country may have an important impact on its scientific research outputs, and China should improve the academic journal system to promote the development of social science. Our analysis method and results can also make sence for policy makers in other countries.

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Notes

  1. http://www.moe.gov.cn/srcsite/A16/moe_784/202002/t20200223_423334.html (accessed on 19 July 2020).

  2. In China, it is customary to include humanities, philosophy, and art into social science.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the Hunan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 2018JJ3298), the Ph.D. Scientific research Start-up Project of Xinjiang University (Grant No. BS202104), the Tianchi Doctoral Project of Xinjiang (Grant No. TCBS202050) and the Xinjiang High-level Talents Tianchi Program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Politics and Public Administration, Xinjiang University, Urumqi, 830046, China

    Kun Chen & Hai-bo Qin

  2. Collaborative Innovation Center for National Security Research, Xinjiang University, Urumqi, 830046, China

    Kun Chen & Hai-bo Qin

  3. Development Research Center of the People’s Government of Hunan Province, Changsha, 410011, China

    Kun Chen

  4. Institutes of Science and Development, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 8712, Beijing, 100190, China

    Xian-tong Ren & Guo-liang Yang

  5. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Xian-tong Ren & Guo-liang Yang

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  1. Kun Chen
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  2. Xian-tong Ren
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Correspondence to Guo-liang Yang.

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Chen, K., Ren, Xt., Yang, Gl. et al. The other side of the coin: The declining of Chinese social science. Scientometrics 127, 127–143 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-04208-2

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