Focus on quality, not just quantity

["Alejandro C. Frery" <acfrery@gmail.com>]

Boa tarde,

Tomo a liberdade de copiar um artigo que acabou de ser publicado no
periódico Nature. Eu acho que ele é interessante para refletirmos
sobre a nossa realidade.

Alejandro

Published online 20 July 2011 | Nature 475, 267 (2011) | doi:10.1038/475267a

Column: World View
Focus on quality, not just quantity

China publishes huge amounts of scientific research. Now it must make
more of it worth reading, says Changhui Peng.

Changhui Peng

China's recent rise to scientific superpower has been striking. A
report published earlier this year by London's Royal Society found
that China now publishes the second highest number of scientific
papers and that, by 2020, it could be the world's dominant producer of
scientific research.

China has intensified its investment in research and development in
recent years. Spending has grown by 20% annually since 1999, and has
now reached more than US$100 billion a year. The Chinese government
has urged scientists to publish in highly respected English-language
journals, offering promotions and other rewards as incentives; and
many Chinese universities have attempted to boost their rankings in
the Shanghai Jiao Tong University's world university table, which is
weighted heavily towards articles published in Science and Nature.

However, despite the enormous progress made in China during the past
few decades, the quality of its research seems not to have kept pace.
The Royal Society report used the number of times a paper is cited in
the scientific literature as a proxy for quality. It found that
between 1999 and 2008, China's citation share rose from almost nothing
to 4%. However, this is dwarfed by the 30% share held by the United
States. And although China ranks second to the United States in terms
of publication output, the report found that, in 2008, it ranked only
joint ninth in citation numbers. This suggests that China's dramatic
proliferation of scientific papers does not reflect quality research.
China still has a long way to go to become a major player in the
scientific arena and, to do so, I believe it must address these key
areas.

   “Although China ranks second in terms of publication output, it
ranks only ninth in citation numbers.”

First, data sharing. Wide distribution of information is key to
scientific progress, yet traditionally, Chinese scientists have not
systematically released data or research findings, even after
publication. With so much emphasis on publication, data sharing is
regarded as less important, and rules to encourage or compel such
behaviour are inadequate. Moreover, institutions want to monopolize
their data in the interest of their future scientific reports.

There have been widespread complaints from scientists inside and
outside China about this lack of transparency. What data are made
routinely available are often satellite measurements made for
meteorology or large-scale background Earth-systems science records.
Usually incomplete and unsystematic, these data are of little value to
researchers and there is evidence that this drives down a paper's
citation numbers.

Alongside better data access, China must do more to monitor and punish
widespread academic misconduct, including plagiarism, which occurs as
a consequence of the emphasis placed on publishing large numbers of
papers. The CrossCheck service, offered by the nonprofit association
CrossRef, could help Chinese publishers to identify plagiarism, by
comparing the content of a submitted paper to a continuously updated
database of published work.

The third area that needs improvement is international collaboration.
Fuelled by a desire to work with the best people, as well as by
advances in communication technologies and more affordable travel,
international scientific collaborations are on the rise. According to
the Royal Society report, the past 15 years has seen a 10% increase in
the number of published articles that are internationally
collaborative. There is also a strong correlation between citation
number and the number of collaborating countries (up to a tipping
point of ten countries).

There is already progress here, and China is beginning to open up. The
Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology has signed treaties for
scientific and technological cooperation with more than 100 countries.
Under these treaties, the Chinese government is encouraging scientists
to cooperate and exchange data with international organizations. China
is also welcoming international scientists to come in and set up
long-term cooperative initiatives. These efforts should be accelerated
and their profile raised. Only by participating in more international
scientific collaborations, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change or the FLUXNET global network of micrometeorological
tower sites, can China catch up with the United States and Europe.

The final area is the way in which China addresses complex and
interrelated global issues — including climate change, Earth-systems
modelling, carbon-capture technologies, biodiversity and resource
security. To be a scientific superpower, China must encourage its
scientists to play a more prominent part in addressing these pressing
challenges. Chinese scientists should think globally and put
themselves at the forefront of cutting-edge science. They must
demonstrate leadership, developing new research initiatives and
chairing international programmes. A good example is the Third Pole
Environment programme, led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences'
Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research in Beijing, which aims to pool
international resources and expertise to study the interactions
between ice, water, air, ecology and human behaviour.

The time has come for China to consider how best to boost the quality,
rather than the quantity, of its scientific output. The steps I have
outlined will provide a platform to strengthen the impact of China's
research and contribute valuable science to the world's most important
questions.

Changhui Peng is at the College of Forestry of Northwest A&F
University, Yangling, China, and the Institute of Environmental
Sciences of the University of Quebec at Montreal in Canada.


--
Alejandro C. Frery
Maceió, AL - Brazil
http://sites.google.com/site/acfrery/
http://www.researcherid.com/rid/A-8855-2008