It is crucial to establish an evaluation system of academic journals of philosophy and social sciences with Chinese characteristics. Photo: TUCHONG

The concept of the “core journal” is central to China’s current journal evaluation systems. Since the release of the first edition of “A Guide to the Core Journals of China” by Peking University in 1992, the primary focus of academic journal evaluation in the country has been the identification of these core journals. The source journals of the Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index (CSSCI), the core journals listed in “A Guide to the Core Journals of China,” and the core journals and above (including top and authoritative journals) included in the AMI Comprehensive Evaluation Report of Chinese Journals of Humanities and Social Sciences are all recognized as “core journals” among academia and journal publishers.

In the 1990s, the quality of academic journals in China was inconsistent, with many lacking standardized academic rigor. Although the selection of core journals has been a subject of debate, this process has played a key role in fostering competition and driving the development of journals, leading the academic community to place greater emphasis on them. Over the past three decades, both the theory and practice of journal evaluation in China have continued to develop, with significant improvements in evaluation standards, methods, indicators, discipline classification, and the presentation of evaluation results. What has remained constant, however, is that evaluations have always been centered around core journals.

At present, China’s philosophy and social science discipline system is steadily improving, with research teams expanding and demonstrating greater levels of expertise and innovation capacity. Academic journals in these fields are poised to play an increasingly vital role in promoting philosophical and social science research. However, judging from its current status, the existing academic journal evaluation system, which heavily relies on core journals, is becoming less capable of meeting the evolving needs of philosophy and social sciences in China.

Constraints of ‘core journal’ concept

The concept of a “core journal” presents certain limitations, particularly in determining the appropriate number of these journals. While there are no strict rules, it is customary to designate around 20% of all journals as core journals. In the early stages, the aforementioned three major journal evaluation systems had significant discrepancies in the number of core journals they included. However, these differences have been narrowing in recent years. The CSSCI 2021-2022 edition includes 615 core or source journals (including newspapers and journals from the Taiwan region), “A Guide to the Core Journals of China 2023” lists 740, and the AMI Comprehensive Evaluation Report 2022 covers 717 (including new and foreign-language journals). Overall, core journals now represent approximately 20% to 30% of all academic journals in China.

There is evidently an upper limit to the number of core journals. Since the reform and opening up, China’s philosophy and social sciences have developed rapidly, leading to significant improvements in the overall quality of Chinese academic journals. However, regardless of the number of high-quality journals, the proportion of core journals must be kept within a restricted range. If too many journals are designated as core, the term “core journal” would lose its significance.

The Matthew effect is intensified by the resource allocation mechanism centered around core journals. A core journal will enter the fast lane, but once it loses its core journal status, it often suffers a dramatic decline in submissions and financial support. Due to the limited number of core journals, the majority of academic journals—more than 70%—remain non-core and face limited opportunities for development. This imbalance leads to a significant under-utilization of national journal resources.

The control over the number of core journals creates a scarcity of resources, which in turn heightens competition. While a moderate level of competition can drive journals to improve their quality, excessive competition can stifle their development and stray from the original purpose of academic publishing. In order to be included and remain in the core journal catalog, journals become heavily focused on meeting specific evaluation indicators. This often leads to increased homogenization, with journals favoring papers that are likely to boost their ratings. As a result, papers that make smaller contributions in this regard struggle to find publication opportunities. This reduces the chances for certain topics, types of research, and academically disadvantaged groups to be represented, ultimately hindering the healthy development of academia. The overemphasis on core journals has transformed the evaluation index system from a “baton” guiding the development of journals into a “straitjacket” that restricts the development of both journals and academia.

In the past decade, the length of journal articles has generally increased, while the average annual number of published journal papers has steadily declined, further exacerbating the scarcity of core journal resources. Taking CSSCI as an example, between 2013 and 2022, the number of its source journals increased from 535 to 585, while the total number of published papers decreased from 92,000 to 73,000, with the average annual number of articles published per journal decreasing from 172.2 to 124.9. This represents a 20.6% decrease in the total number of published papers and a 27.4% decline in the average number of papers per journal over the decade. As the number of published papers decreases, so does the diversity of publication types, with a greater focus on academic papers. The proportion of research papers has risen from 93.6% to 97.4%, while the number of reviews, commentaries, research reports, and other types of publications has diminished.

In stark contrast to the scarcity of core journal resources, China’s philosophy and social science research community has been continuously enriched and strengthened, showing a continuous increase in academic productivity during the same period, particularly driven by a substantial rise in the number of doctoral students. The combination of several factors has made it increasingly difficult to publish papers in core journals: acceptance rates have dropped, while the time to publish papers is getting longer. The number of papers published in journals is shrinking, but assessments of academics are largely based on how many papers they publish in core journals, putting immense pressure on researchers. The situation is especially grim for young scholars and doctoral students, who often face mandatory requirements to publish in core journals as the main criterion for graduation or promotion. As a result, many researchers find themselves focusing solely on meeting these publication criteria, gradually deviating from their original academic intentions and mission, hindering broader academic development.

These phenomena indicate that the current academic journal evaluation system, based on core journals, is no longer adequate to support the prosperity and development of philosophy and social sciences in China. On the contrary, it has become an important factor restricting academic development to a certain extent.

Expanding evaluation scope

At present, although China’s three major evaluation systems continue to expand their scope of evaluation, none can fully cover all journals published in the Chinese mainland. There are approximately 2,700 academic journals in philosophy and social sciences in China. The CSSCI 2021-2022 edition includes 615 core journals (including newspapers and journals from the Taiwan region) and 229 extended journals. The 2023 edition of “A Guide to the Core Journals of China” includes 740 core journals in humanities and social sciences. The 2022 edition of AMI Comprehensive Evaluation Report includes 682 core journals and above, 711 extended journals, 26 English-language core journals and above, and 19 new core journals. Among the three, the AMI Comprehensive Evaluation Report includes the largest number of journals, evaluating a total of 2,168 Chinese and foreign-language journals published in China, including the journals in its database. However, despite this broad scope, some journals remain unlisted in the AIM report. Journals not included in these evaluation systems often struggle to gain attention from the academic community. This exclusion can be partly attributed to the absence of scientific evaluation standards and effective evaluation practices for journals with special content or formats.

In addition, China’s journal evaluation system is rarely aligned with international journal evaluation systems. As Chinese academia strives to “go global,” some researchers are turning to international journals due to the enormous pressure of publishing in domestic core journals. This has led to a rapid increase in the number of papers published overseas by Chinese philosophy and social science scholars. However, overseas journals are numerous with varying qualities. While international journal evaluation systems can provide valuable insights, they have yet to fully address the specific needs of China’s philosophical and social science fields. Non-English journals from important neighboring countries and Belt and Road nations are rarely included in SSCI or Scopus, and therefore it is necessary for China to enhance its connections with journal evaluation systems in these regions or develop its own mechanisms to evaluate these journals.

Suggestions

At present, the main contradiction between journal evaluation and the development of philosophy and social sciences is that resources are concentrated in a limited number of core journals, restricting the development space of other journals. Evaluation and the application of evaluation results mainly focus on core journals, and fail to cover the full spectrum of journal types. As a result, it is increasingly difficult for the number of papers published in core journals to meet the publishing needs for China’s growing philosophy and social science fields. To this end, journal evaluation should act as a baton rather than a straitjacket. This requires top-level design and systematic planning, including adjustments to the existing journal evaluation systems. For academic journals to advance towards high-quality development, it is vital to move beyond the core journal-centric evaluation model and include a broader range of journals. It is also necessary to release the vitality of journals and encourage their diversified development. Finally, it is advisable to promote effective resource allocation and develop a more efficient mechanism to support academics in their journal publishing efforts.

To sum up, it is advisable to adopt a strategy of keeping the bottom line, strictly control the upper limit, relax the middle tier, and expand the scope horizontally, in order to establish and enhance a journal evaluation system for philosophy and social sciences with distinct Chinese characteristics.

To keep the bottom line is to ensure that China’s academic journals in philosophy and social sciences adhere to proper publication orientations and academic standards. Firstly, we need to formulate basic standards and specifications for academic journals in Chinese philosophy and social sciences, referencing internationally accepted standards of academic journals while considering the unique development context of Chinese journals. In addition, regular reviews and evaluations of existing journals are necessary, and newly established journals should be incorporated promptly. Moreover, the withdrawal mechanism of academic journals needs to be improved. Journals with serious problems, such as quality flaws or breaches of academic integrity, can be removed from the list of academic journals.

Guidelines for the evaluation of high-quality academic journals in Chinese philosophy and social sciences should be formulated, grounded in fundamental academic journal standards. High-quality journals should be selected accordingly, with each discipline developing its own high-quality evaluation catalog to reflect unique characteristics and needs, thus providing more visibility to deserving journals.

Jiang Ying is deputy director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Evaluation Studies.