A whistle-stop tour of open access in China

Tennant, Jon. A whistle-stop tour of open access in China. Blog.scienceopen.com, September 6, 2016. URL : http://blog.scienceopen.com/2016/09/a-whistle-stop-tour-of-open-access-in-china/ (consulté le 7 septembre 2016)

Open Access is not a research issue. It’s not a European issue. It’s not a publisher or policy issue. Open Access is a global issue.

Knowledge is a public good, and forms the basis of an environment in which everyone can develop and build inclusively. It can help to inspire publication innovation and entrepreneurship. Open Access to research sits at the core of this on a global level.

As part of our ‘Open Science Stars’ series, we’ve been trying to expose some of the views and experiences of people from the world of open around the world. This global perspective is important, because researchers have a responsibility to contribute to the open sharing of results around the world, and not take a free ride based on elite privilege.

Open Access and China

Today, we wanted to delve a bit into the status of OA in China. Recently, we partnered with Higher Education Press, one of the top publishers in China, to index one of their flagship journals, and to demonstrate China’s continued support for more open research practices. China has committed to rapid growth in scientific research and development recently, and this is reflected in the solid evidence for a strongly developing open access research base.

Here are several facts to get things started.

1. Public research and development funding in China is around 2% of GDP, and increasing more than 10-15% each year.
2. Between 2002 and 2013, the growth of Chinese research papers went from 5.6% to 13.9% of the world total (source).
3. China is the third most cited country in the world.
4. Both the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the National Science Foundation for China (NSFC) signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access in 2004.

Historical developments

Since 2004, there have been a number of large-scale changes in Open Access in China. In 2007 and 2009, the issue of copyright and licensing was discussed in two conferences in Beijing. This was followed up in 2010 by the 8^th annual Berlin Conference on Open Access being hosted in Beijing.

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Monique Abud

Centre d'études sur la Chine moderne et contemporaine, EHESS, Paris, France

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