The Chinese Academy of Sciences is no longer publishing its journal ranking. Credit: Cheng Xin/Getty
The National Science Library of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Beijing has stopped publishing its influential journal ranking, taking many researchers by surprise. The ranking has had a central role in research evaluation in the country for more than 20 years and its cessation leaves universities and academics uncertain about what happens next.
The CAS journal ranking, also called the CAS Journal Partition Table, was developed as a tool to help researchers assess journal quality. But over time, it began to influence hiring decisions, funding allocation and promotions.
“The official retirement of the CAS Journal Partition Table is indeed a crucial watershed moment for China’s scientific evaluation system,” says Xinchen Gu, an ecologist at the South China University of Technology in Guangzhou.
The ranking itself hasn’t disappeared, however. Last month, some of the team who used to run the CAS system published a new index, called Xinrui Scholar, run by a private organization. The new system uses the CAS ranking methodology.
Scholars and universities are unsure whether Xinrui Scholar, or any of the several other rankings that have emerged in the past few months, will become as influential as the CAS list. Others think its closure is an opportunity to move research evaluation beyond journal metrics.
Sudden closure
The cessation of the CAS ranking came with little fanfare. On 24 March, an organization called Xinrui Scholar announced that it has released a new journal ranking. Like the CAS ranking, Xinrui Scholar groups journals into discipline category and then divides those into four tiers mostly on the basis of article citation metrics.
This led to some confusion, says Nie, about whether CAS had simply rebranded its ranking into an independent system.
On 27 March, the National Science Library of the Chinese Academy of Sciences issued a statement that it had stopped publishing the CAS ranking and declared that any journal ranking lists published by other institutions are unrelated.
Sichao Tong, one of the academics who moved from CAS to Xinrui Scholar, says several factors informed the decision to close the CAS ranking.
China wants to develop a journal ranking system that is recognized and used internationally. And having a private, non-government organization run Xinrui gives it more independence, says Tong.
The CAS ranking has been criticized for the lack of transparency around the way it was determined. Internal indicators used by the ranking were not explained, for instance, and the system garnered criticism when long-established, internationally recognized journals were downgraded while some newer journals unexpectedly rose.
CAS did not respond to Nature’s questions about these criticisms.
But some researchers question whether Xinrui Scholar can be truly independent if it uses the same methodology as the CAS ranking and is run by members of the same team.
Tong thinks the organization can be independent and hopes to work with publishers and scientists to improve the ranking.
Too influential
A researcher familiar with the CAS system who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, says another factor in the decision to close the ranking was the criticism from researchers over its influence on research evaluation.
When the CAS library system launched in 2004, it was supposed to help Chinese academics to understand which international journals in their fields were reputable. The list, which was updated annually, grouped journals into discipline categories and then divided those into four tiers mostly on the basis of article citation counts. One of its components, the Early Warning Journal List, was meant to alert scholars to predatory journals.
But over the past decade, universities, public institutions and hospitals began considering researchers’ publication history in high-ranked journals when doling out awards, promotions and doctoral degrees, says Zhiqiang Nie, a cardiology researcher at the Guangdong Provincial People’s Hospital. (The CAS library has stated that its system should not be used to evaluate researchers.)
As a result, the ranking often overrode scientific merit, Gu says. “Instead of asking whether a study solved a real problem or made an original contribution, evaluation became about whether it appeared in a tier 1 journal,” Gu says. “A high ranking does not equal high quality. Even top-tier journals have suffered misconduct.”
The reliance on the ranking for promotions and hiring has been particularly hard for early career researchers, says Gu. Young scientists without publications in high-tier journals often struggle to get faculty positions or research funding, he says.
