China’s scientists face major changes in how their work is judged … and coronavirus anger may be partly to blame
- New rules will mean that researchers will no longer be judged on the amount of research published in international journals
- Some members of the scientific community believe the sluggish response to the Covid-19 outbreak may have prompted the announcement
Many scientists in China have been affected by the mass lockdowns prompted by the Covid-19 outbreak as laboratories and universities around the country closed down and funding applications were put on hold.
For many it provided an opportunity to work on research papers for international journals, and most of the researchers the South China Morning Post spoke to believed the impact would be temporary and life would eventually return to normal.
They may be wrong.
On Sunday,the Ministry of Science and Technology and Ministry of Education of China jointly issued a notice that said the way millions of scientists have their work evaluated would change, and those research papers may no longer be so important to their future careers.
Those who are on the government payroll will no longer be judged on the number of papers published in journals listed under the Science Citation Index (SCI), one of the main international benchmarks.
Instead, a new appraisal system is likely to come into force after July which, guidelines suggest, will reward scientists for innovation, their contributions to society or the economy or for moving outside the Western scientific mainstream.