[Paper Review] Publish or impoverish: An investigation of the monetary reward system of science in China (1999-2016)

Quan Wei, Bikun Chen+1 more|Papyrus : Institutional Repository (Université de Montréal)|Jul 4, 2017

scientometrics and bibliometrics research27 references159 citations

TL;DR

The paper analyzes China’s cash-per-publication reward policies across 168 university documents from 100 universities, showing rewards from $30 to $165,000 and a rising trend over the period.

ABSTRACT

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to present the landscape of the cash-per-publication reward policy in China and reveal its trend since the late 1990s. Design/methodology/approach: This study is based on the analysis of 168 university documents regarding the cash-per-publication reward policy at 100 Chinese universities. Findings: Chinese universities offer cash rewards from 30 to 165,000 USD for papers published in journals indexed by Web of Science (WoS), and the average reward amount has been increasing for the past 10 years. Originality/value: The cash-per-publication reward policy in China has never been systematically studied and investigated before except for in some case studies. This is the first paper that reveals the landscape of the cash-per-publication reward policy in China.

Motivation & Objective

• Characterize the landscape of cash-per-publication reward policies in Chinese universities from 1999 to 2016.
• Quantify typical reward levels and the distribution across journals indexed by WoS.
• Identify temporal trends in reward amounts over the study period.
• Highlight the novelty of providing a systematic, large-scale view beyond case studies.

Proposed method

• Analyze 168 university documents detailing cash-per-publication reward policies.
• Aggregate reward amounts offered for papers in WoS-indexed journals across 100 universities.
• Summarize reward ranges and compute observed trends over time (late 1990s–2016).
• Present findings as landscape-level evidence rather than single-institution case studies.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 What are the prevailing cash-per-publication reward levels offered by Chinese universities for WoS-indexed journal papers?
• RQ2 How do these rewards vary across universities and over time from the late 1990s to 2016?
• RQ3 What is the overall trend in monetary awards for scientific publications in China during the study period?
• RQ4 What is the scope and nature of the cash incentive landscape across Chinese higher education institutions?

Key findings

• Rewards for WoS-indexed papers range from 30 to 165,000 USD across universities.
• The average reward amount has been increasing over the past 10 years within the study window.
• The landscape was previously understudied and this work provides the first systematic, large-scale view.
• The study analyzes 168 university documents from 100 Chinese universities to map policy diversity and scope.