International visibility of Chinese scientific journals

Abstract

The internationalization and the visibility of Chinese journals covered by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) are discussed. Attention is focused on physics and chemistry journals. For these journals the country of origin of published papers and their citation patterns are analysed. As an indicator of internationality we further consider the composition of their editorial boards. It is concluded that even those Chinese journals that are covered by ISI are still rather ‘local’ and suffer from a low visibility in the world. Yet we are optimistic about the future of Chinese science and its scientific journals.