The rapid development of plant biology in China has received much attention from the international community. China's plant biology research enterprise is more productive and internationally connected today than ever before, comments Prof. Xing Wang Deng from the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, Yale University.
This trend is perhaps most apparent in China's growing representation in international journals, observes Deng and his colleagues in a recent article published by The Plant Cell. Overall, the number of annual publications by plant scientists of China's mainland in 14 important plant-specific and general scientific journals has increased dramatically over the last 15 years, from two publications in 1991 to 61 in 2005.
This progress is given credit to broader changes in China's research environment over the past two decades. China's extensive reform program in the late 1970s focused on revitalizing the nation's science and technology by increasing research funding and reforming institutional arrangements. With broad-based support from the government, many institutions have steadily hired new personnel and upgraded equipment and facilities. A growing number of these recruits are returning scientists trained abroad and have brought with them expertise and valuable overseas connections. These stronger international ties and China's internal experimentation with new institutional models are catalyzing fundamental changes in China's research environment.
However, China's modern plant biology research is facing challenges, says the article. In terms of research funding and output, China still lags behind many of the advanced industrialized countries. When publication records for China and the U.S. are compared, the gap in output becomes clear. In The Plant Cell, China published 13 articles in the first 11 months of 2006, while the figure for U.S. was 60. The present evaluation systems for research proposals and institutional/individual performance are in need of significant modernization.
The independent peer review model widely used in developed countries needs to be implemented at every level of the scientific evaluation system in China, suggests the article, adding a more patient and balanced evaluation system on the institutional and personal productivity would likely promote risk-taking in the search for major scientific breakthroughs in the long run.
Source from CAS
