Strengthen the construction of literature database and don’t let scientific research be intercepted from the source
Pay attention to the four elements of life science research②
The literature database has become an information exchange platform for viewing China from the world and the world from China. China should have more important papers and influential journals, and at the same time, it should establish its own world-class authoritative literature database in order to be in the future. Master the right to speak in the competition of science and technology.
Professor, School of Life Sciences, Tianjin University
Wang Zefang
Recently, a survey conducted by the Chinese Entomological Society, the Chinese Society of Laboratory Animals and other units found that my country’s institutions of higher learning spend considerable amounts on purchasing data. In 2019, four universities in the Shanghai area spent more than 30 million yuan in purchasing resources, and one of them reached 60 million yuan.
The lack of a complete literature database in my country not only has to spend a lot of scientific research funds to purchase literature data, but also heavily relies on foreign scientific information for scientific information, which also brings more uncertain risks to scientific research.
“Nowadays, the document database has become an information exchange platform for viewing China from the world and the world from China. China should have more important papers and influential journals, and at the same time, it should establish its own world-class authoritative document database. Only in order to master the right to speak in the future competition of science and technology.” said Wang Zefang, a professor at the School of Life Sciences of Tianjin University.
Almost all commonly used literature libraries belong to foreign publishing groups
“Almost every discipline must do a lot of literature research before conducting a research.” Wang Zefang said, taking life sciences as an example, the most commonly used data libraries in the field of life sciences are relatively concentrated, and almost all come from large foreign businesses. Chemical Publishing Group. The largest of these is Elsevier in the Netherlands. This group publishes more than 2500 journals. The famous “Lancet” and “Cell” journals all belong to the group. In addition, Elsevier also publishes more than 39,000 electronic books, has the world’s largest abstract and citation database Scopus, etc. Every year, 350,000 papers are published in Elsevier’s journals worldwide. .
In addition, Springer Nature and John Wiley & Sons Publishing Company are also global publishing groups that provide top services to the entire scientific research community. The former owns the world’s oldest and most prestigious scientific journal “Nature”, and the latter publishes The journals of which involve chemistry, chemical engineering, life, computer engineering, mathematics, physics, etc., are very comprehensive large-scale publishing houses.
“In addition to the above-mentioned data and literature sources, Web of Science is also an important database platform for obtaining global academic information.” Wang Zefang revealed, “The impact factor that measures the academic influence of journals is proposed by Science.”
“In addition, there are some supplementary ways to obtain literature data, including platforms or journals sponsored by various professional organizations or societies. The most famous is PubMed, a free search engine provided by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, which can provide comprehensive biological information. The retrieval service of medical papers and abstracts is currently the most widely used free search engine on the Internet. In addition, the famous journal “Science” sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” sponsored by the American Academy of Sciences ( PNAS) is also one of the important ways to obtain life science literature.” Wang Zefang said.
“In addition to English databases, there are also several Chinese literature databases commonly used, such as China Knowledge Network (CNKI), Wanfang Database, National Science and Technology Books and Literature Center, etc.” Wang Zefang introduced, of which the National Science and Technology Books and Literature Center is a virtual science and technology literature Information service agency.
The data library is of great significance to scientific research
Regarding the current situation where the life science research field relies heavily on foreign data archives, Wang Zefang reluctantly said: “More than 90% of the life science literature comes from these English databases, and most of the heavyweight scientific research results are published in “Science” and “Nature”. “Cell” and “The Lancet” and other important journals, so if you want to grasp the latest developments in the discipline, you must frequently consult these documents.”
“Such consequences will cause scientific research to be constrained by others. From a large point of view, it may be’knocked’ at any time, and many scientific researches will not be carried out. From a small point of view, many rules are formulated by the other party, and their use will be restricted everywhere.” Wang Zefang said “We have spent a lot of money to subscribe to the database, but we cannot obtain the original data. At the same time, the number of online users is also limited. If the number of users exceeds the number of users, other people cannot access the data and can only wait for someone to log off before using it.”
In addition, not all universities have sufficient research funds to purchase all important databases, and the research work of researchers and students in these universities will be affected. Some colleges and universities may purchase some professional databases based on their own advantages. Students of other majors need to rely on document delivery to obtain documents through other universities or other channels, which is very inconvenient. “Over time, it will cause imbalanced educational resources and imbalanced discipline development.” Wang Zefang said worriedly.
“What’s more serious is that the database is also a platform for academic exchanges, which is related to intellectual property competition and academic discourse power.” Wang Zefang explained that due to the great influence of some famous journals, papers are published here
It means being recognized by academia. Therefore, researchers will work hard to publish scientific research results in these journals. Whoever publishes it first seizes the intellectual property rights of this research, which is of great significance to scientific research.
Nowadays, several large foreign publishing groups monopolize scientific and technological literature databases, and their arbitrary price increases have caused frequent conflicts between academic circles and publishers. At the end of 2018, the University of California and Elsevier failed to reach an agreement on an open access publishing agreement and subscription price. After the negotiations broke down, Elsevier cut off the University of California’s access to more than a thousand journals. It was not until this year that the two parties re-reached the cooperation. During this period, the more than 350,000 faculty and students at the University of California can only obtain new papers they want to read through methods such as seeking help from the campus library, searching for legal open access copies on the Internet, or directly contacting the authors.
It is imperative to establish a large-scale local literature database
“The country has realized the importance of document dissemination, that is, the right to speak and initiative in the dissemination of intellectual property rights, so it has launched the’China Science and Technology Journal Excellence Action Plan’, which aims to promote the high-quality development of my country’s science and technology journals and accelerate the construction of world-class science and technology journals. “Wang Zefang introduced that, driven by national policies, a number of high-level journals have emerged in the field of life sciences in my country.
Among them, the “Cell Research” co-sponsored by the Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Society for Cell Biology, is an original research paper published, edited and distributed in English , Disciplinary review and an international academic monthly publication of bulletin.
In addition, there is also the “Protein & Cell” magazine, which is co-sponsored by Higher Education Press, the Chinese Biophysical Society, and the Beijing Institute of Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and is issued overseas by Springer. It is a founding The editor-in-chief of the local journal in 2010 was Rao Zihe, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
“Although my country currently has some of its own high-level journals in the field of life sciences, there is still a long way to go to achieve the scale of the four major overseas databases.” Wang Zefang said.
Throughout the development history of these established publishing groups, Elsevier’s predecessor can be traced back to the 16th century, and modern companies also emerged in 1880; Springer Nature was founded in 1869; John Wiley & Sons Publishing Company was founded In 1807, both have a history of more than 100 years. After a long period of development, these major publishing groups have grown through the merger of small periodicals and magazines, and they have all become huge literature databases.
“Because of a long history and complete construction, these publishing groups have very low marginal effects and low maintenance costs, especially after networking.” Wang Zefang believes that at the same time, entering this industry now has very high barriers, because A large number of copyrights are already in the hands of these publishing groups, and they need to be purchased at a high price, and healthy competition cannot be formed at all.
In addition to establishing a database of journals with global influence, another difficulty is the language problem. “At present, the official language of academic journals is almost all English, so it is relatively easy to merge. Many of our journals are in Chinese.” Wang Zefang said.
“In the future, through policy guidance and government support, the construction of China’s document database will definitely be accelerated.” Wang Zefang suggested that we can learn from foreign business operation models and integrate more social resources. For example, data documents in a certain field are particularly valuable to a certain company, then this company can be responsible for the construction of the document database in this field. In this way, social capital can be pooled, and the accumulation of less can be achieved, and finally a large and complete domestic literature database can be established.
.