Status In Quo Of English-Languaged Biomedical Journals In China And Their Internationalizing Development

In terms of quantity, Chinese journal had already been a strong power in the world by the end of last century, while the overall quality and the academic prestige of our scientific journals are still very low, lagging far behind the international level, which is mainly due to the backward management system employed since long time ago. With the globalization of world economy and science & technology as the background, and pushed by China's entry of World Trade Qrganization(WTO), our scientific researches have seen breath-taking advancement and the society as a whole has made rapid progress, which virtually ask for the internationalization of our scientific journal; meanwhile, under the socialist market economy in our country, it is actually an internal call of the journal itself as a kind of commodity for internationalization. In a word, it has become an urgent task for our scientific journal to carry out its internationalization.This study gave a thorough conception of scientific journal internationalization and brought forth its parameters; by analyzing the relation among all the parameters, it was found that the language internationalization was the most active parameter a-mong the all. Furthermore, the successful experience of non-English language countries, such as German, France, Netherlands, Hungary, Japan and so on in having their own English-languaged scientific journal indicates that English-languaged scientific journal may also be taken as the major force for the internationalization of the scientific journals in China. As the leading discipline of the natural science being biomedicine in 21 century, the biomedical journal is witnessing rapid progress and has already become the largest group among all the disciplines. English-languaged biomedical journals are endowed with both the advantages and potentials of English-languaged journals and biomedical journals, which makes it a reasonable pioneer forthe internationalization of our scientific journals.This study conducted a survey on the status in quo of English-languaged biomedical journals in China, analyzed their parameters for internationalization, and summarized the achievements and the problems. The possible role of English-languaged biomedical journals in the internationalization of our science journals as a whole was also discussed, and some feasible countermeasures were put forward.All the 31 English-languaged biomedical journals in the country were investigated using questionnaire by self-filling or telephone interview. It was found that: (1) Some major defects of English-languaged biomedical journals are small number, unbalanced discipline distribution and delayed publication, with more than half the 31 being basic /comprehensive and nearly half of the disciplines of the field left without a single journal, and with more than half being semi-annual and quarterly; (2) Although some journals are well-known at home, their academic prestige and influence are still weak internationally. A few journals with domestically high impact factor and total cited frequency only had a moderate position or below internationally in their corresponding discipline. The fact is that until now China does not have even one journal with international fame; (3) Parameters such as internationalization of the editorial board, manuscripts, peer-reviewing, and the publication of English-languaged biomedical journals were better than those of Chinese-languaged biomedical journals, but they lagged far behind their international counterparts, and needed very much to be improved; (4) Due to the long-term practice of planned economy, our English-languaged biomedical journals were generally in bad need of business management initiation, and the market-oriented management and industrialization were still at the preliminary stage; (5)All the journals were troubled by the lack of fund and manpower; the chief editors did not make full play of their role and the English proficiency of the editors need to be improved greatly.Taken together, with unbalanced development, China'...