The majority of Chinese researchers in the scientific field admit they are writing academic papers because they wanted to get a promotion, as the academic appraisal system of the country is favoring quantity over quality. The China Association for Science and Technology conducted the survey, wherein more than 93 percent of scientists said their major motivation in publishing papers is to get promoted.
The survey is conducted every five years and this year includes more than 48,000 researchers across China. The survey revealed that almost half of researchers think the assessment of the authorities in the scientific research was misleading. Some scientists said the publish-or-perish culture of the country has created a huge impact on the rampant academic misconduct emerged over the past years.
The eagerness of researchers to publish many academic papers led retraction scandals, said Wang Pei, a doctoral candidate at the University of Science and Technology of China's (USTC) Earth and space sciences school.
For instance, as per the South China Morning Post, the international and Chinese publications had to retract more than 100 papers from a sociologist at the prestigious Nanjing University. The university announced last week that the China Youth Daily accused Liang Ying - who is now under investigation - of plagiarism and duplicate submission of at least 15 of her papers.
A researcher specializing in theoretical chemistry at USTC, Yuan Lanfeng, said that most people might agree that any paper is linked to the conferring of academic titles under the existing system.
"In fact, many papers are a long way from the pursuit of scientific progress and the authors are well aware of that - so naturally they will say [in the survey] that they are just publishing the papers to get promoted," Yuan added.
The survey also found that scientific researchers are working an average of nearly 50 hours every week, which is 2.4 hours more compared to their working hours five years ago. Their salaries had jumped up to 22 percent to about 90,000 Yuan every year. However, they were reportedly less happy with their wages now compared to the previous years.
Also, the survey further found that scientists' ownership of patents increased over the past couple of years, but there's an only little relationship between market needs and their achievements. About 38 percent of the researchers in the survey said there were practical applications for their studies.
Meanwhile, China's cabinet and the State Council vowed in July that they would be eliminating research works solely based on the number of published papers by the end of the year, and will rather establish a system focusing on the "quality" of the studies.
