A Chinese academic tradition examined in the context of international academic communication: exploratory research into Shang Que articles
ISSN: 0022-0418
Article publication date: 18 April 2023
Issue publication date: 24 October 2023
Abstract
Purpose
Academic contention occurs when research evidence is amenable to more than one interpretation. China has a long tradition of Shang Que (商榷), in which authors argue for their preferred interpretation. The modern form of this tradition is the Shang Que article, which often takes the form of research papers in Chinese-language journals and which tends to be question-oriented. Shang Que articles usually take the views of a particular author or article as the focus of independent and complete criticism by another, independent, academic. This paper explains the role of Shang Que articles in Chinese scholarship and their influence on international academia.
Design/methodology/approach
A bibliometric analysis was used to explore the characteristics and evolution of Chinese Shang Que articles using 30,577 articles published between 1979 and 2018. Microsoft Excel and Gephi were used for data analysis and visualization.
Findings
Findings suggest a decline in the number of Shang Que articles and an increase in the number of co-authors. Shang Que articles remained particularly prominent in Philosophy and Humanities and Social Sciences, where they focused on local issues such as classical Chinese, the Sinicization of Marxism and Chinese literature. This suggests that the number of Shang Que articles is related to the degree of internationalization of a research field.
Originality/value
Shang Que articles, which have been influenced by academic paradigms in English, are a fusion of China's Shang Que tradition and of the modern academic system. Through considering Shang Que articles, this paper explores the benefits of local academic traditions in non-English-speaking cultures.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the general projects of the National Social Science Fund of China (Grant No. 22BTQ100), “Theory and Practice of Responsible Innovation in Libraries in the Context of High-quality Development”. The authors thank Professor Zhao Yuxiang at Nanjing University of Science and Technology for his helpful opinions on an earlier draft of this paper. In addition, they appreciate the help of Zhu Hanyu, Li Su, Yan Yuling, Zhang Haifeng, He Xiaoyu, Ainura Amantur, Nadia Ahiti and Kuang Jingshan at the School of Information Management, Sun Yat-sen University, who helped collect and clean the original version of data, and of Duan Jingsong at the School of Information Management, Sun Yat-sen University, who helped check the final version of the data.
Citation
Zheng, W., Xiao, P. and Madden, A. (2023), "A Chinese academic tradition examined in the context of international academic communication: exploratory research into Shang Que articles", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 79 No. 6, pp. 1459-1484. https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-11-2022-0235
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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