About Science Net

Science Net

Science Net, published at sciencenet.cn, is a Beijing science-news portal and online community for Chinese-speaking scientists. Launched in January 2007 by Science Times Media Group, it combines timely science news with what its own English introduction calls the most active and high-profile virtual community of Chinese-speaking scientists in the world. It publishes Chinese research, higher-education and science-policy news, runs a large academic blogging community, and is a standard citation source for Chinese science news — the place where China's researchers talk to each other in public, and where journalists and scholars abroad look to hear them.

Launch and sponsors

ScienceNet was officially launched on 18 January 2007. It was launched by Science Times Media Group and is supported by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the National Natural Science Foundation of China; its own English page adds the China Association for Science and Technology among its co-sponsors. Its stated mission is to build a global virtual community for Chinese-speaking scientists — phrased on its English site as building a global community for the Chinese science community worldwide. That sponsor list explains the site's position: it is not a commercial science magazine or an independent blog host, but a platform created by the media arm of China's science establishment, with the country's two great academies, its main basic-research funding agency and its national science association behind it.

The Science Times and China Science Daily lineage

Science Net belongs to a media lineage that reaches back to the beginning of science journalism in the People's Republic. The China Science Daily is described as the earliest science and technology newspaper established in the People's Republic of China: it was founded on 1 January 1959 as Science News, originally the official news bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and on 1 January 1999 it was renamed Science Times. The newspaper is managed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and jointly sponsored by the Academy, the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the China Association for Science and Technology. Over time the original newspaper developed into the China Science Daily Press group, supervising two newspapers, two magazines and ScienceNet as its website — described in the group's own accounting as the online newspaper of the group. Science Net, in other words, is the digital member of China's oldest professional science-media family.

News service

The news side of Science Net covers the daily life of Chinese science: research results from Chinese universities and academy institutes, science and technology policy, research funding, higher education, academic appointments and honours, and science stories from around the world of interest to Chinese researchers. Its English introduction emphasises "timely and reliable science news" alongside abundant classified information — the job advertisements, conference notices and institutional announcements that a working research community needs. Because so much of its material originates inside China's research system, Science Net is a standard citation source for Chinese science news: when international journals, news magazines and academic studies report what is happening in Chinese laboratories and universities, ScienceNet is frequently the source they cite, and studies of Chinese science communication treat it as a central institution of that system.

The blogging community

What made Science Net famous, in China and abroad, is its blogs. The site describes itself as a science virtual community and science blog platform, and scholars can register under their real names to blog, publish posts, comment, recommend and exchange messages. Since its launch, thousands of scientists and graduate students have blogged on the platform — Wikipedia's count records 5,553 scientists and graduate students among its bloggers — and its roster has included prominent figures such as Harvard and Tsinghua professor Yu-Chi Ho. The journal Science, reporting on the ferment in Chinese science, described researchers discussing reform openly on ScienceNet.cn, with bloggers calling for systemic changes to make the funding system more transparent and fair. A National Science Review forum on science communication in China likewise noted that the site's only original content is its blogs, that the blogs are immensely popular, and that they aim to give voice to scientists at all levels.

A forum where Chinese science argues with itself

Science Net's blogs have repeatedly become the arena for debates that matter to Chinese science. A hiring-policy debate between Rao Yi and Cui Keming, conducted through posts on Science Net, was featured in an editorial in the journal Nature. Professor Chen Yongjiang used a series of Science Net articles to expose an academic fraud case at Xi'an Jiaotong University. During a Shanghai building collapse in June 2009, a civil-engineering professor published his expert assessment on his Science Net blog the following morning, making the platform a source for journalists covering the story. These episodes illustrate the site's unusual dual role: it is an official platform, sponsored by the academies, that nonetheless hosts frank argument among scientists about funding, hiring, integrity and reform — argument visible enough to be quoted by Science and Nature.

Scale and standing

Science Net's own English introduction states that it reaches more than 3 million people per month and is the most well-known science medium in Chinese research institutes and universities, as well as in Chinese science communities scattered around the world; the editorial board has likewise ranked it first among Chinese science websites. Accounts of the China Science Daily group credit ScienceNet with an average annual page-view count of over 300 million, ranking first among Chinese-language science and technology websites. Such figures are the publisher's own, but the site's standing is corroborated by how others use it: academic research on scholarly communication uses ScienceNet blog data as a case study of academic blogging, and international science journalists have treated its bloggers as insider sources on Chinese research for well over a decade.

How the platform works

In practical terms, Science Net combines a news portal's front end with a scholarly community's back end. The homepage carries science news and highlighted posts; the blog system lets registered scholars publish under their own names, organise posts by category and tag, and build readerships through recommendations and comments. Research on the platform describes the full range of recorded scholarly behaviour there — registering, publishing, categorising, tagging, reading, recommending, commenting, downloading, citing, visiting, messaging and forming friend relationships — which is the behaviour of a working academic network, not merely a comments section. The site is published in Simplified Chinese and is non-commercial, consistent with its sponsorship by public scientific institutions and its mission of community-building rather than advertising.

Audience: a global Chinese research community

The audience Science Net was built for is defined by language and profession rather than by geography: Chinese-speaking scientists in China's institutes and universities and in the Chinese scientific diaspora worldwide. Its mission of establishing a global Chinese science community recognises that a large share of the world's Chinese-trained researchers work outside China, and gives them a shared public space with colleagues at home. Graduate students are a major part of the community alongside established professors, which gives the blogs their distinctive range — from senior academics debating national policy to younger researchers discussing careers, methods and laboratory life. For readers outside that community, the site functions as an observation post: it is where the internal conversation of Chinese science can be followed as it happens.

Significance

Science Net, operating from Beijing since January 2007, occupies a position no other Chinese website quite replicates. It is simultaneously the online newspaper of the China Science Daily group — heir to a science newspaper founded in 1959 — and a scholar-led community whose blogs have hosted debates noted by Science and Nature. Sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the China Association for Science and Technology, and operated by the academies' media group, it joins institutional authority to community voice. For anyone who needs to know what Chinese scientists are discovering, disputing and demanding, Science Net is one of the first sources to consult.