In my last post on China I discussed why China is
becoming a scientific juggernaut. I focussed on all the things that seem to be
working in its favour (funding, high expectations on scientists, etc.). While I
do think that science in China is good and getting better, it is also important
to point out some of the hurdles and limitations that hold back some aspects of
scientific advance here.
In my previous post I noted that the expectations placed on
students and researchers (i.e., to produce a minimum number of papers in
journals with high impact factors, IFs) provided motivation to do good science.
This is undoubtedly true, however, these strict expectations also reinforce a strategy
of ‘paper-chasing’ where students are encourage to figure out how to get a
paper. This is because the reward structure is so quantitative. While this type
of evaluation systems has pros and cons, it does create a different sense of urgency
than I’ve experienced elsewhere.
Pragmatic factors
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| The Great Fire Wall of China from "Cracks appear in the Great Fire Wall of China" posted by the China Daily Mail, Sep. 25th 2013. |
I have never yelled at my computer or cursed the internet as
much as I have in China. In the west we often hear about the ‘Great Firewall of
China’ and probably do not think much about what this actually means. It sucks.
The internet barely functions for significant proportions of the working day. I
thought that this might have to do with the number of people and lack of
infrastructure, but I no longer believe this to be true. Other countries in the
region have great internet, and China has very advanced infrastructure. I’m
pretty sure that when there is high traffic, the national security protocols
and activity monitoring servers are the bottleneck.
Because the government policy is to block certain websites,
most of the scientific internet websites and data sharing portals are not
accessible here, but this may change at any given time.
For example: Google Drive, Dropbox, Facebook, Blog sites, Twitter, Google Maps,
and Google Scholar are all services routinely used by scientists and which are
blocked in China. The reason for these to be blocked, as far as I understand
it, is that they do not share users’ activities and the government cannot
monitor what individuals share and download (which reinforces the value of
these services to me). I also suspect that they are blocked to give local companies
a chance to succeed without competition from global corporations, or perhaps
simply because of disagreements with the companies.
I have had immense trouble trying to share files with my lab
back in Canada (and to post this blog entry –which is why I’m doing it from
Cambodia!). I am not currently engaging in social media –something that I saw
as a legitimate activity for communicating science. I am having a very hard
time searching for articles without Google Scholar. I also have trouble with
other websites that should not be blocked, but that use third party encryption.
For example, I can’t log in to my University library in Toronto, and I couldn’t
connect my Canadian grant application to the Canadian Common CV (which we are
required to do in Canada) because the CCV web interface was blocked (I had to
get my post doc in Canada to do it for me). I have tried to go to researchers’
websites to find that they are blocked because they use a blogging site (e.g.,
Wordpress). The amount of time I spend doing basic online professional
activities has increased 3 to 4-fold.
This is important
because Chinese scientists are at a disadvantage when it comes to international
collaboration and participating in online initiatives. I would encourage
scientists outside of China to consider these imposed limitations to ensure
that information and collaboration is barrier-free. Here are some tips:
- Don’t link to your Google scholar publications on the publications page of your website
- Don’t use a blog site to host your website (e.g., Wordpress)
- Don’t use Dropbox or Google drive to collaborate on papers
- Don’t use gmail as your work e-mail, Air China, for example, won’t send e-mails to gmail.
- Social media has emerged as a great way to communicate with broader communities, it is important to recognize that these dialogues exclude Chinese scientists.
- Ironically, as I write in this blog, blogs are blocked and while blogs provide a great platform to discuss ideas and issues, they are not available to Chinese scientists.
These last two are interesting as journals
increasingly require or request tweets or blog posts to help maximize exposure,
but these forms of communication are not on scientists’ radar here.
Chinese science has been increasing by leaps and
bounds despite these limitations. This is a testament to the hard work and
dedication by Chinese scientists. I have no doubts that basic scientific
research in China will continue to increase its stature and impact.
Postscript
One thing that is interesting to me is that many of
the graduate students here use VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) to mask their IP
addresses. They are able to access blogs, Google Scholar, etc. In conversations
with people, VPN use is extremely widespread and successful at circumventing
government filters, most of the time (there seems to be an arms race between
the government and VPNs). It really makes me wonder how much longer these
governmental controls can be realistically maintained.
