In 2021 Cambridge set up its Chinese Librarian Advisory Board. It’s the only Cambridge advisory board to consist solely of members from a single country and the only one that does not communicate in the English language. Board members respond to virtual round questions in Chinese; their comments are then translated into English and the translation forms the basis of a report in the standard format used for all Cambridge advisory board reports. The Chinese board has now participated in two annual meetings, both ‘hybrid’ in format: the members meet at a Chinese university and members of the Cambridge team join them remotely. Simultaneous translation enables everyone to communicate in their own language.

At present the board consists of ten members. Most are senior librarians at well-known Chinese universities. However, the latest person to join the board. Professor Dr Xu Lifang, is not a librarian but both an academic and a publisher. She is the Director of the Wuhan University Institute of Digital Publishing.  

Professor Dr Xu Lifang is a full professor in the Department of Publication Science at the School of Information Management, Wuhan University. She has also served as a part-time editor of Publishing Science Journal (PSJ) since 2006. It is the journal of the Hubei Editorial Society – like ALPSP’s Learned Publishing – but PSJ concerns itself with issues affecting all mainstream publishing sectors: trade, professional and educational, as well as academic. Professor Xu is also herself a reviewer for several professional journals. She says that being able to engage with publishing at a practical level complements her research work.

The Department of Publishing Science at Wuhan University (WHU) celebrate its 40th anniversary next year. Its undergraduate program in editing and publishing was set up in 1983, making it the oldest department of its kind in China. At present more than 40 undergraduates, about 30 academic masters’ students, more than 10 profession-oriented masters’ students, and about 10 doctoral students enrol each year. Most of the students are Chinese, although some of the postgraduates come from other countries. Often publishers or publishing professors from abroad who visit universities across China say that their hosts are alumni of WHU. Including short-term students, Wuhan now has between eight and nine thousand graduates in publishing.

Most of PSJ’s contributorsare publishing professionals and researchers in China. However, a small number of the authors come from other countries – e.g., the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Korea, and Japan. Often articles written by these authors are translated into Chinese prior to publication.

Asked what she regards as the greatest challenges she has to contend with, Professor Xu says that in China publishing exists only as a secondary discipline. It is subsumed into the more prestigious discipline of “Journalism and Communication.” Finding ways to present publishing’s unique body of knowledge and find logical starting points, research objects, research questions and research methodology that are different from those of other disciplines is what she and her Chinese colleagues find most challenging. When she talks with her peers overseas – for example, Professor Ersula Rautenberg, former Head of the Book Studies program at the University of Erlangen (Germany), she finds their concerns are similar, although perhaps not to the same degree.

Professor Xu is one of several Chinese professors who are regarded as pioneers in the field of digital publishing research. Sometimes their recommendations, such as the adoption of a broader definition of “digital publishing”, to include online games, online knowledge services, aspects of online education, etc., have aided the administrative authorities in their understanding of and therefore approach towards the digital publishing industry.

Wuhan publishing students are acclaimed for their high level of professionalism, broad research horizons and strong research skills, which gives them a strong sense of accomplishment.

Professor Xu’s ambition is to continue her work on the basis of the “research-editing-teaching” technique that she has developed so successfully. She wishes to explore ever more deeply the value and social function of knowledge and knowledge workers; and is keen to establish whether researchers in today’s society will be able to serve it more directly with their insights and skills.

“My hope is to get real insights into the human aspect of the Chinese publishing phenomenon and be able to propose theories about this, even if I can only partially substantiate them.”

Professor Xu is conversant with the open access publishing model and has researched it. She says that the fundamental reason OA has not gained much traction in China is that it is “not an endogenous issue in Chinese academia today. For generations of Chinese researchers, the top priority has been to produce internationally recognized research results; there is not enough time or energy to worry about anything else. Traditionally, most researchers think this is something for the state administration to concern itself with, not the individual researcher.”

Because the Chinese economy is so buoyant, and because of the importance the country places on science and technology, state investment in scientific research is increasing. To date, the government has made no attempt to calculate the return on its investment, nor reflected on whether the traditional international mainstream models of scholarly publishing need to be adjusted. There has therefore been no attempt to seek ways to promote new open access publishing models systematically. For their part, Chinese scholars are much more interested in whether they can afford to publish OA and the prestige of the journals in which they may publish.

The future of Chinese publishing

Asked how she sees Chinese publishing developing in the next five years, Professor Xu says: “There is a sense here that, unless technology brings about an irreversible revolution, academic publishing in China will probably continue much along existing lines. Within that, however, new future trends might include more emphasis on improving the standard of national academic publishing, especially for scientific journals. Dedicated funding for these may continue; and engaging in collaboration with leading international publishers (e.g., KAI with Elsevier, Digital Twin with F1000) may still be considered worthwhile. In non-STM publishing, especially in the Humanities, the most important research results will probably still be published in monograph form. China’s research assessment criteria require ‘breaking the five onlys’: i.e., strictly not to assess researchers ‘only’ according to their existing papers, talents titles, job titles, education and awards. Any major changes at the practical level will eventually affect the publication choices of Chinese researchers, thus changing the face of academic publishing in China organically rather than by artificial means. Finally, it is likely that China’s version of open access will still be a mixture of green OA, gold OA, diamond OA, etc.; but aside from this, whether it will further strengthen some existing OA repositories or alternatively set up new OA publishing platforms still remains to be seen.”  

Professor Dr Xu Lifang is clearly very busy and committed to her work. However, she still manages to make time for some hobbies. She likes to read Chinese and foreign classics, but says she is less likely now to choose fiction than when she was younger. She often compares the writing style and outlook of Chinese authors with those of authors from other countries. She likes to experience and enjoy the diverse traditions and practices of different countries and regions, such as the culture of tea and the culture of coffee and the different approaches to gardening adopted in different parts of the world.