The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) held a Summit on Assessment and Development of Academic Chinese on 18 November.  A collaboration agreement was concluded among 32 cross-strait universities from mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau to promote Chinese as an internationally recognized research language.

Initiated by CUHK together with Peking University (PKU), Nanjing University(NJU), Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) and Taiwan University (NTU), the Summit brought together around 100 participants including university leaders and scholars as well as representatives of Scopus and Web of Science, the two authoritative international citation databases.  Participants took the opportunity to share views and exchange ideas on joint efforts towards enhancing the status of Chinese in the global academia.

'Most current authoritative citation databases index English journals.  The achievements of Chinese publications and the research achievements in the community at large, especially in the fields of arts and humanities and social sciences, are not well recognized, ' said by Prof. Joseph J.Y. Sung, Vice-Chancellor of CUHK.  'The majority of the cross-strait Chinese journals do not find their way to the citation index and the impact factor, greatly hindering the development of humanities and social science research in the context of Chinese societies.  The research outcome should be measured by its own worth, rather than the language in which it is written.'

CUHK, NTU, PKU, NJU and SJTU initiated a movement on Academic Chinese to get together cross-strait universities, including Hong Kong and Macau to compile a list of recommended quality Chinese journals as an important reference for cross-strait and international academia, so as to raise the impact of Chinese in various research fields and to bring Chinese research outputs to the world. Details of the Summit can be found at:

http://www.cpr.cuhk.edu.hk/en/press_detail.php?id=2129&t=32-cross-strait-universities-sign-agreement-to-promote-academic-chinese-an-initiative-led-by-cuhk-pku-nju-sjtu-and-ntu