Path to global knowledge: a review of Chinese scholars on international publishing

3.1 Kicking off awareness (1992–2004)

In this stage, China started to realize international publishing was important and valuable for its academic circle and Chinese institutions promoted international publishing by offering monetary rewards. In fact, the first reference cited on international publishing in CNKI was a reward announcement published a university journal run by Central China University of Technology^[2] that encouraged its faculty members to publish more English papers in important international journals in 1992 (Editor 1992).

The year 1992 was crucial as China officially kicked off its policy of reform and opening up for its national developments under Deng Xiaoping’s leadership after a chaotic period in the 1980s. Though research on international publishing was still in infancy, international publishing was encouraged with rewards and honor titles as well as academic promotions in most Chinese institutions. As a result, China ranked the 12th in the world in the international publication of papers in 1994 after China had been lingering for many years at the 15th place in its international publications (Editor’s Note 1994).

Besides, non-profit foundations in China cooperated with scientific research institutions in an effort to provide more support and assistance to Chinese scholars for their international publishing (Chu 2006; Li and Fytton 2006). Jiang (1997) believed that increase in the international visibility of journals is an important measure to improve the quality of journals. Wu (2000) took Hungary’s experience in publishing journals as an example to illustrate the role that foreign language journals established in that country in promoting the international publication of domestic scholars.

During this stage, Chinese scholars regarded international publishing as academic and cultural exchanges and relied on excellent international journals, famous publishing institutions and major publishing countries to improve the dissemination and competitiveness of their scientific research outputs. To some degree, the kind of international publishing in this stage has mirrored the economic globalization, information networking, and internationalization trends of academic research in China during this stage (Zhao 2002).

On the whole, Chinese scholars began to discuss international publishing in this stage though their numbers were still limited. For example, there was no article on the topic in 2004. Meanwhile, with the commercialization of academic publishing, the rise of journal publication fees also made some Chinese scholars to ponder over the monopoly of commercial western publishers. Difficulties in global knowledge building and sharing also made scholars to realize that open access journal model is a future trend with the traditional academic journal publishing model facing a crisis (Chu 2006).

3.2 Facing with challenges (2005–2009)

This stage witnessed a growing rise of attention from Chinese scholars on international publishing with the climax in 2009 as shown in Figure 1. Their discussions focused more on the challenges and difficulties they faced in the process of getting their articles published internationally and on suggestions and measures for how to increase international publishing.

Zhao and Jiang (2007) found that the number of authors for international publishing from mainland China is still small, with most scholars from Hong Kong, while Taiwanese scholars are almost absent. After comparing the English publishing in international journals by scholars from mainland China and Hong Kong, Huang and Zhao (2010) found that language barriers and time-consuming academic writing process are common problems of writing English papers for Hong Kong and mainland scholars. In addition, mainland Chinese scholars faced unique difficulties, such as a lack of sophisticated writing skills for English academic papers, insufficient cooperation with native English speakers, lack of sufficient database resources and lack of confidence and understanding of target journals.

From the perspective of journal reviewers, Zhang et al. (2011) suggested Chinese scholars maintain a good academic mentality and pay attention to developing appropriate research ideas and reasonable research methods for suitable international journals. After analyzing academic papers publication on library science by Chinese scholars, Jing et al. (2009) also pinpointed some problems of library science research in China and made their suggestions for international publishing.

In general, Chinese scholars in this stage reiterated the importance and expectations for international publishing and also became critical about the biased practice of counting numbers of international publications as the sole measure of academic standards for scholarship in China (Yan and Yue 2012).

3.3 Striving to improve quality (2010–2015)

This stage saw the rapid and stable increase of the number of articles published by Chinese scholars on international publishing and they paid more attention to the quality and influence of international publishing and its role in building global knowledge.

After examining publications in international editing and publishing journals over a period of 10 years, Li (2013) discovered a big gap between the international publishing between China and western countries, even though the number of international publishing by Chinese scholars were on the rise year by year. Li (2013) then suggested that Chinese scholars should strengthen cooperation with scholars from Europe and the United States to improve their quality of international journal submissions. Li and Zhang (2015) studied educational papers in international journals and proposed to increase the influence of China’s research by standardizing research methods and enrich research contents.

In this stage, Chinese scholars have gradually discovered that topic selection, research design, writing logic, language style and research conclusions and scholars’ mentality are the key factors that determine whether an article can be published in high-quality international journals (Yang 2015). In addition to the quality of international publishing, Chinese scholars in this stage also began to realize it is important to balance between “localization” and “internationalization” in international publishing. While national policies encouraged international publishing through monetary rewards and honor titles (Chen 2014), Chinese scholars have found their international publishing on China issues still lacks real international recognition (Lyu 2014) and to some degree, domestic issues in China are not in line with the academic agenda in the international academic community (Jia and Zhang 2015; Zhang and Jia 2015).

3.4 Reflecting upon Chineseness (2016–2023)

In the recent five years, discussions on international publishing among Chinese scholars reached a unparalleled height though with fluctuations. They are more concerned about how to further expand the international influence of academic publishing in the world so as to improve the cultural soft power of the nation, with special reflections on Chineseness of international publishing practice by Chinese scholars.

The international influence of publications is a common theme for international publishing to Chinese scholars at this stage. Their articles analyzed the status quo of international publishing in different disciplines through author’s country, region, research institution, publication frequency, and impact factor etc. (Hou and Yang 2016; Ren 2018; Zhou et al. 2017). Chinese scholars were encouraged to professionally construct their Chinese identities in academic circles and improve academic abilities and international cultural communication capabilities (Cui and Yao 2019; Xu 2017a; Wu 2019).

Meanwhile, Chinese scholars realize that they still face difficulties in their Chineseness. The language dilemma in EAL^[3] international writing is a global issue, especially non-English natives (Xu 2017b). Even China has the largest number of foreign language learners, the largest team of foreign language teachers and the largest group of applied language scholars in the world, it has little influence in the academic world of foreign language teaching (Wen 2017). When Chinese EAL scholars publish internationally, their lack of language skills often affects their articulation in arguments (Liu and Si 2022; Zeng and Zhong 2018).

In the process of their Chinese international publishing, scholars also take into consideration the nation’s publishing system and social environment (Wei 2018; Xu 2017), including their personal career development (Feng 2020; Tian and Lu 2016; Xu and Jiang 2018), the professional identity of Chinese scholars (Wu and Hu 2021; Xu 2017a) and the development of higher education as a whole (Zhu et al. 2021) as well as the uneven quality of academic journals in publishing ecology (Mao et al. 2017; Tian and Chen 2017).

In order to alleviate these challenges, Chinese scholars also made suggestions from the perspectives of scholars, reviewers and editors respectively to adapt to the styles and practices of international journals. This includes polishing language, converting academic logic, adjusting research methods, as well as finding collaborators and selecting appropriate journals (Deng 2019; Lu 2017; Wang et al. 2022; Zhang and Chen 2018).

The balance between “localization” and “internationalization” continues to be the key issue for most Chinese scholars on international publishing in this stage. Scholars in China are main consumers of global knowledge, but cannot become manufacturers of global core knowledge (Gao 2017). Chinese scholars have expressed strong interest in enhancing their Chinese academic identity in international (mainly English) publishing and in playing up their Chineseness in the current international knowledge system by promoting Chinese issues globally (Miao et al. 2018; Wei and Qin 2023; Zhang 2022).

4.1 International influence

The influence of international publishing in one country is not only an indicator of the prestige of individual scholars in the academic field, but also a key driving force to promote global knowledge production and academic progress. In recent years, Chinese scholars have observed that the citation rate of Chinese articles published in international journals on social sciences is still relatively low, although the number of English papers published internationally by Chinese scholars is on the rise during the past two decades. This means that international publishing by Chinese scholars does not gain enough attention and influence from the international academic community (Zhu et al. 2021).

From a global perspective, the imbalance between quantity and influence of international publishing for Chinese scholarship may result from the dominance of western developed nations in the current international academic system, in terms of their number of international academic journals and hegemony of academic evaluation (Xu and Ma 2023). For a long time, European countries and the United States have dominated the international academic community with their advantages in academic publishing, capital system and overall research capabilities. Therefore, they can control the global academic narratives and maintain their western centric world academic rules, leading to the polarization and structural imbalance of global academic outputs (Wu 2019).

From an individual level, the reputation of Chinese scholars has been tarnished by some Chinese scholars’ practices of plagiarism and high frequency of retracted international papers (Xu and Ma 2023). In fact, China has seen the fastest year-on-year increase of retracted papers in the world (Liu and Hu 2011). Some authors place higher priority on quantity than quality, as they may be pursuing publishing itself only in exchange for monetary rewards or honor titles, and thereby care less about academic impacts and reputations (Hao 2020). On the other hand, because majority of mainstream theories of international research and global communication are derived from western traditions and research paradigms, it is difficult for Chinese international scholarship to be taken seriously in the western centric academic world, historically and culturally (Zhu et al. 2021).

Besides the low international impacts, Chinese international scholarship in social sciences is also rarely cited by their domestic peers. Some Chinese scholars who only publish papers in English journals have become a kind of “academic island” in China as their research outputs can neither have a greater impact overseas nor be read and recognized domestically (Zhu et al. 2021). This may be due to the fact that scholars in China have not yet cultivated the habit of reading international papers extensively and systematically. In recent years, as social media such as WeChat have been employed to disseminate academic knowledge and promote latest academic outputs in international journals, scholars in China now gain more access to global knowledge and are exerting their influence of international publishing in China (Zhu et al. 2021).

It is worth noting that most Chinese scholars believe that international publishing can help upgrade the academic standards in China in a long run, though they generally admit their international publications have not produced significant academic impacts home and abroad and also encounter explicit or implicit international bias in the process of international publishing (Zhu et al. 2021).

4.2 Contextual debates

Scholars from different countries and research traditions may adopt different research methods and paradigms for different topics and research contexts. When delivering papers in Chinese, Chinese scholars tend to focus more on domestic literature, and reinterpret it with domestic discourses and concepts, before they rise to national values in China (Zhu et al. 2021). So, when it comes to international publishing, it is normally assumed to keep in line with international mainstream issues of concerns in the international (western) scholarly circle.

Some Chinese scholars hold different views on how to balance international practices and Chinese contexts. They tend to believe that specific local issues in research may vary in different countries, but research methods, theoretical basis and research frameworks should remain similar. The questions of academic inquiry can originate from specific situations, but the approaches to explore the questions of concerns are universal. They emphasize it is more important to focus on whether research questions are valuable and meaningful. Valuable research questions in a Chinese context can also resonate and contribute to the accumulation of global knowledge (Han 2015).

However, other scholars in China agree that academic research is inseparable from local contexts. Different social contexts and historical cultures have their own theoretical assumptions applicable to local contexts. Blind pursuit of international publishing practices may mean to blindly integrate into mainstream western academic traditions and academic paradigms and to accept theoretical and research paradigms that may not be applicable to Chinese contexts (Han 2015). Overemphasis on international publishing will also lead domestic scholars to focus on general theoretical research or just follow trends of international research while neglecting research in domestic contexts and concerns. As a result, academic research studies conducted by Chinese scholars cannot help guide policies and practices in China and fail to contribute to the global knowledge building in a long run (Zhu et al. 2021).

Some Chinese scholars have also attempted to explore reasons and logic behind these debates, which they attribute more to a narrow understanding or a weak grasp of communication theories, or even their incapability to use theories well and attract the interest of international scholars (Miao et al. 2018). For instance, in the area of humanities and social sciences, Chinese scholars tend to establish research paradigms of the discipline by translating important academic works from the western world in early days. These translations, to some extent, did contribute to the initial establishment of Chinese disciplinary academic systems (Xu 2017).

But it should be admitted that these paradigms were primarily constructed and developed from western contexts, which Chinese scholars are not familiar with. Even when these works are released in Chinese. Chinese scholars cannot really understand the historical and cultural background of these western theories and the core logic behind the disciplinary knowledge. All they can do is to consume the western knowledge which is inclined to naturally neglect Chinese contexts.

While Chinese scholars are engaged in knowledge translation and theory replication, western researchers are working on constant innovation of global knowledge. As a result, Chinese scholars continue to be consumers of global knowledge rather than innovative initiators. This may result in a deeper gap or the imbalance between localization and internationalization (Miao et al. 2018).

However, nowadays more Chinese scholars argue that it is necessary to explore new theoretical approaches in the Chinese contexts while still learning from the west (Xu 2017). This may contribute to a better understanding about the relationship western theorization and local contexts in China and will reach a new balance between localization and internationalization.

4.3 English language

As is the case elsewhere, English dominance also exists in global academic research of humanities and social sciences, including global academic communication. As Altbach (2007) pointed out, “The dominance of English has made science around the world increasingly become a hegemonic rule dominated by the main academic system that uses English, and has brought challenges to scholars and universities that do not use English.” The dominance of English in the academic communication ecosystem has squeezed the development space of other languages as academic communication languages (Zheng and Gao 2016).

The discussion on the usage of the English language in international publishing by Chinese scholars focuses on the instrumental and ideological natures of the English language.

In the current English-dominated international academic system, strong English writing ability is a necessary prerequisite and primary threshold for international publishing. However, not all Chinese scholars have the ability to write and publish in English. Xu (2017) found that the main difficulty faced by second language writers is always the English language itself. Zhang Le and Qin (2021) and others found that the four major language-related problems of non-native English scholars in international publishing are the overall planning of the discourse structure, grammatical accuracy/rhetorical expression, cohesion and style. Different research perspectives, evaluation criteria, and differences in perceptions of English for scientific research presentations all affect researchers’ judgments on the difficulty of language-related issues.

Besides, scholars’ ability to use English vocabulary and to handle interlingual differences and identities also affect the solution of language problems (Liu and Si 2022). In terms of grammatical accuracy, Zeng and Zhong (2018) found that inadequate language ability is reflected in grammatical errors such as article usage and subject-verb agreement. In pragmatic inappropriateness, it is reflected in problems of semantic articulation and coherence and insufficient academic writing skills such as rhetorical skills and argumentation skills.

Language is not only just a tool for writing and communication, but also a carrier of ideas and the soil of culture. It is ideological by nature (Xu and Jiang 2018). Through the international translation practice of “Chinese Printing History”, Chen (2009) illustrated that in the international academic platform, language can be used to subtly penetrate one culture into another culture, thus reminding Chinese scholars to have a good cultural awareness and mentality. From a sociopolitical perspective, international academic publishing activities in English include power struggles, exacerbating the inequality between the English center and the non-English periphery (Zheng and Gao 2016).

In addition, the dominance of English as an international language is more common in the field of natural sciences which have established an internationally unified system of expressions. However, in humanities and social sciences, research on subjects such as Chinese language and literature often relies on language itself. If they write mainly in English, it means that Chinese scholars have to give up their mother tongue thinking and even their national cultural subjectivity in academic research (Xu and Jiang 2018).

Choosing a language to write and publish not only affects the researcher’s personal way of thinking, but also reflects the cultural orientation of the entire academic circle and even the whole nation. If there is too much emphasis on English publishing and neglect of native language writing, it will be a sign of lack of confidence in the native language and culture, and it will also increase the dependence of our academic community on the west (Xu and Jiang 2018). In the context of globalization, the protection of linguistic and cultural diversity is to safeguard democracy and equality in the true sense. The cultural consciousness and mentality of scholars is an important factor to embody the equal right of speech and fight against the hegemony of language and culture (Chen 2009).

4.4 Academic motivations

Chinese scholars’ motivations for international publishing are varied and are related with different factors. Factors such as academic atmosphere, institutional guidance and personal self-motivation have promoted international publishing of Chinese scholars, but other practical factors also hinder Chinese scholars from publishing internationally.

At a macro level, from the perspective of cultural exchanges, internationalization is an inherent need for academic exchange (Xu 2017). With the influence of academic communities, Chinese scholars expect international publishing can effectively promote dialogues between individual scholars and global academic communities (Zhu et al. 2021). They believe international publishing is a way of telling the story of China well to the outside world and enriching the understanding of the international academic community about China, which is regarded as one of the responsibilities of Chinese scholars (Miao et al. 2018). On the other hand, some scholars are dissatisfied with the academic atmosphere in China, noting that publishing articles in China requires personal relationships and academic journals do not have an anonymous review system with only invited reviewers and offering no quality feedback to authors. For some scholars, they choose international journals simply because they believe that their research topics are more sensitive domestically (Zhu and Miao 2017).

At the meso level, universities in China put increasing importance to international publishing to their faculty members, even though English is not their native language. They have implemented incentive systems to encourage teachers and researchers to publish more papers in international journals. This kind of rewards not only serve as compensation for teachers’ labor, but also encourage the internationalization of research in Chinese humanities and social sciences (Xu and Jiang 2018). Miao et al. (2018) noted that the internationalization of China’s higher education and scientific research institutions and monetary encouragement are the most important factor promoting international publishing. Interview data show that organizational assessments have become the decisive factors for Chinese scholars to publish internationally in recent years (Zhu et al. 2021).

In addition to the macro and meso levels of external motivations and incentives such as professional titles and monetary rewards, internal motivation may be greater for academics who have not obtained tenure and who has the spontaneous inner need to pursue academic careers (Han 2015). For them, the sense of honor gained through international publishing and the learning can be the most important factor that motivates them to engage in international academic production. This includes interactions with editors and anonymous reviewers in the process of international publishing, such as discovering valid research questions, academic standards, innovative research methods, rigorous processing and presentation of research data, and prudent derivation of conclusions. It also includes reviewers’ careful guidance, constructive criticism and understanding of future research directions during the review process (Miao et al. 2018). It is true that scholars who have the ability to publish English papers and are familiar with international publishing environment, are more inclined to publish in international journals in recent years (Wang et al. 2022).

Additionally, it is also observed that most university faculty members in China also face heavy teaching loads and may lack professional training for international publishing and long-term plans for academic research, thus resulting in their inability to generate innovative scientific research and achieve independence in writing academic papers for international journals (Zhang and Chen 2018).

In addition, under the pressure of quantitative assessment for research faculty in China, many scholars find it difficult to focus on long-term research and achieve high-level scientific research results. This is especially true among young scholars who face the pressure of “promoting or leaving”, a system which forces them to publish more papers as soon as possible and to pursue a more stable and rapid career development. The research reward systems in most Chinese universities and scientific research institutions have stimulated young scholars to pursue short-term economic interests and to choose relatively conservative and low-risk research directions (Ren 2018). This tends to make them believe that international publishing is not worth pursuing due to time and energy investment, despite their higher quality. Therefore, it may not be realistic to require scholars to pursue high-level research results in top international journals (Miao et al. 2018).

Of course, other obstacles also exist that may hinder research motivations of Chinese scholars. First, some Chinese research institutions lack sufficient financial support to afford database and lab facilities, especially for research in humanities and social sciences. Scholars in these institutions may find it difficult to access timely international literature and to follow the latest academic developments, which are important for international their publishing (Gao 2017).

Meanwhile, in order to obtain more financial support for research and promotion, Chinese scholars are inclined to apply for research projects and funding at the national and provincial levels, which focus more on China centric issues instead of global topics. These applications for research projects and funding are required to be written in Chinese and some may require the full texts of internationally published outputs to be translated into Chinese. Therefore, many scholars in China have to choose to either apply for funding of China centric issues or to publish internationally by balancing local topics and international issues (Gao 2017; Wen 2017).

In addition, many scholars said that although there are ample opportunities of international exchanges and visits fostered by the Chinese government, these visits mainly aim to foster the influence of Chinese institutions, credentials of the visitng faculty and to improve inter-collegiate cooperation. International publishing by the visiting faculty members may not be the focus of such international exchanges (Zhu et al. 2021).

4.5 Evaluation systems

Research evaluation systems affect attitudes and behaviors of Chinese scholars towards international publishing, in terms of setting research agenda of scholarship, selecting languages and journals and ways of academic cooperation. Some issues in the existing Chinese evaluation systems may directly affect the quality of Chinese scholars’ international publishing and the process of global knowledge building.

Nowadays, many research institutions in China often mechanically determine the value of an academic paper according to the prestige (rank) of publications (Xu 2017). As long as journal articles are indexed at the same level, they will be regarded as equal values. This simple approach of “treating all papers equally within the same index” has made many researchers care only about the indexing of target journals, but less concerned about whether or not a journal is the most highly visible and authoritative journal among international peers. As a result, many Chinese scholars prefer to be engaged in low-risk research, and only aim at easy-to-publish “indexed” journals and formats such as opinion columns. In a long run, this is not conducive to encouraging real academic exploration, and to some degree even against the nature of academic pursuit (Ren 2018).

The academic focus on indexed journals has also led to a disdain for real academic achievements other than indexes. The current evaluation of Chinese scholars’ international publishing is mostly based on whether they are indexed in the SSCI and A&HCI journals, with low recognition of non-indexed journals and authorship of monographs by authoritative international publishers. In addition, lower recognition is also given to papers in the compilation process while the quality of the compilation itself is ignored. This evaluation approach encourages scholars in China to focus more on quantity than on quality and is detrimental to improving the international influence of Chinese scholars, because international academic exchanges are often displayed through monographs and edited volumes (Ren 2018). This academic evaluation system, which measures scholars only by paper numbers rather than academic quality, has greatly discouraged ordinary scholars to engage in international knowledge building (Zhu et al. 2021).

The third issue with the current evaluation systems in China is the short cycle of assessments, which is normally one year. That does not follow the research publishing cycles of the humanities and social sciences. Scholars face the pressure of frequent assessments, making it difficult for them to choose research topics with higher innovation. In order to complete their academic tasks, some scholars may choose to divide potentially influential research outputs into multiple articles and publish them in general-level journals. This not only damage author’s reputation, but also guide a large number of Chinese scholars to engage in repetitive research projects with low innovation. As a result, number of papers published internationally has increased, but they have little impacts on the international academic community (Ren 2018). Meanwhile, due to assessment pressure, many scholars may choose journals that are slightly lower than the actual level of the paper to achieve the success rate of publication (Hao 2020).

The fourth issue of research evaluation systems in China, especially in the field of humanities and social sciences, is the rigid regulations that do not recognize academic contributions of co-authors of papers. This is not only detrimental to the role of international publishing in promoting academic progress, but may even greatly affect the development and prosperity of the social sciences as a whole. Similar to natural sciences, modern social sciences increasingly rely on interdisciplinary, cross-field, and cross-regional collaboration to achieve the convergence of different academic perspectives, traditions and research methods (Zhu et al. 2021). The collaboration of multiple authors can promote the integration and innovation of research cross different disciplines.

In some highly specialized and relatively mature discipline fields, the academic evaluation focusing on the number of publications does have flaws, data has confirmed the rationality of quantitative evaluation focusing on the publication citation rate (Yan and Yue 2012). Therefore, it is necessary to put forward a more effective and scientific research evaluation system to guide Chinese scholars’ international publishing, so as to help improve the role of Chinese scholars in global knowledge production.

4.6 Publication charges

Chinese scholars also discuss the journal models of publication charges, which they think will affect the popularity of scholars’ published outputs as well as the process of global knowledge building. The traditional subscription model of journals is usually paid by libraries, institutions or individuals, which may cause financial pressure on institutions with little resources and limit their access to knowledge resources, resulting in an uneven distribution of global knowledge.

Meanwhile, under the traditional academic journal publishing model, scholars transfer the copyrights of their research outputs to publishers for free or for a fee. The purpose of scholars publishing papers is to have academic impacts and be cited and evaluated by peers (Wang 2005). Since this model is usually dominated by commercial publishers, it may be possible for publishers to pursue more commercial profits rather than academic knowledge sharing. As academic resources are controlled by monopoly capital and turned into commodities, research outputs become the bargaining chip of predatory publishers to raise prices, and the core function of academic journals is alienated into a profit tool of predatory publishers (Yuan and Huang 2022).

As a result, the traditional subscription model began to suffer from crisis, and the open access model gradually rose. “Open access” is an academic publishing and sharing model created to achieve equal and open access to information. It breaks the monopoly of commercial publishers on information and establishes a new academic and information exchange mechanism (Chu 2006). The open access model makes research outputs freely available to scholars and researchers worldwide and promotes the equal distribution and accessibility and sharing of global knowledge (Chu 2006). This kind of open access can also narrow the digital divide for developing countries and protect the legitimate rights of scholars (Fang 2005).

However, with the continuous intrusion from marketing forces, predatory journals have also begun to appear. Wu and Xu (2023) discussed the four approaches of capital intrusion into academic journals. First, predatory journals make profits from publishing by reducing the requirements of academic review or false peer reviews. Second, they clone well-known journals to attract unknown scholars, including cloning the well-known journals’ cover, and even republishing articles without original journals and authors’ consents. Third, predatory journals precisely target the scholars from developing countries who need international publishing to help build up personal careers with varying article publication charges (APC). Last but not least, predatory journals may invite scholars to submit their articles without informing them the publication charges until the article is nearly published. Usually these articles are delayed for a long time and they are not allowed to be retracted, forcing these scholars to pay a fee. By so doing, predatory journals can make a profit by charging these scholars high publishing fees (Wu and Xu 2023). Wu and Xu (2023) also hold that the profit-making nature of international publishing is inevitable. Open Access provides new opportunities for scholars to undergo international publishing, but the emergence of predatory journals not only damage the academic environment, but also causes the dissemination of low-quality academic results and affects the reputation and academic careers of scholars (Wu and Xu 2023).

Zhang and Zhao (2013) hold that in the traditional publishing model, publishers collect, review and publish scholars’ articles and make profits from subscription. But with the development of open access, commercial publishing has switched from paying readers to paying authors. For publishers, this is nothing more than a shift in the way they pay. The author’s desire to publish makes it easier and more grandiose for publishers to extract public wealth.

However, the ultimate goals of scholars and original intention of the open access model are to promote the sharing and free exchange of academic outputs and build a knowledge system that truly promote global academic research. Therefore, in the process of global knowledge production, it is necessary to regulate the publishing ecology and create more favorable platforms for scholars’ international publishing.