Report: Chinese-Owned Science Journal Created to Rival the Best

From Nature:

A new Chinese-owned journal has set its sights on rivalling the world’s oldest and most influential academic titles. Vita is one of several English-language journals that have launched in China in the past couple of years. They represent the country’s latest effort to create prestigious global journals, as part of the government’s Journal Excellence Action Plan, which began in 2019.

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Vita is jointly funded by the Higher Education Press, a subsidiary of China’s Ministry of Education based in Beijing, and Westlake University in Hangzhou, its editorial team says. It publishes papers in biological sciences. Its first print issue came out in July.

As an open-access journal, Vita waives article-processing charges (APCs), fees many publishers require authors to pay when publishing open access articles.

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Vita’s model is “clearly going to be appealing” to authors, says James Butcher, a former publisher who runs a consultancy firm called Journalology near Liverpool, UK. But he warns that keeping the model running in the long term will be a challenge for the journal and its funders because “publishing is expensive”. Publishers who charge APCs say that the money helps to cover the costs of publishing open access, including paying the salaries of in-house editors and production staff, as well as printing and server costs.

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