Evaluating Chinese Legal Scholarship in Journals: Are Journal Rankings and Elite Law Journals Representing the Best Quality?

• Main Author: Jian Zhang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ubiquity Press 2018-09-01
• Series: Tilburg Law Review
• Subjects: Chinese legal scholarship; evaluation methods; bibliometrics-based journal ranking; quality criteria; peer review
• Online Access: https://tilburglawreview.com/articles/2

The worldwide popularity of journal rankings has raised the question to what extent they can represent the best quality legal scholarship. The following analysis suggests current Chinese journal-ranking schemes do not. Existing Chinese journal rankings are based on quantitative indicators, a mere proxy for research quality. Besides, these journal rankings fail to enhance a fair competition between different types of law journals. Peer review used by elite law journals, does not solve the problem as long as there is no consensus on the substantive review criteria are adopted. Moreover, Chinese elite law journals are publishing too many in-house publications, raising doubts about the transparency of peer review processes which should filter out poor quality submissions from faculty members. The case of Chinese law journals addresses the importance of further trying to understand and tackle the challenges connected to journal ranking and peer reviews, which are problems shared by all journals.