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This paper contends that the inclusion of meso- and micro-level perspectives has been under exploration in the study of the internationalization of humanities and social sciences, in particular, in a state-mandated system where policy interventions in higher education and knowledge production have typically been aligned with state construction and national development. It argues that institutional and individual responses to state policies on the internationalization of humanities and social sciences should be investigated due to their respective roles in policymaking and implementation. It has, therefore, retrieved recent and historical policy documents during the post-WTO period and collected empirical data from two Chinese universities. A constructivist-interpretivist qualitative approach and a qualitative case study strategy were adopted for this investigation. Based on an in-depth analysis of the empirical data, this paper reveals the gap between the macro-level ambition of achieving outward-oriented diffusion of innovations and the local-level realities, as well as institutional dilemmas and conflicts in facilitating the internationalization.

Although the potential of English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) for intercultural learning and teaching is acknowledged, few studies have explored the teaching of culture in EMI programmes in higher education contexts. Thus, this study examined the perceptions and practices that six EMI teachers from a variety of disciplines have of culture and cultural instruction at a Chinese university. Data were obtained from 24 classroom observations and six post-observation interviews. Drawing on Larzen-Ostermark's tripartite culture-teaching orientations and Rasouli and Moradkhani's culture-teaching taxonomy, the findings revealed that teachers with a humanities and social sciences background had a fluid and dynamic view regarding the understanding of culture, while teachers with a science, technology, engineering and mathematics background did not recognise the need to incorporate cultural instruction into their EMI classes. In analysing classroom data, five categories of cultural instruction were identified: contrast, authentic material, groupwork, codeswitching and guided discussion of culture. The five categories are mainly in line with the affective and action orientations in Larzen-Ostermark's three-orientation framework. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of the study's findings for EMI policymakers and EMI teacher training programmes.

This article aims to reveal the factors that affecting the impact of international collaboration papers in the field of social sciences and humanities. Based on resource-based theory and transaction cost theory, we analyzed the articles from a sample of 13,331 listed research papers come from the 42 world class universities in China using descriptive statistics, ordinary least square (OLS) regression, and came to the following conclusions: First, it is the quality rather than the quantity of international collaborator that affect the academic influence of the research outputs. Second, researchers from different backgrounds are conducive to improve the impact of research papers and the collaboration leading by Chinese university perform better. Yet, too much collaborators coming from different institutions would have an adverse impact, which may due to the increase cost of cooperation. Finally, collaborating researchers from developed countries or top universities will significantly improve the research performance because of the abundant resources behind them. Findings from this research suggest that setting up international collaboration should pay more attention to the level of the collaborator and consider the cost behind the whole process.

Incentives for improving research productivity at universities prevail in global academia. However, the rationale, methodology, and impact of such incentives and consequent evaluation regimes are in need of scrutinization. This paper explores the influences of financial and career-related publishing incentive schemes on research cultures. It draws on an analysis of 75 interviews with academics, senior university administrators, and journal editors from China, a country that has seen widespread reliance on international publication counts in research evaluation and reward systems. The study focuses on humanities and social sciences (HSS) as disciplinary sites, which embody distinct characteristics and have experienced the introduction of incentive schemes in China since the early 2000s. Findings reveal tensions between internationalization and indigenization, quality and quantity, integrity and instrumentalism, equity and inequity in Chinese academia. In particular, we argue that a blanket incentive scheme could reinforce a managerial culture in higher education, encourage performative objectification of academics, and jeopardize their agency. We thereby challenge 'one-size-fits-all' policymaking, and suggest instead that institutions should have the opportunity to adopt an ethical and 'human-oriented' approach when developing their research incentives and evaluation mechanisms.

The current expansion of English language publishing by scholars from China is supported by national and university policies, including monetary and career incentives to publish in English. These incentives, which extend to work in the humanities and social sciences (HSS, the focus of this paper) as well as the sciences and technologies, are situated in evolving strategies of internationalization. China has moved from an internationalization strategy simply based on learning from the West, to a 'going out' strategy designed to both lift domestic research capacity and advance China's influence in the world. However, the 'going out' strategy nonetheless embodies ambiguities and dilemmas. The world of academic knowledge is not a level playing field but more closely approximates the centre-periphery dynamic described in world systems theory. This study explores the influence of publication incentives in the context of a centre-periphery world. It draws on analysis of 172 institutional incentive documents and interviews with 75 HSS academics, university senior administrators, and journal editors. The study identifies practices within China's HSS that reproduce centre-periphery relationships. By focusing on international publications, Chinese universities run the risk of downplaying Chinese-language publications and adopting standards and norms from global centres to assess domestic knowledge production. These could result in creating knowledge from and about China primarily in Western terms without adding a distinctive Chinese strand to the global conversation. Nonetheless, the study also identifies alternative dynamics that challenge the existing power hierarchies in global HSS, highlighting indigenous knowledge and the need to pluralize global knowledge production.

International collaboration is one of the effective ways to enhance the impact of scientific research papers. In this research, international research collaboration papers published by world-class universities in the field of humanities and social sciences from 2015 to 2019 were selected as the research object, and the effective enhancement of the impact of international research collaboration papers was found to not be dependent on expanding the scale of international research collaboration, but rather on selecting researchers with different international backgrounds and from high-level institutions for collaboration. It was also discovered that, in the field of humanities and social sciences, despite a relatively low proportion of international research collaboration papers being led by Chinese scholars, the Chinese research is characterized by a higher impact compared with the research led by non-Chinese scholars. In light of this, a series of proactive measures should be taken by China's world-class universities, such as actively participating in and initiating international collaboration, selecting high-level research collaborators, and attracting scholars from different countries to engage in research collaboration in the field of humanities and social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Incentivizing academic publications in internationally-indexed journals is a current topic of national debate especially in non-anglophone countries. To boost the dissemination of Chinese research results, the central government and higher education institutions had introduced various schemes to encourage international publications. However, a significant policy change took place when the Chinese government recently announced a break with SSCI supremacy conventions in research evaluation systems. Based on semi-structured interviews with five university managers and 30 academics in humanities and social sciences in five universities in China, this study examines the responses of both institution managers and individual scholars to the latest national guidelines. A qualitative analysis shows mixed attitudes among both HSS managers and individual academics towards the policy change: supportive but with doubts about the policy practicality as well as concerns about ensuing pressures to be generated by new evaluation systems. The findings suggest the policy change will not significantly affect HSS academics' pursuit of international publishing in a short term. It will, however, lead to some adjustments in the existing institutional evaluation regulations. The findings can contribute to the understanding of HE policy influence on academics as well as its potential implications for the global trend of anglicized academic publishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research and the dissemination of scholarship are increasingly global enterprises, engaging scholars throughout the world. In what will be a story familiar to many academics in the West, as well as their inherent desire to disseminate and receive recognition for their research, Chinese scholars face pressures from their institutions to publish in highly cited journals. Journals indexed by the Web of Science are by and large published in English. As a result, young Chinese scholars in the Social Sciences and Humanities face significant hurdles, beginning with, but not limited to the need to disseminate their research in a language other than their own. This interview-based study, undertaken at a research-intensive university in China, investigates the experiences of these scholars, looking at both their challenges and the strategies they use to overcome these difficulties. This investigation of the experiences of young scholars in China contributes to our knowledge of the internationalization of scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the impacts of research excellence evaluation entailed in global ranking exercises, a control strategy characteristic of new managerialism, on Chinese Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) academics. The enquiry combines the Critical Incidents Technique (CIT) and internet-based discourse analysis, drawing on mass media texts and social media discussions. Our analysis identified three major dilemmas that may be created for Chinese HSS academics by their country's aspirations for world-class universities embedded in its complicated socio-political context. First, a highly centralised system restrains academics' autonomy to decide what to research and where to publish. Second, they are conflicted by the need to simultaneously attend to nationalistic interests and publish internationally. Third, ideological correctness is highly important. These findings invite us to reflect on the profound impact of university ranking exercises as a mode of university governance on HSS academics in many contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 2000s, China has been fast establishing English-language academic journals to further internationalize research. This article delineates a national scenario of such journals in the humanities and social sciences (HSS) and explores their efforts and predicaments in bringing China's HSS research to the world. Based on first-hand data collected empirically through interviews and documents, it shows that HSS English-language journals in China attempt to challenge yet are conditioned at the same time by the imbalanced international knowledge structure. While still at a preliminary stage of development in terms of quantity and quality, the journals have already been confronted with major challenges including English language hurdles, unfavorable position in research evaluation systems, unfamiliarity with standards of international academic writing and publishing, and tensions between international ambition and local commitment. This article argues that HSS journals in non-Western societies including China need to strike a balance between their contemporary bid for international visibility and long-term contribution to multiple perspectives in global HSS research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]