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This paper conducts a comparative study of the scientific publications of the 31 province‐level regions of Mainland China during 2006–2018. The main results are as follows. First, the four indices, ordered by total number of papers indexed, across all provinces, are the Science Citation Index (SCI), Chinese Science Citation Database (CSCD), Chinese Social Science Citation Index (CSSCI), and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI). The number of international publications from these regions shows an increasing trend, while the number of domestic research outputs shows a fluctuating trend. Second, the international and domestic publications produced by these regions greatly improved over the study period. Third, different regions vary greatly not only in research output but also in research preference. The top five preferred disciplines of international and domestic academic achievement are very different; the former all belong to the natural sciences, while more than 7 of 10 of the latter belong to the social sciences. Moreover, the adjacency matrices of the similarity of the 31 regions show that there is some correlation between the research spotlight of a region and its economic and cultural patterns. In general, scientific research in China has developed rapidly in recent years, and different regions vary greatly not only in research achievement but also in research preference. Key points: Scientific output is unevenly distributed between Chinese provinces, with Beijing, Jiangsu, Shanghai, Hubei, and Shaanxi each contributing almost half total output.The majority of Chinese‐authored articles in international journals are in STM areas, with national journals capturing the majority of social science articles.Beijing has the highest number of articles in Q1 and Q2 journals within Web of Science, followed by Jiangsu and then Shanghai.The different regions of china specialize in different academic disciplines, with some universities excelling social sciences and others in pure and applied sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]