Scientific evaluation of research achievements can better stimulate the innovation potential of researchers and demonstrate the level of national scientific innovation. There is a natural method for assessing scientific achievements and it is recommended that the government’s relevant departments should adopt them in their work.
Evaluation of scientific achievements has always been a natural platform.
When a researcher needs to investigate or develop a new finding, he will look for many scientific literature. This is natural and self-evident. If you think about it, when we read scientific literature or write scientific results, there will always be some very characteristic sentences and deserve our attention. Here are some examples of these sentences.
“In 2011, Shuyuan Qi, Zhimin Li, and Tonglai Zhang et al. for the first time obtained single crystals of perchloric acid carbonate Zn and Fe metal complexes. ...... In order to industrialize the production of barium zinc perchlorate, they also conducted research on the production process of the process-scale synthesis experiment under the encouragement of this new discovery, and determined the optimum production process conditions. Since then Zinc hydrazide began to be widely used in the country.”
This sentence appears in “Ying Liu. Research on the thermal behavior of trap complexes as pyrotechnic agents[D]. Beijing: Beijing Institute of Technology, 2015.” The scientific achievements evaluated by this sentence actually involve the following paper: “Shuyuan Qi, Zhimin Li, Tonglai Zhang, Zuning Zhou, Li Yang, Jianguo Zhang, Xiaojing Qiao, Kaibei Yu. Crystal Structure, Thermal Behavior and Sensitivity Properties of Energetic Complex [Zn(CHZ)3](ClO4)2. Chinese Journal of Chemical Acta, 2011,69 (8): 987-992."
Let's look at the second example.
As early as the 1970s, Hanrong Wu and others conducted a feasibility study on the measurement of natural field potentials.
This sentence appears in "Li Dong, Dizhao Li, Weibo Jiang. The application of differential evolution algorithm in extracting MT signal inducing information. Advances in geophysics, 2015, 30 (4): 1882–1895." The scientific achievements are actually refereeing to the work here: “Hanrong Wu, Shiming Wang. The possibility of using the natural electromagnetic field to conduct the polarization measurement method. Geophysical and geochemical exploration. 1978, (1): 62—64.”
These examples often encountered us when reading, researching, and writing results. We organized students to collect more than 1,400 cases of such evaluations from about 100 journals and other documents. Judging from the functional nature, this is an evaluation of scientific achievements by nature. The appearance of these sentences has brought about a natural platform for the evaluation of the corresponding achievements. They solve problems in the evaluation of scientific contribution today, and scientifically reflect the labor of scientific workers.
This is actually a kind of familiar and historical origin of the scientific community.
This is "natural" because their evaluation is met by scientific experts on a daily basis. How to guarantees this? In fact, this is a reflection of the “Peer Recognized Value System” in science and technology work (Changgen Feng, “Peer Recognized Value System” in the construction of the scientific team. People's Daily, 2003.5.9, 8th Edition). Since the birth of modern technology, science and technology experts have had a natural assessment of the results of their own research. As followed, these evaluations have fairly accurately documented how a topic has been pushed forward by experts. Let's take a look at an example. This example involves 5 experts from different years (from 1943 to 1992). The examples include evaluation sentences.
The Nobel receiver Pauling proposed the idea of synthesizing antibodies using antigens as a template as early as 1943. This idea of spatial intermixing became the earliest idea of molecular imprinting. This scientific achievement was evaluated 20 times in the literature we found and was cited 842 times. Typical discourses we can read in the literature, for example: "The famous Nobel Prize winner Pauling proposed the antibody formation theory in the 1940s. Although Pauling's theory was overturned by the later 'clone selection' theory, it still has certain rationality and lays a theoretical foundation for the birth of molecular imprinting theory."
The second person in the molecular imprinting study was Dickey. In 1949, Dickey prepared a silica gel adsorbent that can be used for adsorption removal of methyl orange and proposed the concept of “specific adsorption”, which played an important role in the promotion of molecular imprinting technology. This scientific achievement was evaluated 18 times in the literature we found and was cited 89 times. Typical discourses that we can read in the literature, for example: "In 1949, Dickey first proposed the concept of 'specific adsorption', which is considered the seed of molecular imprinting."
Definitive molecular imprinting and molecularly imprinted polymer research work was conducted by Wulff and Sarhan of Germany in 1972. They reported for the first time that organic molecularly imprinted polymers were successfully prepared by covalent methods. This scientific and technological achievement was evaluated 29 times in the literature we found and was cited 458 times. Typical discourses that we can read in the literature, for example: “Wulff and others successfully made molecularly imprinted polymers for the first time, and made breakthroughs in the research of molecularly imprinted technology. Wulff laid the foundation for the covalent synthesis of molecularly imprinted polymers. ".
In 1976, Nishide, Deguchi and Tsuchida made metal ion imprinted polymers. For the first time, the molecular imprinting technology was successfully extended to the preparation of metal ion-imprinted polymers, so that ion imprinting technology has entered a new research field. This scientific achievement was evaluated six times in the literature we found and was cited 94 times. Typical discourses we can read in the literature, for example: “In 1976 Nishide et al. selected copper, zinc, cobalt, nickel, mercury, cadmium, and 1,4-dibromobutane in combination and crosslinked with poly 4-vinylpyridine. The metal ion-imprinted polymer is formed by polymerization, and the ion-imprinted polymer is prepared by a method such as pickling to remove the imprinted ion.
In 1992, Yu, Tsukagoshi, Takagi et al. first proposed the concept of surface imprinting technology, which solved the problem of slow mass transfer rate of traditional imprinted polymers. This has taken a very important step for the development of ion imprinting technology. This scientific achievement was evaluated 7 times in the literature we found and was cited 45 times. Typical discourses that we can read in the literature, for example: “The surface imprinting technique was first proposed by the Takagi research group in 1992, and the complexes were formed on the surface of the emulsifier by the amphiphilic functional monomer and the imprinting ion and then fixed and then polymerized. Generates a blotting material where the blotting sites are located on the surface of the material."
We studied the sentences that these five experts were evaluated and found that of the 20, 18, 29, 6 and 7 sentences (38 sentences) evaluated by each of the 5 experts, later researchers will, invariably, evaluate the work of the five experts. This relationship tells us that the five experts are actually on an academic chain. That is, they are in the same subject. Studying such an academic transfer chain is very helpful for accurately grasping the current academic process and the development of disciplines, in-depth exploration of the discipline development law, and promoting academic research and technological innovation (including the realization of evaluation of many scientific and technological achievements of experts) (Changgen Feng, “How Writing a doctoral dissertation, Science Press, 2015. p. 140).
At present, writers who want to encourage scientific achievements attach importance to peer review.
We publish thousands of excellent scientific papers every year. For example, China published 270,000 papers in 2015. If this year's scientific research results are published, the authors will evaluate the achievement of the topic “adding bricks and tiles” to the subject (whether or not they know it) last year and previous years, and we will be given a natural assessment platform for scientific achievements. This huge platform requires only one more sentence for each winner and one more evaluative introduction. This kind of natural science and technology achievement evaluation method is worth promoting.
To do a good job in this matter, we must first attach importance to this platform from the perspective of upgrading the right to speak of Chinese science and technology workers. At present, the authors of most Chinese scientific community will not use evaluation sentences in the text, especially if they do not evaluate domestic counterparts. Most Chinese authors evaluate the results of foreign experts. This, to a certain extent, has led to the weak voice of Chinese scientific workers in international academic.
We must pay full attention to embodying the academic chain in academic papers, which is as simple as justifying the use of accurate and appropriate evaluation statements in academic papers. It is necessary to encourage scientific workers to fully understand the academic inheritance and academic chain of academic research in their field of research, and to include their scientific research achievements in "inheritance through scholarship," which is the sacred duty and lofty honor of scientific researchers.
SCI journals are an important carrier for this platform. We must pay attention to the role of journals in this area. We recommend that editors and reviewers to promote the publication of more excellent academic papers from the "academic hall" perspective. They reflect the academic achievements that can enter the academic heritage and reflect the topic academic chain. Regardless of the current level of influence factors in a periodical evaluation method, as long as the persistence of influence and academic heritage as the guidelines for publication of the paper, the contribution of journals to science and technology will increase, which is precisely the value of scientific journals. If we can persist in doing so, the Chinese scientific community will get rid of the negative impact of the "SCI" evaluation, while insisting on the scientific and reasonable part of it.
We organize students to collect more than 1,400 evaluative examples from about 100 journals. The vast majority of these examples are the results of recording foreign experts, and they are rarely targeted at Chinese experts. This situation is far from the image of China's science and technology. This should be given great attention. If scientific researchers are able to fully respect the academic discourse rights in academic papers when they publish academic papers, they must objectively and fairly evaluate the work of their counterparts and predecessors at home and abroad, and accurately record academic inheritance and academic links in the research field. Then the level of academic papers in Chinese science community will have a marked improvement. By then (according to the quality of strong academic papers) we will be able to claim a truly technological power.
(The writer is a member of the Standing Committee of the Twelfth National People's Congress and the former vice chairman of the China Association for Science and Technology)
