Imbalances between the Quantity and Quality of China’s Solar Energy Research

Rongrong Li and Xuefeng Wang
Additional contact information
Rongrong Li: School of Management & Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
Xuefeng Wang: School of Management & Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 3, 1-15

Abstract: China’s solar energy industry is developing rapidly and China’s solar energy research is experiencing a high speed of development alongside it. Is China’s solar energy research growth quantity-driven (paper-driven) or quality-driven (citation-driven)? Answering this question is important for China’s solar research field and industrial sector, and has implications for China’s other renewable research programs. Applying statistical methods, the citation analysis method, and web of science data, this study investigated China’s solar energy research between 2007 and 2015 from two perspectives: quantity (numbers of papers) and quality (number of paper citations). The results show that the number of Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-E) papers on solar energy in China has grown rapidly, surpassing the United States to become the world leader in 2015. However, the growth rate in scientific production was consistently higher than the growth rate of the number of times cited. When considering the average number of times a paper was cited among the top ten countries researching solar energy, China was in last place from 2007 to 2015. Further, the impact and effectiveness of China’s papers were below the world average from 2010 to 2015, and experienced a sharp decreasing trend. These results suggest that China’s solar energy research is a quantitatively driven model, with a mismatch between quantity and quality. New policies should be introduced to encourage high-quality research and achieve a balance between quantity and quality.

Keywords: solar energy; China; activity index; attractivity index; impact and effectiveness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/3/623/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/3/623/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:3:p:623-:d:200666

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().