The achievements of the National Center for Philosophy and Social Sciences Documentation are released at a conference in Beijing on May 17. Photo:Zhu Gaolei/CSST

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) held a conference to release the achievements of its National Center for Philosophy and Social Sciences Documentation (NCPSSD) in Beijing on May 17.

A report on the NCPSSD’s achievements between 2016 and 2021 was released at the conference. According to the report, the NCPSSD has more than 20 million data items, nearly 80,000 domestic institutional users, and more than 1,000 overseas institutional users. Its users cover 183 countries and regions. With more than 800 million visits, it has become the largest open access platform for social sciences in the Chinese language.

Based on statistical analysis, the report also rates the 200 most popular journals and 50 best institutional users at home and abroad over the past five years.

CASS President Xie Fuzhan and CASS Vice President Gao Xiang respectively issued certificates to the representatives of the best institutional users and the most popular journals from 2016 to 2020.

Xie pointed out that the NCPSSD has provided a solid guarantee for accelerating the construction of philosophy and social sciences with Chinese characteristics and created an important platform for disseminating Chinese academic achievements by integrating philosophy, social science literature, and information resources, by using the internet and big data technology.

Xie expressed his hope that the NCPSSD will take new technology as a driving force for innovation and development, and build itself into a “top domestic and world-class” information platform for philosophy and social science research as soon as possible.

Documentation services are experiencing disruptive change, as various social forces are accelerating their entry into the documentation service and knowledge service markets. The era of big data documentation analysis and knowledge services has come, said Jiang Peimao, director of the National Office for Philosophy and Social Sciences.

In the context of this era, the NCPSSD has provided an efficient and open platform for the social sciences community, offering high-quality and convenient research conditions for experts and scholars. As such, it serves as a basic guarantee for the innovative development of philosophy and social sciences, Jiang said.

In addition, the conference also released the 2020 report on the attention that academic journals received from NCPSSD’s academic journal database users.

The report covers the attention journals receive, discipline attention, search popularity, geographical distribution of such attention, and institutional users’ data usage. Based on the usage of the NCPSSD’s academic journal database in 2020, the report designs attention indices according to online reading and downloading rates. It analyzes the attention paid to 1,908 academic journals which were available online before January 1, 2020.

Gao said that it is necessary to sum up experience and constantly promote the NCPSSD’s construction, so that it can provide solid support for accelerating the construction of philosophy and social sciences with Chinese characteristics, and make new and greater contributions to the realization of the Chinese Dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.