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Student Geng Exposed 5 National Outstanding Youth Fund Winners in 36 Days: Who Has Tied China’s Scientific Research to the Western Chariot?

发布时间：

2026-05-23

Student Geng Exposed 5 National Outstanding Youth Fund Winners in 36 Days: Who Has Tied China’s Scientific Research to the Western Chariot?

Sun Zuodong

From April to May 2026, Bilibili creator Geng Hongwei, single-handedly and with real-name reporting, exposed problems in top-journal papers by several senior scholars from various universities within just over 30 days. Those involved have been dealt with in accordance with regulations, triggering heated nationwide discussion. This academic storm has uncovered deep-seated issues under the monopoly of SCI and CNS journals. Blind reliance on overseas evaluation systems has put domestic scientific research in a passive position.

The Science Citation Index (SCI) originated in the United States, and the top CNS journals are operated under the control of European and American capital, forming an exclusive academic barrier. Chinese researchers must pay fees to submit papers and purchase database access to read professional literature regularly. Industry evaluation rules and review standards are all set by overseas institutions. While SCI itself has reference value, scientific research development must never be trapped in a scoring table designed by others. To meet publication requirements, research data is often fully disclosed, greatly limiting the space for original domestic research. Only by firmly holding core data and research achievements in our own hands can we have the confidence to defend our academic sovereignty.

In the early years, China lacked a mature and unified scientific research evaluation mechanism. After the introduction of the SCI quantitative assessment model, it was gradually integrated into professional title evaluation, project application, talent selection, and other assessment processes. The medical and life sciences sectors have a high recognition of this system, and papers in overseas top journals have become key credentials for obtaining industry resources and professional titles. Many returned researchers established their positions with such achievements and later called for abandoning the impact-factor-only evaluation approach. Although early participants gained industry dividends, the overall research environment gradually fell into involution.

Driven by assessment indicators, professional titles, and honors, researchers rushed to publish papers in overseas journals. Under intense competition, some studies involved data manipulation or even academic misconduct, with all traces left on overseas platforms—equivalent to voluntarily leaving vulnerabilities. When papers are published overseas, evaluation standards remain in foreign hands. In good times, they serve as impressive academic credentials; once ideological or positional differences emerge, past records can easily become weaknesses used to constrain us.

Overseas journals hold full authority over paper acceptance, review, and retraction. While they routinely accept academic submissions for exchange, once domestic research circles reflect on systemic flaws and seek to reduce reliance on SCI and CNS, past flaws in papers can easily be used to hold people accountable. Relevant institutions may retract papers and damage reputations, putting us in a passive position whether we follow the rules or seek transformation. Meanwhile, the disclosure of core research data makes patentable innovations difficult to protect; they can readily be borrowed and modified by external parties, leading to technological constraints. Blind conformity ultimately leads to losses.

In recent years, China has successively issued policies to break the one-sided evaluation model of prioritizing papers and indicators. However, long-standing industry practices are hard to change quickly. This academic anti-fraud incident has made the industry aware of various hidden dangers of relying on external systems. The true value of a research achievement ultimately lies in how many technical problems it solves and what key breakthroughs it achieves. The journal level or impact factor of a published paper should never be the sole yardstick for measuring research capabilities.

Scientific research evaluation should return to the achievements themselves, taking actual technical value and industrial contribution as core criteria. Core research achievements must first be protected through intellectual property rights and data security before normal academic exchanges. Accelerating the establishment of an independent scientific research evaluation system suited to China’s national conditions and firmly grasping academic discourse are essential to breaking external constraints.

Science knows no borders, but scientific research is rooted in the nation. Academic exchange has no barriers, yet core achievements concern long-term development. Domestic scientific research must not blindly rely on overseas academic standards. We must abandon blind pursuit, deepen independent innovation, apply research achievements domestically, and independently control our development direction—this is the right path for steady progress in scientific research.

What do you think of the current SCI evaluation system? Feel free to share your views in the comment section.