Biodiversity provides a platform humans can thrive on, and it is vital for ensuring the sustainable development of society. China is one of the megadiverse countries in the world, and was also among the earliest to join the Convention on Biological Diversity. Since the launch of the Biodiversity Conservation Plan in China in 1994, researchers in China have devoted more than 10 years of hard work in the area of biodiversity and published a large number of research papers and documents. A search was conducted for papers on biodiversity using the Science Citation Index Expanded, using TS= ("biological diversity" OR biodiversity OR "species diversity" OR "species richness" OR "genetic diversity" OR ecosystem* OR communities OR "ecosystem function" OR "bio* invasion*" OR "invasive species" OR "endangered species" OR "conservation biology" OR "biodiversity conservation" OR biogeography OR "new species" OR taxonomy OR phylogeny OR "landscape diversity"). By analyzing and comparing characteristic figures, this paper accesses the current status and international influence of biodiversity studies in China, and also attempts to provide direction for possible future research.
Between 1997 and 2009, 219773 papers addressing various facets of biodiversity were published globally, with twice as many published in 2009 compared with 1997. During these 13 years, China exhibited the fastest growth rate in terms of the quantity of such papers, with 110 papers published in 1997 and 20 times that number published in 2009, when compared with 207 countries and regions in the world. Globally, the percentage of these papers originating in China continues to increase, growing from 1.23% in 1997 to 7.81% in 2009. China ranks 7^th with 11182 papers published during this time period, representing 5.08% of the total number published on biodiversity globally.
Members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences published the largest quantity of papers related to various facets of biodiversity in the world when compared with the members of other institutes, which is more than twice the average number of the seven major institutes in the United States. However, among the top ten institutes in terms of quantity, China ranks at the bottom based on citations per paper and the h-index. Among the 10 most cited papers with one or more authors from China, all of them are joint efforts of Chinese and international institutes, and none of them has an author from China as the first author or the corresponding author. According to the total citation numbers, citations per paper and the h-index, China did not exhibit a growing global influence in the area of biodiversity. Among the 11182 papers from China, 45 papers had been cited more than 100 times, including only 12 papers with first authors from China. Of the total, 1865 papers had been cited between 10 and 100 times; 3211 papers have not been cited at all, representing 28.33% of the total.
Among the top 10 journals with the most papers from China, six of them are journals from China. Zootaxa from New Zealand led the way with 598 papers from China. According to data from Journal Citation Reports in 2009, the impact factor of Zootaxa is 0.891, and this journal published the most papers on biodiversity both from China and the world. From 2004 to 2009, it was included in SCI-E, and papers on biodiversity constituted 80% of the total.
According to the classification of journals in SCI-E, for both China and the world, the top three subjects with the most papers published related to biodiversity are ecology, environmental studies and plant sciences. Among these three subjects, the 52643 papers on ecology significantly outnumber the 28334 related to environmental studies and 26983 on plant sciences. As for papers from China, 2030 papers on plant sciences exceed the 1486 on ecology and the 1312 papers on environmental studies. Globally, the 25814 papers on marine & freshwater biology rank 4^th as a topic and come closely behind environmental studies and plant sciences in terms of quantity. As for China, the 641 papers on marine & freshwater biology only rank 9^th in quantity, falling behind ecology, environmental studies and plant sciences by a large margin.