Comparison of China and International SCI Papers' Quantity and Quality in Horticultural Science

Numbers of papers published by researchers in China and other countries were retrieved from the Science Citation Index(SCI) database of the United States Institute for Scientific Information(ISI) to investigate the status of horticultural discipline in China in the past ten years.The impact factors of journals publishing these papers were also obtained from ISI.The results showed that the United States was the most developed country in the horticultural disciplines with in a declining trend.The number of SCI papers published by Chinese researchers ranked the second in the world,and it was increasing steadily year-by-year.90.5% of SCI papers by Chinese researchers were published in 10 journals.The average impact factor and the 5-year average impact factor were higher for the 10journals publishing Chinese researcher' s paper than the top 10journals publishing papers by researchers in other countries.However,the average impact factor and average 5-year impact factor for the 10journals publishing Chinese researcher' s paper ranked the seventh,which were lower than the average of the top 10countries with the highest number of SCI papers.