Associate Prof. QIU Shumin from the Department of Business Administration, School of Business, East China University of Science and Technology (ECUST), in collaboration with Professor Claudia Steinwender from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich) and Professor Pierre Azoulay from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has recently had their article titled “Paper tiger? Chinese science and home bias in citations” officially published in the Journal of International Economics, a top-tier journal in the field of international economics.

The Journal of International Economics is a recognized authoritative journal in the field of international economics and trade, publishing cutting-edge research covering trade patterns, international finance, global value chains, and other related areas.

This study systematically examines the phenomenon of "home bias" in academic citations, i.e., the tendency of scholars to excessively favor citing research from their own country. The research team has developed a new benchmark method that matches citation counts with the scale of scientific research in various countries, thereby accurately depicting the deviation of each country's citation behavior from an unbiased scenario. The study finds that China exhibits the strongest home bias in citations among all major countries, a phenomenon that has persisted over the past two decades and spans almost all academic disciplines. This result stands in sharp contrast to China's "home bias" in goods and services trade, which is not significantly higher than that of other industrialized countries. Further analysis shows that China ranks second globally in terms of total scientific citations, second only to the United States. However, after excluding the impact of "home bias", China's real scientific research impact drops to fourth place globally, behind the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany. This finding suggests that there are institutional and social biases in scientific citations, and relying solely on citation indicators may lead to a biased assessment of the scientific research impact and international status of various countries. The study provides a new measurement tool and empirical evidence for understanding geopolitical biases in scientific research evaluation, and is of great significance for the objective comparison of global scientific research impact.

About the Author

QIU Shumin is an Associate Professor in the Department of Business Administration, School of Business, East China University of Science and Technology. Her main research interests include innovation management and the economics of science. She has presided over projects such as the Youth Project and General Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China. Her research findings have been published in journals including the Journal of International Economics, Research Policy, and Management World.

Paper information：

Shumin Qiu, Claudia Steinwender, Pierre Azoulay. (2025). Paper tiger? Chinese science and home bias in citations. Journal of International Economics, Volume 157, 104123.

Link：

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022199625000790