Fireworks in the academic circle have begun again.
Many editor friends are flaunting their gold-embossed certificates in their social circles, and the flowers and applause in the comments could pile up like a mountain, as if the New Year had come early. There are also social science colleagues expressing their fortune in their circles—submitting to a general journal, but upon publication, it turned into a C journal, with a sense of relief in the lines that “choosing the right track is more important than running hard.” Immediately, someone replied, “Perhaps your article has gilded the journal?”
Jokes aside, the underlying tone of this collective celebration is actually an inescapable anxiety.
Currently, the CSSCI source (including the extended version) journal directory is no longer officially published. The Nanjing University Evaluation Center only issues inclusion certificates to selected journals, and in recent days, the academic circle has turned into a guessing game. Journals issue congratulatory notices, and netizens piece together clues in public accounts, with everyone playing detective, repeatedly comparing fragmented information—this task cannot be neglected, as it directly relates to whether the forms for title evaluation can be filled out, whether doctoral students’ defense applications can be approved, and whether the year-end KPI can be met.
The originally clear rules have turned into a hazy picture; on the surface, it seems to downplay journal rankings, but in reality, it amplifies anxiety tenfold. Previously, one could select journals based on the directory, but now one has to rely on rumors to place bets, even needing to keep an ear out for new developments while trying to sleep. This information asymmetry acts like an invisible whip, urging every researcher to keep moving forward.
Even more paradoxical is the hijacking of the evaluation system. When “how many C journals one has published” becomes the sole measure of academic value, the weight of the paper itself is overlooked. Universities looking to recruit talent focus on the number of C journal publications, doctoral students are stuck at the C journal threshold for graduation, and even applying for a project requires listing C journal papers at the forefront.
This logic of “evaluating by publication” is simple and crude yet unavoidable—it’s easy to determine whether a journal is a C journal, but assessing the true value of a paper is much more difficult. Thus, everyone tacitly chooses the most convenient solution, using journal rankings to replace academic judgment, simplifying the complex process of knowledge production into a numerical game.
Journals are also caught up in this game, struggling to keep up. Impact factors, download rates, and reprint rates have become the Damocles’ sword hanging over their heads; to maintain their footing in the biennial reshuffle, editorial offices are bombarding experts’ phones.
The editor-in-chief of a certain academic journal once candidly stated in an interview, “In the past, we waited for submissions; now we have to scramble for them.” The shift from passively waiting for manuscripts to actively soliciting them means that nine out of ten articles are from well-known authors. Some journal editors have it even harder; solicitation emails sent out seem to sink without a trace, yet they must grit their teeth and keep typing—there are only so many quality sources, and if they don’t grab them, they will be eliminated.
In this tug-of-war over journal rankings, no one is a winner. Researchers are trapped in publication anxiety, journals are caught in a data competition, and the truly valuable thoughts may be drowned out in this carnival.
Perhaps one day we will suddenly awaken: academia is not a game of chasing directories; those ideas polished late at night, those results painstakingly achieved in the lab, should inherently carry their own weight.