Development pattern, classification and evaluation of the tourism academic community in China in the last ten years: From the perspective of big data of articles of tourism academic journals

doi:10.1016/j.tourman.2016.03.007

Tourism Management

Volume 58, February 2017, Pages 235-244

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2016.03.007 Get rights and content

Abstract

This paper reports findings from an analysis of 16,024 tourism academic papers published in the major social science journals of China as ranked by CSSCI, and CSCD for the period from 2003 to 2012. The paper ranks and evaluates journals and institutions related to tourism, and thus shows a comprehensive picture of the academic development in China's tourism academic research over the decade. The paper used a creative research method to discover the phenomenon and issues not previously identified by researchers and provides a sound foundation to further develop big data analytical methods in China.

Section snippets

Research question

The decade from 2003 was a significant period of transformation for Chinese tourism development and research. By 2011 there were 1115 tertiary institutions approved by the Chinese Educational authorities to offer tourism education. This compares with 407 universities and institutes in 2002, a growth of approximately 10.6% per annum. At the same time the number of tour companies and hotels increased by 7.4% and 2.8% per annum. The numbers of staff involved in tourism teaching and academic

Literature view

Statistical analysis of an author's CV, topics, key words, and core discipline is an easy, effective, and frequently used method to identify the current situation, existing problems, and trends of a certain subject. In tourism research, many scholars have adopted this method for similar research, with many such articles being published in Tourism Tribune. For example, Zhao (2000) analysed the articles of Tourism Tribune from 1990 to 1999 to identify the authors' social-demographic profile and

Research method and sample

The general methods of measuring the contribution of authors, universities, and research institutes include, questionnaire survey, citation analysis, content analysis, and textual analysis. However, all such past analyses were based on small sample sizes. As discussed above, tourism is scattered across different subjects, and there are but only a few journals that contain “tourism” in the name of the journal, such as Tourism Tribune, which is one of the core journals recognised in Beijing

Results and discussion

The study analysed 16,024 tourism academic articles published in Chinese core journal database, CSSCI and CSCD database from 2003 to 2012. These articles were written by 13,608 authors from 2565 universities or institutions. Each journal published 20.44 papers on average, and each author published 1.18 articles on average, and each university or institute had 5.03 authors on average. This is the overall structure and character of China's tourism community in a recent ten year period. Because

Conclusion and discussion

This paper displays the pattern of development and the classification structure of the tourism academic community over the past decade in China, and draws a more comprehensive and systematic conclusion than previous studies. The method of research has a degree of innovation permitting the discovery of phenomena and problems that have not been revealed in previous studies. It also lays a certain foundation for promoting big data applications of Chinese tourism academic research. Compared with

Lingyun Zhang is a Professor and Executive Chief Editor of Tourism Tribune, the leading academic journal in tourism in Chinese language. He currently serves as the Executive Deputy Dean of the Tourism College, Beijing Union University. His former position was Dean of the Research Institute of Tourism Development, Beijing International Studies University, China.

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Chaoying Lan is a PhD student of Southwest University of Finance and Economics, majoring in tourism management. She holds a bachelor's degree in library science from Southwest University and worked in the library of Beijing International Studies University for many years. Her main research topics are tourism informatization, big data analysis of tourism industry, and tourism researchers' academic ranking, and tourism academic journal impact analysis.

Fei Qi is a PhD student of the Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. She holds a master's degree in tourism management from Beijing International Studies University. Her main research topics are tourism management and the development of the modern service industry.

Ping Wu is a graduate student of Beijing Union University, majoring in tourism management. She holds a bachelor's degree in tourism management from Central South University of Forestry and Technology. Her main research topics are tourism destination management, big data analysis of tourism industry, tourism researchers' academic ranking, and tourism academic journal impact analysis.

^☆: This paper was originally published in Chinese as: Zhang Lingyun, Lan Chaoying, Qi Fei, Wu Ping. Development Pattern, Classification and Evaluation of the Tourism Academic Community in China in the Last Ten Years: From the Perspective of Big Data of Articles of Tourism Academic Journals. Tourism Tribune, 2013, 28(10): 114–125.

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Development pattern, classification and evaluation of the tourism academic community in China in the last ten years: From the perspective of big data of articles of tourism academic journals☆

Abstract

Section snippets

Research question

Literature view

Research method and sample

Results and discussion

Conclusion and discussion

Tourism Management

Tourism Management

Tourism Management

Annals of Tourism Research

The concept of a tourist area cycle of evolution: implications for management of resource

Canadian Geographer

Study on inspecting and reconsidering the tourism research in China: taking the journal of tourism tribune as an example

Geography and Geo-Information Science

On the development of tourism as a discipline based on the analysis of doctoral dissertations on tourism studies

Tourism Tribune

Differences and gaps: the comparison study of PhD dissertations in tourism geography between China and North America

Human Geography

An analysis of the knowledge system of China's tourism research based on the analysis of keywords in tourism tribune

Tourism Tribune

Deconstruction and reconstruction: a new idea for the development of the discipline of tourism science

Tourism Tribune

Process and characteristics of tourism research development in China from 1979 to 2008: based on the statistics of domestic journals and papers

Progress in Geography

Population distribution of China

Acta Geographica Sinica

Assessing the influence and impact of China's tourism research journals

Tourism Tribune

Mapping knowledge analysis of tourism discipline research based on CSSCI from 2000 to 2010

Tourism Tribune

On the progress of China's tourism research in the past twenty years: academic trends as reflected in NSFC and NPOPSS full tourism foundation database

Tourism Tribune

On tourism discipline development from the perspective of tourism research literature

Human Geography