Promoting the spirit of Chinese scientists: The role and functions of Chinese STM journals *

Abstract

Since China released the Opinions on Further Promoting the Spirit of Scientists and Enhancing Work and Study Styles in 2019, the spirit of scientists has gradually become an integral part of the socialist spirit, and a high degree of attention has been devoted by the Chinese government to promoting scientists’ spirit. Through a historical review and comparative analysis, particularly of the evolving role played by Chinese STM journals (science, technology and medical journals), we propose that STM journals are an important venue for promoting the spirit of scientists. On this basis, and in view of the problems and challenges faced by STM journals under the new requirements in the new era, we suggest conceptual upgrades and mindset shifts that Chinese STM journals need to make to further promote scientists’ spirit. Finally, we introduce specific measures to implement these concepts.

1. Introduction

In recent years, China has repeatedly referred to the spirit of scientists in numerous documents and conferences. In 2019, the general offices of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and the State Council issued the Opinions on Further Promoting the Spirit of Scientists and Enhancing Work and Study Styles, laying out clear requirements for promoting the spirit of Chinese scientists, which includes patriotism, innovation, truth seeking, dedication, collaboration and talent cultivation, and underscoring the social responsibilities of the scientific community. In September 2020, General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out at a scientists’ symposium that scientific achievements cannot be separated from cultural support. The spirit of scientists is a valuable form of cultural wealth accumulated by scientists over their long-term scientific practices. In June 2021, the State Council issued the National Action Plan for Scientific Literacy (2021–2035), calling for greater emphasis on the steering role of the scientific spirit and urging specific efforts to practise the core socialist values and promote scientists’ spirit. In September 2022, the general offices of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council issued the Opinions on Strengthening Science Popularization in the New Era, stressing the importance of promoting scientists’ spirit and creating a social atmosphere of loving science and revering innovation.

As these overarching national designs in the field of science and technology (S&T) show, the spirit of scientists has become an integral part of the socialist spirit of the times; the promotion of this spirit is highly valued by the CPC and the state; and scientists’ spirit has become a vanguard value and key component of S&T communication and popularization (Ren et al., 2021). Unlike other content of science popularization, scientists’ spirit has its own features: it is closely associated with the scientific community, so its promotion is built on the social responsibilities of this community, which include not only scientists’ self-discipline and care to present a good social image but also their efforts to diffuse a culture of excellence and the values championed by the community to the wider society. In this process, STM journals (science, technology and medical journals), as important vehicles and media for recording the results of scientific practices led by scientists, are duty bound to pass on the spirit of scientists while undertaking the tasks of recording academic achievements, promoting academic exchanges and inspiring innovative ideas.

2. Chinese STM journals play an important role in promoting the spirit of scientists

The fundamental functions of STM journals, which originated from academic exchange activities within academic communities, are to make timely disclosures of the latest scientific discoveries and to disseminate and communicate new knowledge to a wider audience. Besides those commonalities, Chinese STM journals also serve the historical mission of national rejuvenation, from their founding to their development and maturity. Their mission to promote scientists’ spirit has evolved through several historical stages.

In the first stage (before 1949), the mission was to save the country and enlighten the people through science. At the time when modern science was introduced to China, the survival of the Chinese nation was threatened. Facing perilous domestic and international situations and a poor and weak country, Chinese intellectuals hoped to save their motherland and make it rich and strong by learning modern S&T, and journals were the main instrument for inspiring the Chinese people with scientific knowledge and wisdom. In 1915, the Chinese Science Society published the journal Science, which stated in the preface of its first issue that ‘in a civilized country, there must be an academic society for every field of learning and a journal for every society to publish the progress of its academic research and the invention of new theories’ (Science editor, 2015). Peking University Monthly, founded in 1919, was one of the first academic journals to be published in China with the name of a university in its title; its publication confirmed the role of universities as the main publishers of academic journals. In addition to publishing research articles, journals also served as an important base for promoting new cultures and new ideas. The establishment of early Chinese STM journals reflected the common will of Chinese intellectuals at that time and passed on the valuable spirit embodied in their pursuit of saving the country and the people through science.

In the second stage (1949–1978), the mission was to serve the country with S&T and inspire ‘a hundred schools of thought’. If the work of the Chinese Science Society contributed to the budding of modern science on Chinese soil, then, with the founding of the People's Republic of China, scientific research began to strike deep roots in the Chinese nation and grow out of the actual needs of the country and the people. Starting from that time, scientific research in China was no longer a ‘stream without a source’ or a ‘tree without roots’. Basing their work on the national conditions and actual demands, Chinese scientists concentrated on the task of building a socialist country and realizing the goal of ‘science for the people’. In January 1956, the CPC Central Committee held a national conference on intellectuals in Beijing with the aim of mobilizing intellectuals to actively participate in socialist modernization and launched a great call to ‘march towards science’. In April of the same year, the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee proposed at an expanded meeting the policy of ‘letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend’. STM journals, in which S&T workers can express their views on S&T issues on an equal basis as authors and engage in free discussions in the spirit of scientific democracy, are an important venue for the contention of a hundred schools of thought. From 1958 to 1959, Hua Loo-Keng published a series of academic papers in Acta Mathematica Sinica, which were later combined into a long paper titled ‘Theory of harmonic functions on typical domains’ and published in the 10th National Day special issue of Scientia Sinica in 1959. In 1977, Tu Youyou published a paper titled ‘Artemisinin: A new type of sesquiterpene lactone’ in the Chinese Science Bulletin in the name of the Artemisinin Structure Research Collaborative Group. The discovery of artemisinin helped reduce the mortality rate of malaria patients in China and around the world. Chinese STM journals have witnessed the prosperity and maturity of modern science in China and recorded the bumper fruits of modern science.

In the third stage (1978–2012), the mission was to rejuvenate the nation with science and education and serve as the main battlefront of economic development. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping reiterated the basic Marxist view that ‘science and technology are productive forces’ at the National Science Conference. In the following year, he went one step further with his famous assertion that ‘science and technology are the primary productive forces’. As part of the working class, a vast number of S&T workers actively responded to the call and threw themselves onto the main battlefront of economic development with unprecedented enthusiasm. Driven by the support of national policies and the development of S&T, China's STM journals made rapid advances. The republication of old journals and the launch of new journals took the development of Chinese academic journals into a period of high-speed growth. During this period, the scale of journals expanded year by year, the management of journals was further standardized, and new technologies for editing, printing and distribution were being developed. A large number of STM journals quickly took the stage.

While responding to the needs of domestic development and serving the requirements of the main battlefront of economic development, STM journals also shouldered the mission of leading scientific ideas and values. Most notably, at critical moments of public emergencies, Chinese STM journals always put the interests of the country and the people first and took responsibility upon their shoulders with timely technical support. For example, during the 2003 SARS outbreak, the Chinese Journal of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases, under the leadership of its editor-in-chief, Zhong Nanshan, took the lead in organizing a team of experts to develop a SARS treatment plan, which was published as a special issue of the journal and delivered right away to the medical personnel fighting the deadly virus in the field. The special issue played a key role in the successful control of the SARS epidemic in China and provided a valuable reference for the global fight against the disease. In the wake of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, the Chinese Journal of Geophysics immediately solicited papers and published relevant research articles, which provided valuable information for earthquake relief work and related geological research. Because of their strong academic sensitivity and social responsibility, Chinese STM journals have set the direction for academic studies at critical moments and provided S&T safeguards for China's national development.

In the fourth stage (2012 to the present), the mission is to stimulate original innovation and build a country strong in S&T. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, China has stepped up the implementation of its innovation-driven development strategy and taken self-reliance and self-improvement in S&T as the strategic foundation for the country's development. It is understood that innovation is the primary driving force of development and that science, technology and innovation (STI) are underpinned by the spirit of scientists and focused on seeking truth. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, China has made a number of major S&T achievements in manned space flight, lunar exploration, deep-sea engineering, supercomputing, quantum information, large aircraft manufacturing and other fields. In addition, China has marched towards scientific frontiers in areas such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, integrated circuits, life and health sciences, brain science, biological breeding, aerospace technology, and deep-earth and deep-sea exploration. Chinese STM journals are an important force in building an innovative country in the new era.

On 30 May 2016, at the National Conference on STI, the Conference of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Engineering Academicians and the Ninth National Congress of the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST), General Secretary Xi Jinping encouraged Chinese S&T workers to contribute their wisdom to the country and take part in the great cause of modernization with their S&T achievements. In areas of strategic importance to the country, such as quantum communication and aerospace engineering, Chinese STM journals have endeavored to raise China's voice on the world stage and publish the latest research findings. In this way, they have played a pivotal role both within the scientific community and in society at large.

As far as the scientific community is concerned, Chinese STM journals have demonstrated to the world the extraordinary wisdom and research capabilities of Chinese scientists and secured their place in the world of science. These results are the embodiment of the spirit of patriotism, innovation, truth-seeking, dedication, collaboration and talent cultivation. For society as a whole, Chinese STM journals have communicated to the public the rational and empirical spirit of science and transferred these cultural forces to the process of cultivating and shaping socialist core values. Unlike the general process of science popularization, which focuses on disseminating scientific knowledge and methods to the public, this type of communication builds on the unique function of STM journals to present the contributions of scientists and promote scientists’ spirit in a natural way.

Looking back on the past, Chinese STM journals have borne witness to the relentless pursuit and struggle of Chinese scientists over a century; looking to the future, Chinese STM journals carry the ideal of building China into a country of self-reliance and self-improvement in S&T. In this connection, STM journals must ground their work in the present, find the key issues that await immediate solutions and explore their important role in the country's overall S&T development, as that is the only way for them to hold their ground in promoting scientists’ spirit and bring into play their unique function.

3. Problems and challenges faced by Chinese STM journals under the new requirements in the new era

Although ‘advocating the scientific spirit and establishing scientific thinking’ has been an integral component of citizens’ scientific literacy, the National Action Plan for Scientific Literacy (2006–2020) puts government officials and civil servants on top of the list of professions and especially requires them to undertake the task of promoting the scientific spirit, advocating scientific attitudes and adopting scientific methods. The updated National Action Plan for Scientific Literacy (2021–2035), for its part, encourages S&T workers to participate in science popularization activities and creations and to contribute their share to nationwide scientific literacy campaigns. Under current conditions, the 2021–2035 action plan places special emphasis on the pivotal role of scientists’ spirit in shaping public values and defines promoting that spirit as one of S&T workers’ responsibilities to society. Due to their independence, dedication and professional accomplishments, S&T workers have established themselves as pioneers in practising the spirit of scientists. In the meantime, the 2021–2035 action plan states that actively promoting the spirit of scientists is the responsibility and mission of all S&T workers. They need to consciously practise the spirit of scientists, encourage young people to join the cause of S&T, abide by the code of scientific ethics, and serve as role models in promoting scientific literacy for all.

Comparing government documents from different periods, we can see that the CPC and the state have set higher requirements for S&T workers in the new era. Because of this, STM journals, which mostly publish contributions by S&T workers, should also answer the call of the CPC and the state and provide solid support for further promoting scientists’ spirit and building an advanced socialist culture with Chinese characteristics. However, looking at the development of STM journals in China, it is clear that, although their ability to serve STI has greatly improved, some problems have arisen that must be addressed to meet the new requirements of the new era.

The first problem is putting the number of citations before the quality of the content and deviating from the original purpose of running the journal. At present, affected by the unhealthy practice of ‘evaluating papers based on the journals where they are published’ and the excessive use of the so-called ‘impact factor’ in the process of quantitative assessment, Chinese STM journals are blindly following international trends, as they believe that is the only way to gain visibility and attract citations. To achieve a higher level of self-reliance and self-improvement in S&T, we need to foster a number of high-level STM journals that are able to publish innovative achievements in the light of the country's needs. We need to put STM journals on a track conducive to the country's STI, rather than passively following the track of Western countries and losing sight of the long-term goal of achieving self-reliance and self-improvement.

The second problem is focusing more on innovation and less on popularization, and thus seriously compromising the public visibility of S&T achievements. China's STM journals have tended to confine academic communication to the community of scientists or researchers, and no platform for positive interactions between the scientific community and the general public has yet been established. The absence of STM journals in in-depth science popularization has reduced the visibility of STM achievements, and thus the public's perception of science remains at a surface level. Apart from the scientific value, the application value, economic value and cultural value of S&T achievements are not yet fully accessible.

The third problem is caring more about knowledge but less about culture, with the result that the cultural power of science has not been fully released. In China, science was developed through learning from the West and advanced in a reverse order of ‘artefacts–institutions–ideas’ (Dong, 2007). As a result, scientific culture is not developing as quickly as the progress of S&T. In the case of Chinese STM journals, most papers are devoted to recording and spreading professional scientific knowledge, and it is unusual for papers to explore the cultural value of science. Due to a lack of a humanistic touch, science has a cold face in China. Thus far, the cultural power of science has not been fully released. The lack of scientific culture has become a major constraint on the healthy development of S&T in China (Han, 2020) and made it difficult, if not impossible, for China to achieve the long-term prosperity of S&T.

4. Further promotion of scientists’ spirit requires a mindset shift in Chinese STM journals

Since modern science entered China, STM journals have always been a key arena for Chinese S&T workers to promote the scientific spirit. Under current conditions, there is a real urgency to promote the spirit of scientists. In order to meet the new requirements of the new era, Chinese STM journals must enhance their awareness in terms of the following three aspects.

4.1 Returning to the original academic purpose and building a stage for communication on an equal footing

STM journals were created to serve the need for academic communication within academic communities. Before the creation of the journals, scientists of the ‘Invisible College’ used letters to discuss academic problems or report detailed records of experiments. In 1665, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society was established, marking the birth of a new form of literature: the STM journal. The transition from academic exchange by using letters to the founding of the first academic journal was a qualitative leap and marked the beginning of a process that continues today. The informal personal communication of scientists turned into a formal form of publication through the recognition of the academic community. By way of publication, STM journals undertake the functions of authenticating, refining, disseminating and preserving scientific knowledge and provide a platform for the exchange of information. They are the academic community's main vehicle for internal and external communication. On the other hand, the internal culture and implicit consensus embodied in free-minded communication and mutual promotion among scientists provided the practical basis for the creation of STM journals, and the inherent spirit of academic independence and freedom is still well preserved and carried forward.

STM journals entered China along with modern science and inherited the spiritual core of the Invisible College. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, especially after the beginning of the reform and opening-up policy, STM journals answered the call of the CPC Central Committee and provided an important venue for ‘a hundred schools of thought to contend on academic issues’. The Science & Technology Review is a typical example. As a comprehensive public academic platform, the journal has made responsible interventions in the making of major national decisions and facilitated open and free discussions on major issues to do with S&T, engineering and modernization, such as the South-to-North Water Diversion Project, the development of high-speed railways and the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, by publishing papers representing conflicting views (Xiong, 2017).

Chinese STM journals have also provided a voice for Chinese scientists in international academic circles. In 2019, the English-language journal National Science Review (NSR) published a special issue on ocean drilling in the South China Sea. In the introductory chapter of the issue, Professor Wang Pinxian noted that the new discoveries made by ocean drilling in the South China Sea challenged the universality of passive margin evolution, which was a popular concept at the time. The concept raised in the special issue is far from mature, and the geodynamics of the South China Sea will remain a highly controversial issue for years to come. In 2020, Professor Wang revisited the topic in an interview on the 70th anniversary of the founding of Scientia Sinica and the Chinese Science Bulletin, in which he exulted in the fact that it might be difficult to publish such articles in foreign journals and that only in China's own journals would it be possible to publish all of those results in a single issue, like a clenched fist (Zhao, 2020).

In 2021, General Secretary Xi Jinping wrote in a letter to the editorial board of the Journal of Literature, History and Philosophy that high-quality academic journals should keep to their founding purpose, lead the direction of innovation, showcase high-level research results and contribute to academic exchanges between China and the rest of the world. The founding purpose of STM journals is to promote academic exchange, and the character of public participation is what distinguishes them from other forms of communication. Such a feature makes it easier to promote science and democracy and to create a free and equal atmosphere for discussion in the academic community.

4.2 Paying attention to science communication and bringing science into public life

Since their creation, STM journals have assumed both the key function of internal communication in the academic community and the important role of presenting and promoting the latest achievements of the scientific community to the public. These two functions go hand in hand. As a matter of fact, many internationally renowned scientists who have made major breakthroughs in their scientific work will often disclose their research results in advance in leading international journals such as Nature and Science, and, when their academic papers are published, the public response will be even warmer. Nature, Science and other journals are not only supporting communication and cooperation within the academic community but also taking the general public as their target audience, so that the public can better understand and love science. The mission of Nature is ‘to place before the general public the grand results of scientific work and scientific discovery’. Similarly, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which is the publisher of Science, has set as its primary goal ‘to enhance communication among scientists, engineers and the general public’ in order to ‘promote global science, engineering and innovation for the benefit of humanity’.

STM journals are not only a collection of knowledge but also the crystallization of the process of truth seeking and the wisdom of the truth-seekers. This process includes elements such as the use of scientific methods, the transmission of scientific ideas and the fostering of the scientific spirit, which are the embodiment of humanity's pursuit of goodness through rational means. However, due to the sophistication and specialization of modern science, the connection between science and the public has become somewhat blocked, resulting in a rather ambivalent public attitude towards science. On the one hand, the public hopes that new advances in S&T can steadily improve living standards; on the other hand, the lack of understanding generates distrust (Jiang, 2019). The results of a survey of the scientific literacy of Chinese citizens show that journals are the most trusted source of S&T information for the public. Given the contradiction between the ‘distrust’ that a lack of understanding can generate and journals’ status as the ‘most trusted’ source of S&T information, STM journals have the responsibility and obligation to jump out of the small circle of the scientific community and to face society directly. They need to bring science into public life and re-establish the public's trust in and recognition of science. To achieve this, STM journals need to find their own position in the framework of science popularization and work together with popular science publications to promote the public's understanding of and participation in science. By doing so, they can take their function of publishing S&T achievements further and undertake the more meaningful task of promoting the scientific spirit.

It is encouraging to note that our colleagues in Chinese STM journals are already actively thinking about and exploring this issue. According to a survey, STM journals attach great importance to the communication of innovative results in the public domain, and they are using a variety of presentation methods to ‘translate’ the latest S&T achievements in the ‘Ivory Tower’ into content of public interest (Weng et al., 2022). STM journals, especially those covering comprehensive topics, possess unique academic resources. Building on their professional authority and brand and taking advantage of the communication strengths of new media, they can break through the communication barriers between professionals and non-professionals, take the general public as the target audience of science communication, and thus improve public recognition of scientific achievements. For example, on 4 November 2021, Science China Press put up a post on its WeChat public account—‘Yes, it's true that a review of flexible wearable sensor research by Su Bingtian will be published soon’—as a warm-up for the article ‘Scientific athletics training: Flexible sensors and wearable devices for kineses monitoring applications’, which was scheduled to be published in its affiliated journal, Scientia Sinica Informationis. The post triggered readers’ interest and recorded a daily readership of 2.7 million, which was much higher than other posts on the WeChat public account. The NSR's WeChat posts, such as ‘How the broccoli you eat is transformed into cancer-fighting molecules: Find the answer in NSR's latest research’ and ‘NSR headlines: Chinese scientists report on the physical and chemical properties of the Chang’e 5 lunar samples, laying out the basic framework for follow-up studies’, provide readers with professional and popular interpretations of scientific findings. These good examples fully demonstrate that appropriate forms of science communication carried out by STM journals are a unique means for the scientific community to give back to society and are also an effective way to rebuild public trust in science.

4.3 Enriching the humanistic dimensions of science and building a scientific culture with scientists’ spirit at its core

Science is a system of knowledge by which human beings learn about the natural world, a social activity of the scientific community and a social institution that interacts and communicates with other subsystems of society. The body of science includes not only special knowledge and skills but also conceptual interrelations, a world view and a view of the nature of man and of knowledge (Harvard University Committee, 1945). As vehicles for recording scientific activities, STM journals are the material basis for promoting scientific exchanges. The role they play in the scientific establishment through exchanges, reviews and citations among the scientific community is an extension of their original function. Through the popularization of scientific knowledge, dissemination of scientific methods, propagation of scientific ideas and promotion of the scientific spirit, they represent the core connotations of scientific culture at the conceptual level.

STM journals represent the organic integration of scientific culture at three levels: the artefact level, the institutional level and the conceptual level. More importantly, excellent STM journals also reflect the humanistic concerns of science (Wang et al., 2013). For example, in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, the international medical journal The Lancet not only traced the development of the virus itself but also explored the psychological shock of the pandemic and its far-reaching impact on society as a whole, including the growing inequality of the global health-care system, the escalation of global gender inequality and domestic violence, the inequitable distribution of vaccines worldwide and infection risks associated with racial differences, fully demonstrating the humanistic aspect of medical science.

In a lecture in Montreal in the 1970s, Joseph Needham said that humanity must recognize what could not be done and what should not be done, and argued that the ethical thinking seen in China, Japan and throughout Southeast Asia was the only magic bullet that could correct the biased scientific view in Western societies. Modern Chinese scientific culture is based on the traditional Chinese cultural legacy and was formed along with the introduction, absorption and development of modern science in China. In the difficult process of learning and assimilating modern science and exploring a path of scientific development suited to China's conditions, Chinese intellectuals blended the scientific culture of Western origin with the fine indigenous culture of China, giving birth to a Chinese scientific culture with the spirit of scientists at its core. Chinese scientists, who devote themselves to the pursuit of scientific excellence, are the embodiment of the spirit of scientists, and Chinese STM journals, with their functions of recording scientific practices and presenting S&T achievements, are the vehicles underpinning that spirit. With rich academic resources, STM journals have both the ability and responsibility to explore the cultural connotations behind them.

In 2018 and 2019, Science & Technology Review launched a series of special features on centenaries of the births of scientists. In 2020, on the 70th anniversary of the founding of Scientia Sinica and the Chinese Science Bulletin, the Chinese Science Bulletin planned a series of interviews on the theme of ‘I and Scientia Sinica / Chinese Science Bulletin’. The publication of the special features focused on presenting the scientific spirit, patriotic devotion and sense of responsibility of Chinese scientists. Chinese STM journals are committed to promoting a scientific culture with scientists’ spirit at the core, shaping the cultural concept of ‘S&T for good’ within the scientific community, and harnessing the power of S&T to advance human welfare. They are dedicated to creating an institutional environment and social atmosphere that support science, ensure well-regulated scientific development and cultivate the cultural soil of science, as well as presenting the fine traditions and distinctive characters of Chinese scientific culture in the international arena and contributing Chinese S&T to the building of an international scientific community with shared values.

5. Measures for Chinese STM journals to further promote scientists’ spirit

China now attaches great importance to promoting the spirit of scientists. However, due to the problems of STM journals, such as excessive emphasis on citations, insufficient science popularization and inadequate attention to culture, academic publication has deviated somewhat from the spirit of science. In addition to initiatives at the conceptual level, including returning to their original academic purpose, paying attention to science communication and enriching the humanistic dimensions of science, Chinese STM journals should also take the following measures to further promote the spirit of scientists both within the academic community and in the wider society.

Bring into play the academic review function of journals and promote a sound academic environment that encourages innovation and tolerates failure. Academic reviews are an important part of academic exchanges, and conducting academic reviews is an important means for STM journals to promote the development of S&T. Some scholars have pointed out that scientific reviews help researchers to gain a deep understanding of the meaning of scientific propositions and to locate areas for breakthroughs in innovation. They can also increase scientists’ sense of social responsibility and scientific ethics. Starting with the ‘Preamble’, ‘Reader's guide’ and ‘Editor's note’, journal editors should step up their training efforts and provide professional and standardized guidance on academic reviews to help the authors develop a solid foundation of professional knowledge as well as the ability to make the right judgements and choices. Extensive academic reviews will help to foster a sound academic environment that encourages innovation and tolerates failure, and will gradually reverse the current approach of quantitative evaluation that relies too much on a journal's impact factor in assessing article quality.

Further leverage the role of journals in shaping values and creating a social atmosphere of loving science and revering innovation. Communication of the spirit of scientists is the basis for carrying that spirit forward, and a common understanding and recognition of the scientific spirit is a critical link for communicating the spirit. With the results of scientific research as their main content, STM journals are committed to exploring the underlying cultural aspects of scientific activities, giving outstanding scientists and their teams greater publicity and coverage, advocating morality and ethics in S&T, and presenting the behavioral norms and values shared by all S&T workers in a more visual form. When the spirit of scientists becomes an advanced element leading the development of social culture and assumes the function of nurturing the popular culture, a cultural atmosphere of respecting science, revering science and loving science will emerge in society.

Construct an international exchange platform and contribute to the building of a scientific community of shared values characterized by academic communication and mutual cultural learning. Science originated in the West and has played an important role in the evolution of Western civilization. However, the development of civilizations is diversified and uneven and can be divided into different historical stages. At present, the rapid advance of STI has become an important part of China's cultural elements and has received worldwide attention. In the effort to show China's grand vision and commitment to the world, along with its achievements in STI, scientific culture provides the bond, and the spirit of scientists functions as the core. To further promote the spirit of scientists, STM journals should make active efforts to build international exchange platforms, enhance academic connectivity through communication and promote mutual learning between civilizations.

In recent years, through the Chinese STM Journals International Influence Enhancement Programme and the Chinese STM Journals Excellence Action Plan, many high-quality English-language STM journals have been introduced to the world. Meanwhile, under the Bilingual STM Journals Dissemination Project launched by CAST, long bilingual summaries have been drafted and translated for high-level Chinese-language STM journals. These projects are all dedicated to communicating China's academic achievements in S&T and promoting academic exchanges and cooperation between China and the rest of the world.