Some time ago, the Ministry of SCIence and Technology and the Ministry of Finance studied and formulated "Several Measures for Breaking the Bad Orientation of Sci-tech Evaluation (Trial)", and the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science and Technology jointly issued "Several Opinions on Standardizing the Use of Relevant Indicators of SCI Papers in Colleges and Universities to Establish a Correct Evaluation Orientation", trying to break the bad orientation of "Only Papers" and "SCI First" in sci-tech evaluation.

In fact, not only in the internal evaluation of science and technology, but also in the academic evaluation of humanities and social sciences, the supremacy of "only papers", "SSCI" and "CSSCI" also needs to be broken. This single evaluation orientation permeates the process of cultivating doctoral talents. In 2020, the total scale of doctoral enrollment will reach 654.38+10,000. The expansion of doctoral enrollment will not only bring about the continuous expansion of scale and quantity on the explicit level, but also have an unpredictable impact on a series of hidden levels such as training quality, education and academic ecology. Academic evaluation is an important baton for the goal and process of talent training, and it is also an important early warning device to ensure the quality of talent training. Reforming and perfecting the academic evaluation of liberal arts doctoral students is also a realistic breakthrough to break the simplification of academic evaluation.

Only "CSSCI" alienated the learning order.

At present, most universities require liberal arts doctoral students to publish at least two articles in C magazine before graduation. Undeniably, C-Journal is an important observation index of academic quality and academic output of universities, and the number of articles published by C-Journal directly reflects the scientific research competitiveness of universities. However, the direct application of the C-journal evaluation system to the academic evaluation of doctoral students violates the academic logic and the law of personnel training to a certain extent, which may reflect a kind of "lazy politics" of academic managers in system design, and does not rule out the possibility that some schools will pass on the "curse" of the ranking of GDP indicators of C-journal papers to doctoral students.

The number of journals that can be selected into CSSCI evaluation system is very small. In the context of increasingly fierce competition among journals, some journals not only reduce the number of manuscripts used and published, but also prefer scholar popularity and professional titles in manuscript selection in order to improve citation rate and manuscript efficiency. Doctoral students are just junior practitioners who have just entered the academic hall. As far as this group is concerned, the overall quality of their academic papers cannot compete with mature scholars. It will take them three years or even longer to conduct comprehensive training and systematic polishing in academic norms, academic quality and academic methods.

At present, in the CSSCI-oriented academic evaluation system, the order and objectives of doctoral training inevitably deviate substantially. Due to the scarcity of C periodical resources and the serious imbalance between supply and demand, many students can't graduate if they can't publish articles in C periodical, which leads to the direct motivation and main energy of students to read Bo are spent on the battle for C periodical resources. Undoubtedly, the expansion of doctoral students will once again intensify the competition for such resources, and a considerable number of tutors will be trapped in it. They will have to rack their brains and even use various relationships and strengths just to let students graduate smoothly as soon as possible.

Change the C-oriented evaluation method

It's just that the orientation of C-journal papers is essentially summative evaluation, which ignores the process evaluation of doctoral talent training and only pays attention to the final result of paper publication. As long as students publish articles, it is equivalent to getting the "admission ticket" for thesis defense, which is mostly a formality. The position and role of CSSCI evaluation in doctoral training and academic evaluation should not be mythologized. This does not mean denying the value of CSSCI, nor does it mean completely ignoring the indicators of CSSCI. However, its importance does not mean that rationality and legalization should be the "only goal", but that the supervision and guarantee of doctoral training quality should be improved through multiple evaluation and process evaluation.

At present, the single evaluation method oriented only by C journals is also an influencing factor for the high delayed graduation rate of doctoral students. On the basis of ensuring the quality of doctoral education, how to shorten the study period of excellent doctoral students in school is also an important issue worthy of consideration. Weakening the evaluation orientation of C journal is also an important measure to improve the graduation rate of doctoral students and ensure that doctoral students graduate within the normal academic system.

Adopting diversified evaluation and process evaluation does not necessarily mean lowering evaluation standards. On the contrary, it is more likely to improve the quality standard of personnel training on the premise of respecting academic logic and the law of personnel training. Academic evaluation of doctoral students is related to the overall quality of personnel training, which actually refers to large-scale and whole-process personnel training. This requires colleges and universities to give certain autonomy to various disciplines and majors in training. Based on reality, we should also learn from the experience of foreign first-class universities in talent training, and carefully examine and explore the existing evaluation system and standards and talent training process from a systematic and comprehensive perspective, so as to rationalize and optimize many links.

Attach importance to the process evaluation of doctoral training

First of all, reform the single evaluation method and guide it to diversified evaluation. The expansion of doctoral students will inevitably lead to a new round of "channel blockage" of C journal resources, and the evaluation of academic achievements should be diversified to alleviate this shortage of resources and publishing pressure. In addition to C-issue papers, publishing ideological and theoretical articles in authoritative newspapers and important media, as well as think tank articles, investigation reports and government decision-making reports, has become an important supplementary form of academic evaluation in many universities. In addition, with the in-depth development of the Internet, some universities have also invested in the evaluation of humanities and social sciences. Humanities and social sciences scholars have voiced their voices to the society through platforms and channels such as self-media and WeChat official accounts, which have produced certain social influence and can also be regarded as the result of academic output. Under this background, it is a trend to explore multi-channel and multi-form academic achievements, which requires a series of procedural and institutional explorations, innovations and norms, such as establishing evaluation standards for diversified achievements and strict expert evaluation.

Secondly, respect academic logic and strengthen the process evaluation of talent training. Generally speaking, the process evaluation of doctoral education in China is weak, even in name only, and the evaluation of doctoral students is still based on summative evaluation with strong instrumental orientation. From the experience of doctoral training in world-class universities, more attention is paid to a complete and rigorous academic logic and chain, process assessment and evaluation, strengthening the elimination mechanism, and emphasizing the high quality of dissertations, rather than just paying attention to the number of published academic papers. Specifically, the strict process assessment essentially covers the selection of tutors, course learning, guidance methods, academic training, qualification evaluation, triage elimination, and systematic links such as thesis selection, design, writing, evaluation and defense, and dissertation evaluation. Strict standards and standardized procedures should be formulated for each link.

For example, in terms of curriculum, many universities in China have a single liberal arts curriculum system, which is limited to a narrow field of internal research direction. It is not interdisciplinary and lacks reasonable professional guidance, and the course examination is relatively easy, so just hand in a simple course paper. The corresponding result is that students' academic qualifications are insufficient, the elimination mechanism of doctoral training is not strict, and the elimination rate is low. How to eliminate it needs to improve the corresponding standards, processes and mechanisms. For another example, doctoral students should pay more attention to the quality of dissertations. By weakening the publication of C-journal papers and supporting the incentive mechanism, students are guided to focus more on the writing of dissertations and on high-level and innovative academic research.

(Paul Hu is a doctoral student at the School of Foreign Languages of Nanjing Normal University; Dong Xiaobo, Professor and Doctoral Supervisor, School of Foreign Languages, Nanjing Normal University)

[Editor: Ding]