Publish or impoverish: An investigation of the monetary reward system of science in China (1999-2016)

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to present the landscape of the cash-per-publication reward policy in China and reveal its trend since the late 1990s. Design/methodology/approach – This study is based on the analysis of 168 university documents regarding the cash-per-publication reward policy at 100 Chinese universities. Findings – Chinese universities offer cash rewards from 30 to 165,000 USD for papers published in journals indexed by Web of Science (WoS), and the average reward amount has been increasing for the past 10 years. Originality/value – The cash-per-publication reward policy in China has never been systematically studied and investigated before except for in some case studies. This is the first paper that reveals the landscape of the cash-per-publication reward policy in China.