CAS' new English data journal to aid research

China launched its first English-language data journal in Beijing on Tuesday, underscoring the growing strategic importance of scientific data in artificial intelligence-driven research worldwide.

Titled Data Express, the open-access journal is sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and edited by Yu Guirui, an ecologist and member of the CAS. It serves as the flagship of a cluster of 20 titles — one comprehensive journal and 19 discipline-specific publications — covering strategic fields including AI corpus research, ecosystem science, ocean science, lightning data, biomedicine, materials science and agriculture.

Sun Degang, Party secretary of the CAS Computer Network Information Center, said scientific data has become a strategic national resource in the era of big data and AI.

"Data journals serve as a crucial lever to encourage open data sharing, improve data governance, and empower new research paradigms," Sun said.

Yu noted that making high-value scientific data findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable — known as the FAIR principles — is a shared global challenge.

"Data Express is our response to that challenge. It not only fills a gap in China's high-end data publishing sector, but also offers a Chinese hub for global scientific data exchange, enabling barrier-free circulation and collaboration," Yu said.

Zhang Yun, deputy director of the CAS Bureau of Basic Capacity for Science and Technology, said data journals enable long-confined, high-quality scientific data — much of it generated by engineers and technicians at large-scale facilities and field stations — to be made accessible, giving due credit to contributors. Such data provides critical fuel for "AI for Science" and supports global research progress.

"Data papers are recognized as formal academic outputs," Zhang said, adding that the CAS is drafting guiding measures to encourage institutes to include such contributions in professional promotion and degree-awarding evaluations.

The cluster's design is anchored in China's national science data center system. The 19 discipline-specific journals correspond to established sub-centers across various fields, ensuring a steady pipeline of high-quality data submissions from the outset, Zhang added.

Zhang expressed confidence in the cluster's international competitiveness, noting that Chinese scholars already account for nearly 40 percent of the world's high-quality scientific papers.

Zhang Fan, deputy general manager of China Science Publishing &Media, whose SciEngine platform supports the cluster, said the initiative also addresses a long-standing vulnerability in China's academic publishing ecosystem — the "both ends outside" dilemma, where Chinese scientists publish their papers and store data on foreign platforms.

"Scientific data is a strategic resource, especially in the AI era. The data we feed into AI models may be even more valuable than individual papers. Keeping that data on a platform easily accessible for scientists is essential," Zhang Fan said.

The SciEngine platform is fully self-developed and domestically produced, and currently serves more than 1,000 journals. It connects directly with nearly 20 international databases, including Web of Science and Scopus, ensuring global visibility while retaining data sovereignty, he added.

"Unlike conventional articles that typically publish only positive findings, data journals also welcome well-documented negative or null results," Zhang Fan said, noting that these are particularly valuable in fields such as materials science for helping researchers avoid duplicating effort and for providing high-quality training corpora for AI models.

"Globally, data journals are a relatively recent development, with leading titles such as Elsevier's Data in Brief and Springer's Scientific Data emerging only around 2014," he said. "China's first Chinese-language data journal, China Scientific Data, was launched in 2016 — almost in step with global progress."

"Data journals are an integral part of the national strategy to build world-class scientific journals. This clustered launch places China in a strong position to run neck and neck with, or even surpass, international leaders in this emerging field," Zhang Fan said.