Case study: Science Bulletin

Challenges

Despite its already outstanding prestige and number of cutting-edge research papers published, the journal is still continuously pursuing its goal to attract a much wider international readership, and to increase the journal’s impact and scientific quality. To reflect such ambitions, the journal changed its name from Chinese Science Bulletin to Science Bulletin in 2015.

Xiao-Ya Chen, the former Editor-in-Chief of Science Bulletin, has expressed his hopes for the journal’s future. He aims to develop Science Bulletin into a leading journal that can provide the scientific community with timely and authoritative news, and provide valuable insights into developing trends around the world. Main challenges facing the journal include growing its international audience and encouraging more Chinese researchers to share their scientific discoveries in the publication. To overcome these obstacles, the Journal team looked for a well-known and well-recognized platform for assistance.

Solution

In 2017, Science Bulletin partnered with Elsevier, consigning publication to Elsevier Science Direct on behalf of Science China Press. To help with Science Bulletin’s international development and its aim to reach a wider audience and generate more downloads, Elsevier provides the following support channels:

Free access to cover stories

For every published issue, Elsevier provides all readers with free, three-month open access to cover stories opens in new tab/window, available on the Elsevier website. Readers around the globe can access the latest research immediately after publication to help foster scientific advancement.

Free access to all news stories

All news articles are freely accessible to help readers keep up with the latest scientific findings and enable authors to promote their research.

Monthly usage reports

To increase international readership and attract international authors, Elsevier provides analysis and usage reports each month for its partners to track the journal’s performance. This includes downloads per issue by country, usage per article type, market trends and geographical distributions. Elsevier helps Science Bulletin keep track of hot topics that generate the most interest among researchers, and analyze the scientific fields that leading countries focus on.

Multi-channel marketing promotion

Elsevier runs multiple global campaigns for Science Bulletin for journal promotion, including:

• Campaigns on highly cited papers, most downloaded papers, special issue papers, CiteScore, Impact Factor and to call for papers from interested readers and authors, and sending “thank you” emails to authors and reviewers to further engage the research community.

• Onsite marketing for the journal at international conferences.

• Social media marketing on platforms such as Twitter to promote cover stories, editor’s choice stories and article collections with an aim to generate broader interest from international readers. In 2020, Elsevier tested pay-per-click advertisement on Twitter for the first time with good results.

Publishing support

Local publishers and local journal managers are dedicated to providing effective and timely support to journal production and development.

Achievements

Since collaborating with Elsevier, Science Bulletin has grown dramatically in the following areas:

Increase in International impact

Since 2017, the journal’s  total citations increased dramatically, with the average citation per article reaching 500 per month. Among all article types, review  articles rank the highest with nearly 1200 monthly citations.

In 2020, Science Bulletin received its first CiteScore of 13.3, with an impact factor of 11.780, nearly 2.5 times greater than when it first joined Elsevier.

Increase in monthly downloads

With more than 48,000 total downloads in 2020, the journal’s monthly downloads increased by 206%  since Science Bulletin started collaboration with Elsevier.

High delivery rate in email and social media campaigns

By the end of 2020, Elsevier's global marketing team has sent out nearly 40,000 emails with a delivery rate of 91%. In November 2020, the journal’s Twitter ad received over 17,000 impressions in just nine days of promotion.

Enhanced quality and quantity with increased open access

Since 2017, we have provided global readers with open access to various articles of Science Bulletin including short newsletters, news and opinions, research highlights, reviews and communications. Readers outside of China can also easily and freely access  these articles via ScienceDirect.com opens in new tab/window, and we are continuously increasing the number of open access articles.

Summary of outcome

The rapid growth in scientific publications by Chinese researchers demands good platforms to disseminate their findings to the scientific community. Science Bulletin’s success in publishing with Elsevier demonstrates the importance of collaborating with an international publisher to achieve a journal’s developmental goals. In this strategic partnership, Science Bulletin has increased its reach, visibility and discoverability around the world using Elsevier’s systems, broad networks and marketing channels over the past four years. As an international publisher, we are very proud to help connect Chinese scholars with the international academic committees through this partnership.

– Wan Wan, Associate Publisher of Science Bulletin