On December 26, the unveiling ceremony of the Chinese Evaluation Center for Humanities and Social Sciences (CECHSS) took place in Beijing. Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) President Wang Weiguang, Vice Presidents Zhao Shengxuan and Zhang Jiang and Secretary-general Gao Xiang attended the ceremony. Wang Weiguang and Zhao Shengxuan unveiled the new center and Wang Weiguang gave a significant speech.

Photographed by Zhu Gaolei

The Chinese Evaluation Center for Humanities and Social Sciences launched in Beijing

 

"The evaluation center should produce its flagship programs by setting up a series of evaluation systems", Wang Weiguang urged, "They include evaluating academic journals on humanities and social sciences in China and CASS innovation projects; a rating system for think tanks throughout the world; assessment frameworks for analyzing general development of humanities and social sciences, selecting outstanding academic papers, as well as outstanding academics books." To establish an objective and impartial evaluation system, capacity building is very important. Profession knowledge and skills such as bibliometrics are necessary for researchers at the center. “Evaluation should be based on sufficient and professional research”, Wang added.

 

"Academic research is a matter that has been important in every era, and academic evaluation is significant for all generations," said Gao Xiang, who chaired the ceremony. In order to work efficiently, Gao emphasized the importance of studying Marxism and theories of socialism with Chinese characteristics while following the appropriate scholarship standards. He also said that the CECHSS needs to be aware of the cutting-edge topics in humanities and social sciences, and have a broad and solid academic foundation and purview. In addition, he called for applying both quantitative and qualitative methodologies so as to establish a truly scientific evaluation system and form indicators that can be accepted by the majority of international scholarship.

 

Gao echoed that impartiality and integrity are especially important for evaluation. “Our evaluation must be able to stand the test of the academia and time", he concluded.   

 

Based in CASS compound, CECHSS is jointly managed by CASS's Social Sciences in China Press and CASS's library. According to the release, CEHSS aims to develop an authoritative evaluation system for humanities and social sciences and so as to play a guiding role for academic research and participate in international scholarship evaluation. 

 

From 2013, CECHSS will produce annual evaluation reports on the achievements of CASS's innovation projects and academic journals. From 2014, it will launch an annual "National Social Science Evaluation Forum" and release the series "Annual Report on Comprehensive Evaluation of Chinese Social Sciences". It will also release a "Global Think Tank Rankings" annually from 2015.