Chinese Articles Receive High Citations in Nature Communications, Science Advances, and PNAS, but not in PLoS ONE or Scientific Reports
Our investigation [1] reveals that PLoS articles with a Chinese first author seem to have citation disavdantage. Similar phenomenon is observed in Scientific Reports. In 2025, Chinese aurthors published 15,806 articles in Scientific Reports, accounting for 32% of the total publications in the journal. However, these 15,806 articles have received an average of 3.02 citations each, ranking 37th among the nations published more than 20 articles.
On contrast, Nature communications articles with a Chinese first author published in 2025 received an average of 13.4 citations, ranking 1st among the nation published more than 20 articles in the journal. Chinese articles in Science Advances and PNAS also exhibit good performance, ranking 3rd and 2nd in those journals, respectively.
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The 5GH Team also notes an abnormal pattern that PLoS ONE and Scientific Reports articles by Western Asian authors receive high citations. Further investigations are needed to clearify this abnormality.
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