Historical development and global standings: Charting the cartography of humanities and social sciences research in East Asia

Abstract

The last 3 decades have witnessed a rapid development of research in East Asia. However, most research attention has been paid to science and engineering, overshadowing the progress made by the humanities and social sciences (HSS) research in the region. Meanwhile, there exist taken-for-granted assumptions that East Asian HSS research lags behind, which, we argue, are often made without comprehensive bibliometric evidence. As such, this study conducts a bibliometric investigation into the HSS research outputs produced by five East Asian research systems. It reveals the historical trend (between 2000 and 2023) and the current global standings of HSS research in East Asia—including its quantity, global connectivity, quality, and impact—with reference to a few globally leading systems that are traditionally considered as the center of the world HSS research. The study shows that East Asia has become an important and powerful global player in HSS research, as reflected in the large volume of research outputs, the wide global network of research collaboration and East Asian researchers’ leading roles in collaboration, the good quality of the journals in which researchers publish their research, and the global impact of the outputs in terms of citations.