Measuring Effects of Language Barriers on Knowledge Spillover from Scientific Journals

Language barriers have a negative effect on knowledge spillover process. Scientific journals are main carrier of scientific knowledge, and the mutual citations between scientific journals depict the paths and directions of knowledge spillovers. This paper selects six Chinese scientific journals (three Chinese-language journals and three English-language ones) from three disciplines in Web of Science as samples, constructs journal citation networks respectively with JCR database, and compares network topology parameters and evolution process of these journals from 2005 to 2009. We establish a measurement model of knowledge spillovers by defining network topology parameters as substitutional variables to measure the impact of language barriers on knowledge spillovers. Finally, this paper proposes a suggestion on how to overcome negative effect of language barriers on Chinese scientific journals.