学术评价中的“巴别塔”问题——以我国会计及财务研究为例

The “Tower of Babel” Phenomenon in Research Evaluation:Taking China's Accounting and Financial Research as an Example

经济的全球化发展,带动了学术市场的全球化。然而,世界范围内语言存在巨大差异的现实,使得学术评价的跨语言进行面临难以逾越的障碍,稍有不慎,就会带来弱势语言的学术成就(尤其是人文社会科学)面临系统性低估的风险,本文将之称为学术评价中的"巴别塔"问题。以会计与财务研究领域中的中国问题研究为对象,本文实证比较了中文期刊与英文顶级期刊在原创性方面的表现,结果发现中文期刊在中国问题研究的原创性上并不逊色,部分还领先一步。这一实证发现,支持了学术评价中"巴别塔"问题的存在。最后,在上述基础上,提出了减轻"巴别塔"问题的对策,并说明了本研究的局限。本文并不否认英文顶级期刊在中国问题研究上的先进性,也不否认在过去二十余年中国会计及财务研究国际化的成就,本文的主旨是运用科学研究的方法,阐述并检验发表在中文期刊的研究成果在学术评价上是否受到了低估,并找到了有说服力的支持性证据,对未来如何开展更好的国际化具有一定的启发。

The globalization of the economy brings about the globalization in academic research.However,due to great chasms among different languages in the world,cross-language research evaluations face big hurdles.This can easily bring systematic under-valuation of research outputs(especially those in social science)published in under-privileged languages.We call this the"Tower of Babel"phenomenon in research evaluations.Using China-related research articles in accounting and finance as an example,we compare the originality of ideas between research articles published in Chinese journals and those published in top English journals.We find that articles published in Chinese journals do not lag behind those published in top English journals in terms of originality of ideas and that many Chinese articles are more original.This result supports the existence of the"Tower of Babel"phenomenon in research evaluation.We also propose strategies to alleviate the"Tower of Babel"phenomenon.