According to recent news from Analysys International (Chinese site here), a Chinese research and consulting firm, a new search engine has launched that may be of use to researchers: Soshoo.com 搜数网 bills itself as the first free Chinese vertical search engine focusing on statistics and…

Continue readingdata, data, data: new search assistance?

Have been continuing to think about the educational website issue since I posted a few days ago on my recent experiences with a few educational/academic searches.  Several readers remarked that after all, they are able to access the sociology BBS from their
computers.  My point, however, was not to say that any particular site
is never open to…

Continue readingaccess to scholarly communication in Virtual China

I remember arriving in China in 1985 and noticing that there were no commonly used phone books, either white or yellow pages.  It was hard to find phone numbers, let alone addresses.  To find a new place you basically went to the general vicinity and asked the locals.  Now, with addresses and phone numbers changing so often due to urban…

Continue readingfinding places in Beijing

Just back from a recent trip around China, where I discovered many wonderful things.  Accessing academic information via publicly available websites, however, was not among them.  My sense is that the Chinese filters create a major obstacle for
academic research, certainly from the Chinese side but perhaps from
outside of China as well. A few data points don’t make a theory, but a…

Continue readingblocking educational websites=shooting yourself in the foot