We've been in China since last Friday and I am just now able to connect to TypePad. No idea why the selective access to certain sites, eg Google products and AOL. But I'm on now, so I'll take advantage of it.
I was able to interview three folks this week. Saturday I spoke with a post-doc at Tsing Hua University. She studies computational chemistry. The other three scheduled on Saturday were rescheduled for when I return to Beijing. Their professor had other plans for them that day, and he certainly has priority over me. I interviewed her on campus in a classroom in the HuaTian Chemistry Building. There is no wireless access, but each room has wall jacks for high speed internet.
I also interviewed an aerospace engineer who studies propulsion fuels, and a climatologist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who studies the climate's effects on agruculture and soils. Both have PhD's in their fields and have been working for 5+ years. Both interviews were conducted in a hotel room in WangFuJing, Beijing using high speed internet access.
All three had excellent English reading abilities, although speaking English was considerably less than excellent for two of them.
Here's what I've learned so far:
Mobile Devices
All three have cell phones and use them for phone calls only. All three devices are web enabled but they do not use that feature unless absolutely necessary due to high costs. Emails cost 24RMB per message sending and receiving, and internet access is charged by the kilobyte.
Familiarity with ACS
All three were familiar with ACS Publications but not so much the society services side. They were not aware they could become members as international participants. The student had access to ACS pubs through her university in the same fashion as US universities. TSU provides a portal to all db's and publishers sites. She has the portal page bookmarked as well as ACS advanced search page. She only searches through ACS publications when there is a specific citation she is looking for. Otherwise, she goes to her preferred db's: Web of Knowledge or SciFinder.
The two scientists use databases use databases for their searches. They are familiar with SciFinder but also use Chinese products for their research. They were also very familiar with ACS pubs, but had never gone to the site to search.
Connection Speed
Going through the TSU portal or accessing ACS pubs from my hotel, the time for delivery to the screen was very fast. The student did a test search for "computational chemistry" anywhere in article, which yielded about 37k articles, taking less than 5 seconds to load. Www.acs.org was also fast to load, taking about 5-6 seconds to load, both in the university and at the hotel in Beijing.
As an aside, I've did some browsing around all the ACS sites to see if anything was blocked or noticably slower than other pages. I have not noticed anything out of the ordinary--pages that are image heavy take longer, and www.acs.org drags as it does in the States, but nothing is blocked.
Translation
When asked if they would use sections of the site that were translated to Chinese, they all thought it would be a good idea, and they would probably look at it. As one scientist put it, "English is good; Chinese is better". However depending on its use, they may have less confidence that the content will be kept up as faithfully as the English versions of the same content. For example, when looking at www.acs.org's translation of the About Us pages, they thought the translation was welcoming and inclusive. However when discussing the process for submitting a manuscript, they thought it would add an extra step to the process because they would feel the need to compare the Chinese version to the English version to make sure they match up. This echos the sentiment of American scientists who are keenly aware of the importance of making sure the process for submitting a manuscript is followed to the letter.
It should also be noted that the reading comprehension abilities of all three participants so far is excellent, and they seem to have little trouble understanding scientific papers. They all used my ACS computer using Firefox, and had no trouble using English browser on English websites. The two scientsts were almost offended that I would suggest that there be translation just to accomodate them. When probed, however, they did admit that they do need to translate certain words when reading scientific text, and use online translators or translation software that specializes in scientific words.
As for language, since all those being interviewed are in mainland China, the preferred translation is to simplified Chinese. Traditional Chinese is generally read by Cantonese and Taiwanese.
Access to US Content
One thing I noticed from TSU, and plan to ask when at Beijing University, is that access to sites outside China, and not directly related to educational purposes, is charged to the student by the megabyte. Since internet access is granted through the university, they can charge either 1RMB per mb, or students can pay a monthly fee of 90RMB for unlimited access. This seemed strange to me, but I verified with other colleagues not related to testing, and they agreed this is typical.
More to come on this when I meet with the students from Beijing University.
