25considerable proportion of the articles published in the field of higher education in
Asia originate in Hong Kong, consistent with the findings of previous literature
(Kim et al. 2017 ; Jung and Horta 2013 ). Another stable publication trend is the pre-
dominance of East Asian countries in the international publication of higher-educa-
tion research. The higher-education systems in these countries were established
earlier than those in West, South, Southeast and Central Asia (Jung and Horta 2013 ).
In terms of change, several countries were responsible for the production of
higher-education knowledge during the 1980s, and those in the ‘others’ category
were the highest producers during this period. Promisingly, after several years of
fairly low but steady production, these countries have collectively begun to contrib-
ute more to the international pool of knowledge in higher education since the early
2000s. However, these countries have the potential to contribute even more, as their
aggregate production from 2011 to 2015 was exceeded only by Hong Kong and
China. If this trend persists, the contribution of researchers across Asia to interna-
tional higher-education research is likely to become more balanced in the near
future. Hong Kong researchers continue to contribute most to higher-education
research in Asia, because Hong Kong’s higher-education system is an educational
hub boasting some key Asian flagship universities and a highly internationalised
and well connected academic community, within which English is (not unproblem-
atically) the main language used in publications (Lo 2016a, b; Lo and Ng 2015 ;
Choi 2010 ). However, Hong Kong should be understood as something of an outlier
in the region due to these educational features and its status as a multicultural hub;
it is sometimes regarded as a foreign territory within Asia (even by mainland
Chinese students studying in Hong Kong; see Yu and Zhang 2016 ).
The rapid growth in China’s contribution to higher-education research began in
the early 2000s, partly as a result of national policies designed to increase the
research capacity, internationalisation and visibility of the Chinese academic com-
munity. The number of Chinese-authored publications in all disciplines has increased
substantially (Breznitz and Murphree, 2011 ). The growing contribution of Chinese
researchers to internationally published higher-education research is also related to
the accelerated development of China’s higher-education system. In addition, knowl-
edge production in China is becoming increasingly outward looking, as intended by
the Chinese government (Chen and Hu 2012 ). However, these incentives to publish
are balanced by problems with research quality (Feng et al. 2012 ) and research integ-
rity (Yang 2015 ; Zeng and Resnik 2010 ). The increase in higher- education publica-
tions in Taiwan, Malaysia, South Korea and Singapore since the early 2000s, despite
their specific characteristics and thematic concentrations (see Kim et al. 2017 ), fol-
lowed national efforts to promote these countries’ research and development systems
as global knowledge hubs by increasing not only their knowledge production and
visibility but university prestige, networking and innovation (Lee 2015 ).
In the 1980s, researchers based in India also made a key contribution to the
higher-education research produced in Asia; however, following a decline and sub-
sequent growth in the 1990s, their production has substantially decreased, reaching
a low but steady publication rate during the early and late 2000s. It would be useful
to understand why the Indian contribution to the international higher-education
community has reached a plateau. Meanwhile, Japan-based researchers made a
2 Higher-Education Researchers in Asia: The Risks of Insufficient Contribution...