Human Geography
LI Jie, ZHAO Yaxuan, WANG Hongxi, LI Lingling, ZHU Hong
The establishment of the National Social Science Fund (National Social Science Fund) project is not only an important symbol of the scientific research strength and organizational ability of each region, but also reflects the development trend and hot direction of the discipline field. Existing bibliometrics studies focus more on bibliometrics analysis, and less on the perspective of national social science projects. Using the National Social Science Foundation project database as the data source, this paper collected and analyzed the projects whose provinces, regions, and cities were in Guangdong Province from 1994-2021 for statistical analysis, and used methods such as bibliometrics and knowledge map to describe the knowledge picture of social science research in Guangdong Province reflected in the national social science project in Guangdong Province. The results showed as follows: (1) During the study period, a total of 4 794 national social science projects were established in Guangdong Province, ranking fourth among all provinces, regions, and municipalities (excluding Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan), with an average annual growth rate of 15.7%. Among them, there were 3 211 general projects, youth projects and later funded projects, and 444 major projects and key projects, all of which were higher than the national average. (2) The project disciplines mainly focus on the applied economy, Chinese literature, linguistics, and sociology, with keywords such as "carbon emission", "leisure agriculture", "tropical climate", "rural tourism" and "rural revitalization" as the research themes. The research results are mainly monographs, papers, reports, and these combined, large-scale surveys, computer software, and reference books are lacking. (3) The project approval units are mainly institutions of higher learning, among which, Sun Yat-sen University, Jinan University, and South China Normal University have a large number of projects, while Guangzhou University and Guangdong University of Foreign Studies have made significant progress in recent years. (4) The number of projects initiated by the core hosts reached 57%, but the number only accounted for one-tenth of the total number of project leaders. The discipline of the core host is sociology. Overall, the number of national social science projects in Guangdong Province has increased steadily, and the projects are mainly concentrated in a few key universities, superior disciplines and core hosts. In the future, based on maintaining superior disciplines, Guangdong Province should focus on expanding non-superior disciplines, cultivating competitive scientific research institutions, building scientific and reasonable research echelons including senior, middle-aged, and young scientists, forming a situation that includes a wide variety of subject area, and further strengthening the strength of social science research in Guangdong Province.