South China Sea (East Sea)Research indexBản tiếng Việt

Methodology

Finding documents

Documents are found in three ways. Open metadata: an automated process searches OpenAlex and Crossref and collects metadata only (title, authors, year, DOI, citation count), never full texts. For scholarly works with a DOI, the process selects by a fixed, public rule: the title contains keywords for the South China Sea and related place names, then works are ranked by citations relative to age within each period of years, with a cap on entries per journal and per first author. This selection is a method of searching, not a criterion for inclusion: every entry must still meet the criteria in the Editorial policy. AI-assisted search: AI tools are used to suggest primary instruments, Vietnamese-language works and other sources that are hard to find by machine; every suggestion is checked as described below. RSS feeds of some research institutes. Candidates are only suggestions: the operator decides which documents are added.

Parameters of the automated selection rule

This section publishes the parameters of the selection rule in “Finding documents” so that others can reproduce it (run of 20–21 October 2026):

  • Data source: Crossref (open metadata). Types: journal articles, book chapters, books and edited books.
  • Search keywords: south china sea, spratly, paracel, scarborough shoal, scarborough reef, gulf of tonkin, beibu gulf, natuna, reed bank, second thomas shoal, nine-dash line, west philippine sea, east sea vietnam, nansha, xisha, huangyan, biển đông, hoàng sa, trường sa.
  • Periods and quotas (first pass): 2000–2009: 90 entries; 2010–2014: 110; 2015–2019: 80; 2020–2026: 100. A supplementary pass added Vietnamese-language queries and gave priority to authors affiliated with institutions in the seven parties.
  • Ranking: citation count divided by the work’s age (2026 minus the publication year, plus one); ties are broken by DOI.
  • Caps: at most 12 entries per journal and 3 per first author (counted across all passes); natural sciences and economics at most 25% of each pass; a fixed list of low-quality or predatory publishers is excluded; entries whose country of publication cannot be determined are excluded.
  • Every selected entry must still pass verification and the Editorial policy.

Year of publication

An entry’s year is the year of the print edition recorded in the publisher’s record. An earlier online-first date, where there is one, is not used as the entry’s year. For reissued books, the page links the edition cited.

Source balance figures (as of 28 October 2026)

The site sets no fixed quota for the share of sources. The figures below are published so that readers can judge for themselves; the home page also shows the share by place of publication and updates automatically with the collection.

By country of publisher (1,264 documents): third countries 78.1% (UK 333, Netherlands 232, United States 144, Singapore 91, Switzerland 68, Germany 62…; the UK, Netherlands and United States alone account for 709 entries, 56.1%); Vietnam 8.5%; other claimant parties (Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Taiwan) 10.0%; China 2.1%; international and intergovernmental bodies 1.2%.

By country of the first author’s institution (847 entries where it is known, 67.0% of the collection): China 34.7%; Vietnam 12.0%; Indonesia 6.6%; Australia 6.5%; United States 6.4%; United Kingdom 4.3%; Philippines 4.1%; Taiwan 3.9%; Singapore 3.3%; Malaysia 3.2%. The seven parties together (Vietnam, China, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Taiwan) account for 66.2% of the entries where it is known.

Limits of interpretation: the publisher’s country is not the author’s nationality; the institution’s country comes from OpenAlex and is missing for about 33% of entries (mainly books, chapters and instruments); only the first author is counted for each entry. The figures change as the collection changes and are recalculated at each update.

The site stores only metadata, its own short summaries and links to the original source. It does not store or republish full texts, PDF files or original abstracts of third parties.

Verification

Every document is verified before publication:

  • With a DOI: the DOI is checked against Crossref or OpenAlex and the title is matched.
  • Without a DOI: the link to the official page is checked.
  • Manual verification where needed.

The date and method of verification are shown on each document’s page. A document that cannot be verified is not published. This is meant to keep out documents or DOIs that do not exist, including ones invented by AI.

Summaries

  • A summary is normally 2–3 sentences, in Vietnamese (at most 80 syllables) and in English (at most 60 words). A work with only a title to go on (no usable abstract) and some short instruments may have a single sentence, so that the summary does not infer beyond the information available; such entries state that the title was the basis. As of 28 October 2026, about 42% of summaries have a single sentence.
  • A summary describes and attributes to the author (“The author argues that…”); it does not state the document’s views as the site’s own and avoids evaluative adjectives.
  • AI tools may help draft; the operator reviews. Entries prepared with AI assistance are labelled as such.
  • A summary is based on the document’s abstract, on metadata only, or on the full text; the page states which basis was used.
  • The original abstract is not published. An automated check ensures a summary does not repeat 8 or more consecutive words of the original.

Translation

Document titles are translated faithfully into Vietnamese and English; the original title is always kept.

Updates

The site is intended to be updated weekly. Links are checked periodically each month; broken links are fixed or replaced by an archived copy.

What is not here

There is no AI assistant or chatbot answering readers; search runs in your own browser over a static index.