國際期刊審查港大教大論文地圖爭議

Journal that published paper last July will assess complaints, while EdUHK defends map’s focus on administrative boundaries, not coastlines The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK) premises in Tai Po. Photo: Handout An international journal has said it is looking into concerns raised over a map featured in a paper by an Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK) researcher, in which Victoria Harbour was omitted and the Kowloon Peninsula was merged with Hong Kong Island. A spokesman for the journal Humanities and Social Sciences Communications said on Wednesday that its “assessment is ongoing”, while EdUHK defended the map, saying it was neither a distortion nor an error but a cartographic characteristic based on administrative boundaries rather than land-outline or coastline data. An academic who spoke on condition of anonymity told the SCMP last week that the paper by Wang Cong, an associate professor at EdUHK’s department of Chinese language studies, was supported by the Research Grants Council (RGC), a non-statutory advisory body under the University Grants Committee. The paper was published last July and included a “highly absurd and severely flawed map of Hong Kong”, the complainant said. “The Victoria Harbour we are all familiar with is completely missing. Anyone with basic knowledge of Hong Kong geography can immediately spot the severe distortions and inaccuracies in the ‘map of Hong Kong’ used in the text.” The paper examined how the endangered Tanka language spoken by Hong Kong’s traditional boat people had distinct sound patterns, but how frequent daily contact with Cantonese had caused younger generations of Tanka speakers to adopt more Cantonese words and sounds, putting their language at risk of disappearing. The SCMP has reached out to Wang for comment. The map of Hong Kong cited in the EdUHK research paper, published last July in the journal Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. Photo: Handout Before contacting the SCMP, the complainant said he had also raised the issue with the journal’s editorial board and with publisher Springer Nature’s research integrity group. “They conducted an investigation but ultimately replied that there was ‘insufficient grounds to warrant any editorial action’ and closed the case entirely, showing no willingness to even request that the authors to correct this flawed map,” he said, adding that the research was supported by the RGC’s General Research Fund. Replying to the SCMP’s queries, a spokesman for Humanities and Social Sciences Communications said the journal was aware about the concerns raised. “Concerns have been raised with us regarding this article and are currently being considered by the journal in line with our established editorial processes. The assessment is ongoing, and it would not be appropriate to draw conclusions about the nature or cause of any potential issues before that process is complete,” the spokesman said. “Should we determine that any update to the scholarly record is warranted, we will take appropriate action.” Unhandled type: inline-plus-widget {"type":"inline-plus-widget"} An EdUHK spokeswoman said on Tuesday that the map was “manually created” using a software called ArcGIS Pro 3.0 and based on administrative boundary data rather than land-outline or coastline data. She said that a similar map was also publicly available on Hong Kong’s official government spatial data portal, and that Victoria Harbour was not visible on that map either. When the entire district areas are filled in with solid colours, they cover the water surface of Victoria Harbour, she explained. “It makes it appear as if the harbour is absent from the map. This is a cartographic characteristic, not a distortion or error,” she said.