Page 74 - Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.47, 2021

SU Xinning / The discipline system, academic system and discourse system of information science with Chinese characteristics 073

1998; in 2005, the Ministry of Education included information science on public security in the
undergraduate program, which led to the establishment of the Department of Information Science
on Public Security by the People’s University of Public Security of China that recruited full-time
[7]
undergraduate students ; in 2009, the Shanghai Information Center for Life Science of the Chinese
Academy of Sciences set up a master’s program in biological information science; and in 2018, the
first doctoral program in information science (first-grade discipline) for agricultural information
was set up in Nanjing Agricultural University.
After 1978, societies and associations in the field of information were established one after
another. In 1978, the China Society for Scientific and Technical Information was established,
followed by the establishment of societies of the same kind in various provinces and cities; in 1980,
the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Science and Technology,
the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Health of the People’s
Liberation Army, and the State Food and Drug Administration jointly established the Chinese
Medical Information Society with a number of social groups; in 1986, the Chinese Information
Society of Social Sciences was established; in 1988, the National Association on Scientific and
Technological Intelligence of Defense was registered as China National Association on Scientific
and Technological Intelligence of Defense in the Social Organization Department of the Ministry
of Civil Affairs in 1993, and was renamed as China National Association on Scientific and
Technological Information of Defense in 1998; in 1995, the Society of Competitive Intelligence
of China under the China Society for Scientific and Technical Information was established. At the
same time, almost all societies and associations in other industries have professional committees
related to information technology.
In conclusion, information science in China originated from the work on scientific and
technological information. The theories, approaches and techniques of information science are
mainly discussed around the workflow of scientific and technological information (literature),
and the relevant principles are mostly proposed around the patterns of literature. It can be said
that the work on scientific and technological information in China gave birth to the discipline of
information science, and the development of the discipline has in return injected new dynamics
into the work on information, driving its prosperity and development in the broader and deeper
context.

1.2 Overview on the development of information science with Chinese characteristics

As mentioned above, information science in China is mainly created based on the system and tasks
of work on scientific and technological information. The early work on scientific and technological
information in China was closely related to scientific and technological literature; as a result,
a lot of basic theories and research techniques of information science in the early days were
indistinguishable from those of library science, and many information institutes were derived from