Abstract: At the present time when the university system in China is growing, it is necessary for people to reconsider the process of evaluating scholarly productivity. The model of the Western university is honored because people believe that it leads to innovation, the creation of value. Therefore a closer understanding of scholarly productions, especially publications of books and journal articles, should be under going. Are there objective methods for the assessment of productivity? How valuable is counting numbers of publications, the simplest, crudest form of measuring productivity? The author urges Chinese scholars to understand that they should depend on close judgment of the content of scholarly work other than simple numbers.

Key words: innovation, measuring productivity, judgment, bureaucracy, content, university