Figure 1.

Flowchart of the research process. ^a, Combined search conditions: “AD=(China or Taiwan or Hong Kong or Macau or Macao or Hongkong) and WC=[(Pharmacology & Pharmacy and Oncology) or (Integrative & Complementary Medicine and Oncology)] and Indexes=SCIE and Timespan=2008-2012”. AD is a field tag for address and WC is Web of Science Category which is used to narrow search to specific fields of study; ^b, Institutions were from the author information supplied by the 675 articles. Since the emphasis of this research is placed on collaborative linkages between Chinese units, records of authors belonging to a non-Chinese institute were removed. Besides, we standardized institutional affiliations supplied by the authors; SCIE, Science Citation Index Expanded.