Some foreign magazines, such as Scientific American, also offer feedback to readers in every issue. Readers' understanding and opinions on certain experiments or their suspicions over a certain passage will be published.

If market-oriented development is an inevitable choice for science magazines, "localization" may be another necessary step. Whether the introduced magazine can survive or not in the target country depends on whether the information it carries is understandable and interesting to readers there.

Yan Qi was formerly the executive editor of the Chinese version of Newton, a popular Japanese science magazine. In her opinion, "localization" is not aimed at a certain circulation volume, but is a kind of concept. She said that when she was the executive editor, every issue presented a Chinese scientist along with his or her achievements.

"By doing so, we don't mean to focus solely on Chinese scientists, but want to show that balanced attention should be paid to scientific development both at home and abroad, as the efforts and achievements made by Chinese scientists are also very important," said Yan.

"Scientific achievements are the common treasure of humankind, so our ultimate goal is to present to our readers the most valuable information, no matter it is from China or any other country," Yan added.

The Chinese version of Newton is considered to always keep Chinese values and ways of thinking in mind, and thus is a typical example of successful "localization." Differences in historical and cultural backgrounds, as well as in people's values, demand different pictures, ways of expression and even styles for the same issue of the same magazine.

"What to extract and what to delete is based on our knowledge of the appreciation level and receptiveness of target readers," Yan said. "The localization of a foreign magazine is to be achieved by fully incorporating the essence of the original version, which is supposed to be most attractive to Chinese readers."