Zhang is a Member of Governing Board, National Science and Technology Library, Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST); Vice Chair of the Academic Committee, Chinese Society of Library Science; Vice Chair of the Governing Board, STM Journal Society, CAS. He was a former Member of the Governing Board and Academic Committee, IFLA, from 2005 to 2009.
Zhang graduated from Sichuan University with a Bachelor of Science in physics in 1982, from Columbia University in the City of New York with a Master of Science in 1984, and a Doctor of Library Science in 1992. After joining NSL/CAS in 2001 he became Executive Director in 2003 and then Director of NSL from 2004-2015.
Zhang has been working in fields of Digital Library, Metadata and Knowledge Organization Systems, Scientometrics, Open Science, and Informational Infrastructure for e-Science and e-Learning. He was the Director for National Science Digital Library Initiative, CAS, and the Leader for the Chinese Digital Library Standards Development project funded by MoST. He has been instrumental in developing open access policies for CAS and NSFC, organizing Chinese participating in SCOAP3, coordinating Chinese positive responses to OA2020 initiative, and serving on consulting and committee roles to the development of Open Science policies in China. He has been leading the National Digital Preservation Program under MoST, and currently organizing the development of open data policies and services for ShanghaiTech University, a research-intensive and internationally-oriented institution. He has been active in research and services in the theories, methods, systems, and products in R&D planning, assessment, and integrative & diagnostic analysis of R&D development & impact. He is one of the Co-Editor-in-Chief for Journal of Data and Information Science (English, included in ESCI and Scopus), and Editor-in-Chief for Data Analysis and Knowledge Discovery (Chinese, included in Scopus and in the recommended lists by Chinese Computer Federation, CCF, and Federation of Management Societies of China).