While the OP probably has figured things out by now, there might be others.
There are quite a few things that have that funny phrasing where you need to be a “nobel prize winner, or a professor, or a an associate professor, or a researcher, or having a PhD, or having written a specialized book” etc, and it can be difficult figure out what you really need.
This type of fuzzy phrasing appear for instance on
- Plum blossom APRC
- Academic and Bussiness Travel Card
- Biometric collection exemption
etc
To my understanding the interpretation of these rules are by some sort of (secret) point system. You get more points for being a professor than by a mere PhD. And you (presumably) need to get a certain score to get what you are applying for.
Also an application for these with a mere PhD diploma, publication list and some other certificates is going to fail. Spoke at immigrations about getting that travel card and they showed how they expect an application to look like. It was like 1000+ pages. They said they want the applicants to include their publications, theses, books, … rather than just having publication lists and ISBN numbers. Crazy but guess MOE, who judges academic credentials, might not have access to all journals so they can judge your work otherwise.