About Science China Earth Sciences

Science China Earth Sciences

Overview and identity

Science China Earth Sciences is the English edition of Scientia Sinica Terrae, published by Science China Press in Beijing under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Natural Science Foundation of China, with Springer distribution. It publishes original research across the earth sciences and is indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded. It is described in its own series context as among China's most cited earth-science journals, a standing consistent with its flagship status: it is the Academy series' journal of record for the geological and environmental sciences.

Earth science holds a special place in Chinese research. The country's geology, from the Tibetan Plateau to its cratons, basins and marginal seas, poses first-order scientific questions; its mineral, energy and water resources demand geological knowledge; and its exposure to earthquakes, landslides, floods and droughts makes earth science a public necessity. Science China Earth Sciences reports that research in English at flagship level, including landmark work on the Tibetan Plateau and the East Asian monsoon for which the journal is particularly noted.

Scope and signature research

The journal's scope covers geology, geophysics, geochemistry, climate, oceanography and environmental earth science. Geological coverage spans stratigraphy, palaeontology, tectonics, petrology and mineral deposits, much of it bearing on the assembly and evolution of the Asian continent. Geophysical coverage addresses the structure of the crust and lithosphere beneath China and its margins, imaged by the dense seismic networks Chinese institutions operate. Geochemistry addresses the composition and evolution of rocks, waters and the atmosphere, and the dating systems on which earth history depends.

The journal's signature themes deserve emphasis. The Tibetan Plateau, its uplift, its deep structure and its effects on Asian climate and river systems, has been studied by Chinese earth scientists more intensively than by any other community, and the journal is a principal English record of that work. The East Asian monsoon, its history in loess, lake and marine sediments and its dynamics in the modern climate system, is a second signature. Oceanography of the China Seas and environmental earth science, on pollution, carbon and land degradation, complete a scope that connects deep time to present environmental change.

The shared history of the Science China series

All Science China titles descend from a single ancestor. The series began in 1950 with the founding of a Chinese Academy of Sciences journal, published in Chinese as Zhongguo Kexue and in English as Scientia Sinica, which became China's flagship general science journal and published landmarks including the artificial synthesis of crystalline bovine insulin and Chen Jingrun's work on the Goldbach conjecture. In 1982 the journal divided into series, in 1989 the English version took the name Science in China, in 1996 it branched into lettered sub-journals by discipline, and in 2010 the whole family was renamed Science China, the letter designations replaced by discipline names, and publication in cooperation with Springer began in order to expand international distribution.

Today the series is jointly sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Natural Science Foundation of China and published by Science China Press, also rendered Science Press or Science China Magazine Press, in Beijing, in cooperation with Springer Nature. It comprises Chinese and English editions across the major disciplines of the natural sciences and engineering, all monthly and peer-reviewed, and indexed in the Science Citation Index system and Scopus. Each English discipline journal is the counterpart of a Chinese Scientia Sinica title, and each carries the series' founding mission: to present China's best fundamental research to the world in China's own flagship journals.

Indexing and standing

Science China Earth Sciences is indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded and in Scopus, with additional field-specific indexing noted in its profile where applicable. As a member of the Science China series it shares the series' standing: these are among China's oldest and most prestigious scientific journals, supervised by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and publication in them carries particular weight in Chinese research assessment. Their citation performance places them among the leading China-based journals in their disciplines.

The series model concentrates prestige. Rather than dispersing Chinese fundamental research across hundreds of domestic titles, the Science China journals collect the strongest work discipline by discipline under one historic brand, published monthly in English with global distribution through Springer. For international readers, a Science China title is therefore a reliable filter: its contents represent work that China's own flagship system judged significant, refereed to international standards.

Readership and authorship

Readers of Science China Earth Sciences are researchers, graduate students and specialists in the earth sciences worldwide, together with science-policy readers who use the Science China series to follow Chinese fundamental research. Authorship is led by Chinese institutions, the Chinese Academy of Sciences institutes and the research universities, whose scientists produce a large and growing share of world output in the earth sciences, and includes international contributors. All papers appear in English, the series' deliberate choice for its international editions.

For authors within China, the journal offers the combination of national prestige and international visibility: the imprimatur of the Academy-sponsored flagship series, monthly publication, and distribution through Springer Nature's platform into the libraries and search systems of the world. For the journal, that combination sustains a strong submission flow in a competitive market for China's best papers.

Assessment and continuing role

Science China Earth Sciences carries forward, in its discipline, a publishing tradition that began in 1950 and has documented Chinese science through its entire modern development. Its English edition exists so that the world's researchers can read that record directly, and its monthly volumes continue to add to it. In the earth sciences, where Chinese research now stands at or near the world frontier across many topics, the journal's role as the flagship English channel is more consequential than at any time in the series' history.

The journal continues monthly publication from Beijing under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Natural Science Foundation of China. Science China Earth Sciences remains the Science China series' journal of record for its field, and one of the principal titles through which Chinese fundamental research enters the international literature.

Disciplinary significance

Within Chinese earth science, the Science China title occupies a position that no commercial journal can reproduce: it is the discipline's own flagship, owned within the national academy system, edited by its leading scientists and continuous with a journal tradition reaching back to 1950. When the history of Chinese earth science in the twenty-first century comes to be written, its volumes will be a primary source, because the community's own institution chose this channel for a significant share of its most considered work, including the reviews in which research programmes are summarised and assessed.

The journal's international significance follows from the same fact. Foreign specialists in earth science who cannot read the Chinese literature, which remains far larger than the English literature of any single country, use the Science China journals as their systematic point of access to Chinese work, confident that the series' refereeing and prestige have already filtered it. In fields such as plateau and monsoon research, where Chinese groups now set part of the world agenda, that filtering function carries genuine authority in the international discipline.

The English edition and its Chinese counterpart

Each Science China English journal exists alongside a Chinese-language counterpart in the Scientia Sinica family, and the relationship between the two is one of parallel flagship publication rather than simple translation. The English edition selects and presents work for the world literature, in the world literature's language, while the Chinese edition serves the domestic scholarly community in its own language. Together they enact the series' founding purpose in both directions: Chinese science speaks to itself and to the world through journals it owns.

For the individual researcher, the English edition is the version that travels: it is the version indexed internationally, distributed by Springer, cited abroad and counted in global assessments. The sustained investment by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Natural Science Foundation of China in maintaining these English editions, monthly and to international production standards, is therefore a strategic investment in the visibility of Chinese science, and this journal is its instrument in earth science.