About Journal of Zhejiang University Science B

Journal of Zhejiang University Science B

The Journal of Zhejiang University Science B — styled by its publisher as Journal of Zhejiang University-SCIENCE B, and abbreviated JZUS-B — is an English-language monthly peer-reviewed journal of biomedicine and biotechnology published in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, by Zhejiang University Press in collaboration with Springer. It carries the print ISSN 1673-1581 and the online ISSN 1862-1783. The journal was created in 2005, when the Journal of Zhejiang University-SCIENCE was formally split into two separate journals: JZUS-A, focused on applied physics and engineering, and JZUS-B, focused on biomedicine, biochemistry and biotechnology. It is indexed in MEDLINE, PubMed Central and Science Citation Index Expanded, and it presents research from China and abroad to the world's scientific community in monthly issues distributed internationally through Springer's platform.

Origin: the 2005 split of Journal of Zhejiang University-SCIENCE

The journal's history is documented in its own pages. An editorial analysis published in the journal in 2009, reviewing its citation performance, records that in 2005 Journal of Zhejiang University-SCIENCE was split formally into two distinct sections, making them in fact two separate journals: JZUS-A for applied physics and engineering, and JZUS-B for biomedicine, biochemistry and biotechnology — a step the editorial explains is taken to benefit readers and contributors as disciplines expand and become more specialised. A peer-reviewed guide to Chinese biomedical journals likewise records 2005 as the first year of publication under the present title, with twelve issues a year, the two ISSNs above and the National Library of Medicine catalogue number 101236535. The parent title dated from 2000, so JZUS-B inherited a running journal and re-founded it as a specialist biomedical title. A third sibling, covering computers and electrical and electronic engineering, later became Frontiers of Information Technology & Electronic Engineering, leaving A and B as the two Journal of Zhejiang University-SCIENCE titles.

Publisher, place and editorial structure

The journal is published by Zhejiang University Press in Hangzhou, the home city of Zhejiang University, in collaboration with Springer Science+Business Media, which distributes it internationally on the SpringerLink platform as journal number 11585. Bibliographic records give its editorial address at Zhejiang University's Xixi Campus on Tianmushan Road in Hangzhou. Wikipedia's record of the journal names Wei Yang of Zhejiang University and Peter H. Byers as its editors-in-chief, a Chinese and an international pairing that matches the journal's stated working method: manuscripts are peer reviewed by an international editorial board of distinguished foreign and Chinese scientists. The journal sits inside a substantial university publishing house — Zhejiang University's journals centre records that it publishes twenty-two academic journals, fifteen of them in English, with JZUS-B listed among the English titles alongside JZUS-A, the World Journal of Pediatrics and Hepatobiliary & Pancreatic Diseases International. JZUS-B is thus not a stand-alone venture but the biomedical flagship of one of China's largest university journal programmes.

Aims and scope

Springer's aims-and-scope statement defines the journal in one sentence: it is an international journal that aims to present the latest developments and achievements in scientific research in China and abroad to the world's scientific community. Its coverage is biomedicine and biotechnology and biochemistry, together with life-science subjects related to them, such as plant and animal sciences and environment and resources. Scopus-based classifications place it across biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology, medicine, pharmacology, toxicology and pharmaceutics, and veterinary science — a spread that reflects the journal's willingness to publish work at the boundaries of laboratory life science and medicine, from molecular studies through to animal and plant biotechnology. That breadth within the life sciences, rather than a focus on one disease or one organ system, is the journal's identity: it is a general journal for biomedicine and biotechnology in the way that its sibling JZUS-A is a general journal for applied physics and engineering.

Article types and how manuscripts are handled

JZUS-B publishes research articles, reviews and science letters, in Springer's summary. The journal's own author guidelines give the fuller contemporary list of categories frequently published: Preview — also called a Communication or Letter, for rapidly and concisely presenting a preliminary study with innovative findings or a novel idea — Perspective, Article, Review or Mini-review, Correspondence and Editorial. The guidelines sit alongside the journal's stated apparatus of international peer review, CrossCheck screening, ethical requirements and copyright protection. That apparatus has a documented history of its own: the journal's 2009 editorial records that in 2008 JZUS-A and JZUS-B became, together, the first journals from China to join CrossCheck, the Crossref plagiarism-screening service, in order to protect the credibility of contributing authors and their articles. The same editorial records that in 2008 JZUS-B received a grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China — grant number 30824802 — described as the first such grant to a university journal.

Indexing and standing

The journal's indexing is unusually well documented. It is indexed in MEDLINE, and its full texts are held in PubMed Central — an early claim made for it, in its own introductory material, was that it was among the first Chinese journals accepted by PubMed Central and, at the time of that claim, the only one from China in its group. In 2008 it was taken into Science Citation Index Expanded, the Web of Science index whose coverage is the precondition for an official Journal Impact Factor; its own editors noted at the time that, as a newly included journal, it would wait until 2011 for its first official impact factor under the standard calculation period. Scopus coverage runs from 2005, the year of the split, and Scopus-based rankings in recent listings place the journal in the first quartile of its subject categories — a strong standing for a university-published title, and one that reflects two decades of monthly English-language publication. Its CODEN is JZUSAM and its Library of Congress catalogue number 2005243231, the 2005 imprint of its founding year.

The citation record and international authorship

The journal's 2009 SCI citation analysis gives an early, concrete picture of its readership: its articles were being cited by journals such as Colloids and Surfaces B — Biointerfaces, the Brazilian Archives of Biology and Technology, Comptes Rendus Biologies, the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry and the Journal of Hazardous Materials — a citing audience spread across biomedicine, agriculture, chemistry and environmental science, on several continents. The journal has maintained a citation database drawn from Web of Science since 2004, tracking how its A and B titles are cited year by year. Its article DOIs follow the pattern 10.1631/jzus.B followed by the manuscript number — as in the case report on metastasis of gastric carcinoma to the thyroid and lung, DOI 10.1631/jzus.B0900378 — a prefix that makes JZUS-B articles instantly recognisable in reference lists.

How to access and distinguish it

The journal is reached through its Springer page (link.springer.com/journal/11585), through its own site in the Zhejiang University journals system, and through PubMed Central for its open full texts. It should be distinguished from its siblings and near-namesakes: JZUS-A is the engineering title; Frontiers of Information Technology & Electronic Engineering is the former JZUS-C; and Zhejiang University also publishes separate Chinese-language journals, including the Journal of Zhejiang University (Medical Sciences), which is a different periodical with a different ISSN and language. Within this directory's China listings, JZUS-B is the Hangzhou English-language biomedicine title, print ISSN 1673-1581, online ISSN 1862-1783 — the identifiers that settle its identity in any catalogue.

Key facts

Journal: Journal of Zhejiang University Science B (Journal of Zhejiang University-SCIENCE B; JZUS-B). Place of publication: Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. Publishers: Zhejiang University Press with Springer Science+Business Media. Founded as a separate journal: 2005, by the split of Journal of Zhejiang University-SCIENCE. ISSN: 1673-1581 (print); eISSN 1862-1783. Frequency: monthly. Language: English. Indexing: MEDLINE, PubMed Central, Science Citation Index Expanded, Scopus. Scope: biomedicine, biotechnology and biochemistry, with related life sciences including plant and animal sciences and environment and resources. Article types: research articles, reviews, science letters, previews, perspectives, correspondence and editorials.