About Automation of Electric Power Systems

Automation of Electric Power Systems

Automation of Electric Power Systems is a Chinese-language journal of power-system automation published in Nanjing, Jiangsu, by Automation of Electric Power Systems Press, with ISSN 1000-1026. Known in Chinese as Dianli Xitong Zidonghua, it is one of China's most-cited power-engineering journals. Scopus coverage recorded in SCImago-derived profiles runs from 1996 to the present, and the journal is ranked in the first quartile (Q1) across computer science applications, control and systems engineering, electrical and electronic engineering, and energy engineering and power technology. It covers dispatch automation, protection and smart grids — the technologies by which electric power systems are monitored, controlled and operated.

A Journal Devoted to Controlling the Grid

An electric power system cannot simply be built and left to run. Generation must match demand second by second, faults must be isolated before they cascade, and flows across a continental network must be continuously monitored and adjusted. The discipline that does this is power-system automation, and Automation of Electric Power Systems is the Chinese journal devoted to it. Its Chinese title, Dianli Xitong Zidonghua, states the subject directly.

The journal is published in Nanjing, a city whose importance in this field comes from the concentration there of China's power-automation research and manufacturing. Index-derived profiles name its publisher as Automation of Electric Power Systems Press, while researcher-directory records associate the journal with the Nanjing Automation Research Institute — the institute from which China's power-automation industry grew. That Nanjing base is part of the journal's identity, distinguishing it from Beijing's society and grid-company journals.

Bibliographic Record and Indexing

The journal's ISSN is 1000-1026. SCImago-derived profiles record Scopus coverage from 1996 to 2025 and assign the journal an h-index well into three figures in those profiles, with several thousand citations — 7,871 in one three-year window reported by a directory summary — a citation volume that places it among the most influential Chinese-language engineering journals in its field. Its SCImago Journal Rank has been recorded above 1.3 in recent summaries, with Q1 standing in all four of its subject categories.

CiteScore figures in directory records stand at 6, again high for a Chinese-language title and evidence that the journal's papers are heavily used by the large Chinese power-engineering research community. These metrics are reported here as directory records of the journal's standing, and they support the description of the journal in the candidate record as one of China's most-cited power-engineering journals.

Scope: Dispatch, Protection and Smart Grids

The journal's documented scope covers dispatch automation, protection and smart grids. Dispatch automation is the computerised monitoring and control of power systems from control centres — the SCADA and energy-management systems through which operators see and direct the grid. Protection is the relaying and fault-clearing technology that detects short circuits and abnormal conditions and isolates them in fractions of a second to protect equipment and prevent blackouts. Smart grids, the field's modern frontier, bring digital sensing, communication and control deep into distribution networks and to the integration of renewable generation and flexible demand.

Around those three anchors sits the wider automation territory the journal's subject classifications indicate: control and systems engineering applied to power, computer applications in power systems, and the information and communication technologies of the modern grid. The journal is where Chinese research on operating the grid — as distinct from building its lines and substations — is principally published.

Position Among China's Power Journals

China's power literature divides naturally by subject. Proceedings of the Chinese Society for Electrical Engineering is the society's general flagship; Power System Technology concentrates on grid technology broadly; High Voltage Engineering on insulation and high-voltage technique. Automation of Electric Power Systems holds the automation ground: it is the title a Chinese researcher in dispatch, protection, control or grid informatics reads first and cites most.

Its Q1 rankings across four categories — including computer science applications and control as well as electrical engineering and energy — reflect that cross-disciplinary position. Power automation sits at the meeting point of electrical engineering, control theory and computing, and the journal's indexing profile shows it being recognised in all of those literatures simultaneously.

Scale of Publication

SCImago-derived journal-value tables credit the journal with several hundred documents a year — 442 documents in the 2025-based table, and figures of a similar order, between roughly four and six hundred, in the historical ranking tables for years such as 2008 and 2016. That is the output of a major national journal, far beyond a quarterly review, and it indicates a large, active research community submitting to the journal continuously.

Sustaining that volume in Chinese, over the three decades of its Scopus coverage, makes the journal a substantial archive of how China automated the world's largest power system — from the early dispatch-automation systems of the 1990s through to today's smart-grid and renewable-integration research.

Readership and Authors

The journal's authors and readers are the engineers and researchers of China's power-automation world: university departments of electrical engineering, the research institutes of the grid companies, the manufacturers of protection, control and dispatch equipment concentrated in Nanjing and elsewhere, and the operating staff of dispatch centres. For that community the journal serves simultaneously as research record, technical reference and professional common ground.

Because power-automation practice is highly standardised and safety-critical, papers in a journal of this kind often have direct operational significance: a protection scheme, a dispatch algorithm or a wide-area monitoring method published here may be taken up in real control rooms. That practical weight is part of why the journal's citation record is so strong within China.

Language and International Visibility

The journal publishes in Chinese. Its international visibility therefore comes through its indexing: Scopus coverage since 1996 means its papers are discoverable worldwide by title, author and subject, even though the full texts serve a Chinese-reading audience. The dual naming in the indexes — Dianli Xitong Zidonghua alongside the English Automation of Electric Power Systems — is the standard pattern for major Chinese journals and is how the journal appears in SCImago and related services.

Researchers outside China who work on power-system operation encounter the journal through those indexes and through the citations of Chinese authors publishing internationally, for whom this journal is a standard reference for the Chinese state of the art in grid automation.

Distinguishing the Title

The journal must be distinguished from similarly named titles in the same Nanjing ecosystem. Electric Power Automation Equipment concentrates on the devices of automation; Power System Protection and Control on protection and control as a specialty; the Journal of Modern Power Systems and Clean Energy is an English-language international title from the State Grid research system in Nanjing. Automation of Electric Power Systems is the senior, general journal of power-system automation itself, identified by ISSN 1000-1026 and its dedicated press.

That identification — title, city, publisher, ISSN — is the record preserved in this directory, together with its documented Q1 standing and Scopus coverage.

Why the Journal Matters

Every modern grid runs on automation, and China's grid is the largest modern grid there is. The journal that has documented Chinese power-system automation since before its 1996 Scopus coverage begins — through dispatch automation, protection and into the smart-grid era — is a central source for the history and current practice of that technology. Automation of Electric Power Systems earns its place in this directory as one of China's leading engineering journals: Nanjing-based, Chinese-language, internationally indexed and heavily cited in the field it defines.