About Journal of Wuhan University (Natural Science Edition)

Journal of Wuhan University (Natural Science Edition)

Overview and identity

Journal of Wuhan University (Natural Science Edition) is a Chinese-language comprehensive academic journal of the natural sciences, based in Wuhan, Hubei. Its own journal-information page states that it was founded in 1930, is sponsored by Wuhan University and is administered by the Ministry of Education. It is currently bimonthly, publicly distributed domestically and internationally, in A4 format with 112 pages, published on the 24th day of even months. Its identifiers are ISSN 1671-8836 and CN 42-1674/N.

Those details, taken directly from the journal's official information page, give this title an unusually complete public identity. A reader can establish, from the journal itself, when it began, who sponsors it, who administers it, how often and in what physical form it appears, and the two numbers — an international ISSN and a Chinese domestic CN number — by which it should be cited and shelved. This profile is built on that official record, on the documented history of Wuhan University, and on the clear distinction the journal itself requires between this Chinese-language edition and a separate English-language Wuhan title described below.

History since 1930

A founding date of 1930 places the journal two years after its sponsor acquired the name National Wuhan University in 1928, and early in the life of one of China's earliest comprehensive national universities. The journal's own site carries a dedicated historical study, A brief history of Journal of Wuhan University (Natural Science Edition) in 1930–1949, published on the site in 2023, covering its first two decades as a separate period. The existence of such a history, and its division at 1949, underlines that the journal's early life belongs to the pre-1949 university as much as to the institution that followed.

By the end of 1946, according to Wuhan University's official history, the university had established a balanced framework of six colleges covering the arts, law, sciences, engineering, agriculture and medicine. A natural-science edition founded in 1930 and continuing through that period therefore served a university in which science was one established college among several, not an afterthought. Its survival into its present bimonthly form, with the honours and core-journal listings described below, represents continuity from that early comprehensive university into the much larger institution created by the merger of 2000.

Sponsorship, administration and the university

The journal is sponsored by Wuhan University and administered by the Ministry of Education. Wuhan University, in the university's own description, is a key comprehensive university directly under the Ministry of Education, among the prestigious 985 Project and 211 Project institutions and a pioneer in the Double First-Class initiative. Its origins trace back to 1893, to the Ziqiang Institute established by Zhang Zhidong, then governor of Hubei and Hunan in the late Qing dynasty. It took its modern identity as Wuhan National University in 1928.

A significant milestone came on 2 August 2000, when the former Wuhan University merged with Wuhan University of Hydraulic and Electric Engineering, Wuhan Technical University of Surveying and Mapping and Hubei Medical University. That merger greatly widened the scientific and technical base standing behind a comprehensive natural-science journal: hydraulic and electric engineering, surveying and mapping, and medicine joined the original university's sciences in a single institution. Today, the university states, it offers programmes across 13 major disciplines, including philosophy, economics, law, education, literature, history, science, engineering, agriculture, medicine, management, arts and interdisciplinary studies, organised in six faculties and 37 schools in one recent official account. The natural-science edition's comprehensive scope should be read against that breadth.

Scope and character as a comprehensive natural-science journal

The journal describes itself, in English translation on its own page, as a comprehensive academic journal of natural sciences. Comprehensive, here, is a scope statement: the journal is not limited to mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology or earth science alone, but is open across the natural sciences taught and researched in a university of Wuhan's range. That is the same model as other Chinese comprehensive university journals, but in this case the claim is carried by a university whose science base was enlarged in 2000 by institutions distinguished in water resources and electric power, and in surveying and mapping — fields that sit between the pure natural sciences and engineering and that give a Wuhan comprehensive journal a distinctive local colour without narrowing its stated remit.

The journal's own page adds a statement of editorial character: it has always adhered to high academic taste and high editorial quality. That is the journal's description of itself, and it is supported, in institutional terms, by the succession of national and provincial honours and core listings it reports. Readers evaluating an individual article should still judge that article on its own methods and evidence, but the journal's self-description explains the audience it seeks: researchers who want a general natural-science outlet of recognised standing within the Chinese journal system, in Chinese, distributed both domestically and internationally.

Publication pattern, format and identifiers

Few university journals state their production details as precisely as this one. Bimonthly publication, A4 format, 112 pages per issue and publication on the 24th of the even month together describe a substantial, regular issue, appearing in February, April, June, August, October and December if the even-month rule is followed through the year. A fixed day of publication is a practical detail for subscribers, libraries and contributors awaiting an issue, and its presence on the official page is a useful sign of a journal presenting itself as a current, operating periodical rather than a historical title.

Its identifiers should be used exactly. ISSN 1671-8836 identifies this edition internationally. CN 42-1674/N is its Chinese domestic publication number; the 42 element corresponds to Hubei, the province of publication, and the /N marks the natural-science category in that domestic system. An earlier ISSN, 0253-9888, appears for Journal of Wuhan University, Natural Science Edition in older international lists of Chinese journals. A citation carrying that older number is not necessarily an error; it may reflect the period in which the cited article appeared. What matters is that citations to the current edition are matched to ISSN 1671-8836, and that neither number is confused with the ISSN of the separate English-language title discussed below.

Core status, indexing and honours

The journal's official page lists a dense set of standings within Chinese and international systems. It is currently, in its own words, a key magazine of China technology, a Chinese Core Journal of Peking University, a core journal of CSCD — the Chinese Science Citation Database — a WJCI Q2 journal and an authoritative academic journal of RCCSE, graded A+. Peking University core status and CSCD core status are the two listings most often used inside China to identify journals that sit in the recognised core of their field, and this journal claims both.

Internationally, the same page states that it is abstracted and indexed in CA, INSPEC, JST and P zh (AJ), among other important databases — Chemical Abstracts, the physics and engineering abstracting service INSPEC, the Japanese JST service and the Russian abstract journal service rendered in that list. Abstracting of that kind is how a Chinese-language journal becomes discoverable to researchers who do not read Chinese periodicals cover to cover: an abstract record, in an international database, is often the first point at which work in this journal is found.

Its honours, again as listed by the journal itself, include nomination for the National Journal Award twice in a row, the title of One Hundred Chinese Outstanding Academic Journals four times, and honours including Top 100 Science and Technology Journals of Chinese Universities, China Excellent Science and Technology Journals and the Hubei Province Excellent Journal Award multiple times. This profile reports those honours as the journal lists them, without converting them into a ranking or a metric that the source does not supply.

Distinction from Wuhan University Journal of Natural Sciences

The most important caution in this profile is a distinction of titles. Journal of Wuhan University (Natural Science Edition), ISSN 1671-8836, is a Chinese-language journal founded in 1930. Wuhan University Journal of Natural Sciences is a different journal: an English-language title with print ISSN 1007-1202 and online ISSN 1993-4998, published in connection with EDP Sciences in catalogue records, with coverage recorded in indexing sources from 1996 and 1998 to 2022 and a bimonthly frequency of its own. Similar names, the same sponsor university and an overlapping subject field make the two easy to conflate in a search result, a reference list or a journal-ranking table.

They must not be conflated. Metrics, coverage dates, publisher information and article records belonging to the English-language Wuhan University Journal of Natural Sciences do not belong to the Chinese-language Natural Science Edition, and vice versa. A metric page headed with ISSN 1007-1202 is about the other journal, however similar its English name looks. Contributors, librarians and readers should check language, ISSN and CN number together: Chinese language, ISSN 1671-8836 and CN 42-1674/N identify the journal profiled here.

Similar care is needed against a third, unrelated family: journals of Wuhan University of Science and Technology and of Wuhan University of Technology are publications of different Wuhan universities, with their own ISSNs and histories, and are not editions of this journal at all. In a city with several major universities, the full sponsor name is part of the bibliographic identity.

Readership and how to use the journal

For researchers in China, a Peking University core and CSCD core comprehensive journal in Chinese offers a recognised venue for natural-science work intended first for a domestic scholarly audience, with international abstracting providing a second route to discovery. For readers outside China, the journal is most often encountered through those abstracting services, through citations in later work, and through the journal's own website, which provides an English-language journal-information page and English presentations of its history alongside its Chinese content.

Practical use follows from the facts above. Search by ISSN 1671-8836 where a database allows it. Expect six issues a year, dated to even months. Treat a record dated by volume and issue, in Chinese, under this title as distinct from an English-language record under Wuhan University Journal of Natural Sciences even if the subject and the authors' institution are the same. And when a ranking or metric is offered for a Wuhan natural-science title, ask which ISSN it was calculated for before applying it to this journal.

Assessment

On its own verified record, Journal of Wuhan University (Natural Science Edition) combines a 1930 founding, sponsorship by one of China's oldest comprehensive universities, administration by the Ministry of Education, a precisely stated bimonthly A4 format of 112 pages, dual ISSN and CN identification, Peking University and CSCD core status, international abstracting in services including CA and INSPEC, and a repeated record of national journal honours. That is a fuller verified profile than many university journals can support.

Its assessment must end with the same caution with which its identity begins. This is the Chinese-language natural-science edition, ISSN 1671-8836, CN 42-1674/N, published in Wuhan, Hubei. Kept distinct from its English-language namesake, it stands as the general natural-science journal of a university whose origins reach to 1893, whose comprehensive form was established by 1946 and whose scientific range was widened again by the merger of 2000 — and as a journal that has carried that university's natural-science work, in Chinese, for more than nine decades.