About Journal of Inner Mongolia University (Natural Science Edition)

Journal of Inner Mongolia University (Natural Science Edition)

Overview and identity

Journal of Inner Mongolia University (Natural Science Edition) is the natural-science version of the journal of Inner Mongolia University, based in Hohhot, the capital of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China. It is identified by ISSN 1000-1638 and domestic unified periodical number CN 15-1052/N. Its Chinese title is rendered in pinyin as Neimenggu Daxue Xuebao Ziran Kexueban, and its Latin form is Acta Scientiarum Naturalium Universitatis NeiMongol. This profile records the verified identity of the edition — its identifiers, its place within a three-version journal family, its university home and its frequency — and takes care to distinguish it from similarly named titles, in particular the Journal of Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology, a different journal, from a different university in Baotou, with its own ISSN 2095-2295.

Journal directories record the natural-science edition as a quarterly publication, and list it in the Web of Science directory of journals. Because Chinese university journals often exist in several versions under one domestic registration, this title should always be cited by its full edition name and its ISSN 1000-1638, so that its record is not merged with the humanities edition of the same university or with the journals of the region's other universities.

One journal family, three versions

The Journal of Inner Mongolia University has three versions: a Mongolian version, the Journal of Inner Mongolia University (Humanities and Social Sciences) in Chinese, and the Journal of Inner Mongolia University (Acta Scientiarum Naturalium Universitatis NeiMongol) in Chinese, which is the natural-science edition profiled here, carrying ISSN 1000-1638 and CN 15-1052/N. In fact they are three different journals, with different contents, different readerships and different scholarly communities; under Chinese regulation on publishing activities, however, they are regarded as merely one journal, sharing the university's single domestic periodical registration.

That structure explains much about the edition's character. Inner Mongolia University teaches some courses in both Chinese and Mongolian and awards bachelor, master and doctoral degrees in some majors through study in Mongolian, so a journal family with a Mongolian version alongside Chinese humanities and natural-science versions mirrors the university's own bilingual structure. For librarians and indexers, the three-version arrangement makes the edition name and ISSN essential: the natural-science edition is the version that carries the university's research in mathematics, the physical sciences, chemistry, life sciences and related fields, and it is that version alone to which ISSN 1000-1638 belongs.

Inner Mongolia University: the journal's home

Inner Mongolia University was established in 1957 in Hohhot. It was the first comprehensive university established by the Party and the state in a border minority region after the founding of the People's Republic of China, and its first president was Ulanhu, then Vice Premier of the State Council and chairman of the People's Government of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, who held the presidency from 1957 to 1966. The university enrolled graduate students from 1962, was awarded the status of a national key comprehensive university by the Ministry of Education in 1978, and was listed in 1997 among the universities of the former 211 Project for key construction and development. It is now affiliated with the People's Government of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, co-funded with the Ministry of Education of China, and included in the Double First-Class Construction.

The university's own publishing arms stand alongside the journal: its affiliations include the Inner Mongolia University Library, established on 14 October 1957, the Inner Mongolia University Journal itself, and Inner Mongolia University Press, established in 1985, which publishes books in both Chinese and Mongolian — about 120 books a year. A university journal edited inside this structure is therefore part of a complete scholarly-publishing environment, in which the same institution teaches, researches, libraries and publishes in two languages.

The natural sciences at the university

The natural-science edition draws on a broad scientific base inside the university. Its teaching units have included the College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, the College of Life Sciences, the College of Computer Science and Technology and a College of Science and Technology, and its research system has included the Institute of High Polymer Science, the Center for Laboratory Animal Science, the Center of Biological Engineering and a research unit for natural resources, alongside its Mongolian-studies institutes. The university's notable natural scientists have included the phytoecologist Li Bo, the ecologist and phytophysiologist Li Jitong, and the reproductive biologist B. Shorgan, who also served as the university's president from 1993 to 2006.

This breadth is what a natural-science edition exists to publish. Where a specialist journal serves one discipline, a university's Acta Scientiarum Naturalium serves the whole scientific side of the institution: the chemist, the polymer scientist, the ecologist studying the grasslands of Inner Mongolia and the computer scientist all publish in the same quarterly, and the edition's run becomes a record of the university's scientific development since its founding generation.

Scope and published research

The edition's scope is the natural sciences as practised at a comprehensive university in northern China. A concrete example from its pages is the list of C4 plants in the NeiMongol area, published in the journal in 2001 in volume 32, on pages 431 to 438 — a piece of regional botanical and ecological inventory work of exactly the kind a journal based in Hohhot is well placed to publish, since the flora of the Inner Mongolian steppe is a subject on which local knowledge and local authorship matter. Plant ecology of this sort connects the journal to the university's long ecological tradition, represented by figures such as Li Bo and Li Jitong.

Work of this kind is presented in the forms its readers expect from a peer-reviewed journal of record: original research where new data are reported, and shorter contributions where a single observation, inventory or method deserves circulation. Because the edition is based in Hohhot, submissions and editorial expertise are anchored there, but neither authorship nor readership is confined to one city; Chinese academic journals of this standing draw contributors nationally, and the natural-science edition's subjects — from grassland ecology to chemistry and computing — are national research fields, studied in a distinctive regional setting.

Frequency, indexing and access

Directory listings record the edition as published quarterly, and list it in the Web of Science directory; Researcher.Life's journal record for Neimenggu Daxue Xuebao Ziran Kexue Ban gives that quarterly frequency explicitly. The candidate bibliographic record for this profile also notes that Chemical Abstracts' records have described the publisher in terms of the journal's own editorial department — the normal arrangement for a Chinese university journal, in which the editorial office of the university journal, rather than a commercial publisher, is responsible for editing and publishing the edition.

For readers and librarians, the practical points are the identifiers. The edition is catalogued under ISSN 1000-1638 and CN 15-1052/N, under its Chinese title, its pinyin form Neimenggu Daxue Xuebao Ziran Kexue Ban, and its Latin form Acta Scientiarum Naturalium Universitatis NeiMongol. Searching any one of those forms should lead to the same Hohhot natural-science edition, and not to the university's humanities edition, its Mongolian version, or the separate journals of Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology or Inner Mongolia University for the Nationalities.

Readership and audience

The edition's core readership is the Chinese-reading natural-science community of northern China: researchers, teachers and postgraduate students in the sciences at Inner Mongolia University itself and at universities and institutes across the region and the country. Its regional anchoring gives it a particular audience among scientists whose work concerns the environments of Inner Mongolia — its grasslands, its flora and its natural resources — while its general natural-science scope keeps it relevant to readers in chemistry, biology, mathematics and computing whose work has no regional dimension at all. As one of the three versions of the journal of the region's flagship comprehensive university, it also carries a representational role: it is the printed record, in Chinese, of what the natural sciences at Inner Mongolia University have produced.

Place in Chinese scholarly publishing

Journal of Inner Mongolia University (Natural Science Edition) belongs to the large, structured system of Chinese academic journals in which comprehensive universities maintain multi-version journals for their communities — a humanities and social-sciences version, a natural-science version and, at a bilingual university such as this one, a version in the minority language. Understanding an individual edition therefore requires the facts assembled here: which university publishes it, in which city, under which ISSN and domestic number, as which version of which journal family, and at what frequency. On those measures this edition is the established natural-science record of Inner Mongolia University in Hohhot — ISSN 1000-1638, CN 15-1052/N, published quarterly — and its record continues to grow issue by issue from its base in the capital of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.