About Academic Journal of South-Central Minzu University (Humanities and Social Sciences Edition)

Academic Journal of South-Central Minzu University (Humanities and Social Sciences Edition)

The Academic Journal of South-Central Minzu University (Humanities and Social Sciences Edition) (Chinese title: 中南民族大学学报（人文社会科学版）) is a Chinese-language humanities and social sciences journal published in Wuhan, Hubei, by South-Central Minzu University (SCMU), a university for ethnic studies and the social sciences. The university reports that the journal was selected as a CSSCI source journal (2021–2022 and 2023–2024), as a core journal in the Peking University core list, and honoured as a national high-level authority social science journal of universities; in 2020 its 30 reprinted articles in Renmin University's reprint journals ranked first nationally on ethnic-issues topics. It is the scholarly flagship of a Wuhan university whose mission centres on China's ethnic communities.

South-Central Minzu University

South-Central Minzu University in Wuhan is one of China's universities for nationalities (minzu universities) — institutions serving the country's ethnic minority communities and the study of ethnic affairs, administered within the national ethnic affairs system. Its academic identity centres on ethnology and the social sciences of a multi-ethnic country: ethnic theory and policy, ethnic economics, ethnic law, minority languages and literatures, and the history and cultures of China's ethnic groups, alongside a full range of humanities and social sciences. The journal is the university's humanities and social sciences edition — its general scholarly journal — and it embodies that mission in periodical form. Where a comprehensive university's journal displays general breadth, a minzu university's journal displays breadth organised around a centre: the study of ethnic issues in contemporary China. That centred breadth defines the journal's character and explains its distinctive national honours, which cluster precisely on ethnic-issues scholarship.

CSSCI and core-journal standing

The university reports a sequence of evaluations that place the journal in the national first tier of university journals. It has been selected as a source journal of the Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index (CSSCI) for 2021–2022 and again for 2023–2024 — CSSCI, developed by Nanjing University and established in 2000, covers some 568 academic journals in 25 categories including law, management, economics, history and political science, selected by combined quantitative and qualitative methods, and is used across Chinese universities in research evaluation. It is a core journal of the 2020 edition (ninth edition) of the Peking University 'General List of Core Chinese Journals'; a core journal of the AMI comprehensive evaluation of Chinese humanities and social sciences journals (Journal A grade); a core academic journal of RCCSE China (Class A); and it has been named a national-level selected journal of university social sciences and the most influential academic journal of Hubei Province. Most recently, at the seventh national inspection and evaluation of college social science journals hosted by Three Gorges University, it was honoured as a 'National High-Level Authority Social Science Journal' — the first time it had received that award — following its CSSCI inclusion for 2023–2024; 95 journals nationwide received that classification in the evaluation, which assessed authority, academic quality and overall influence.

Reprint honours and ethnic-issues leadership

The journal's most distinctive documented honours concern reprinting — the system by which China's digest journals, above all the Replicated Journals of Renmin University of China, select and republish the best articles from the journal literature, creating a secondary canon that Chinese academia watches closely. In 2020, 30 articles from the journal were reprinted by influential digests — 17 by the Replicated Journals of Renmin University, seven by China University Academic Abstracts, three by Xinhua Digest, two by Chinese Social Science Digest and one by Education Digest Weekly, across a retrieval net of 143 channels. The journal ranked first in the topic 'Research of Ethnic Issues' in the Renmin University reprint system, and ranked at the top among journals of universities for nationalities and among CSSCI university journals. The previous year it had also set records: 19 articles reprinted in 2019, ranking 53rd nationally by reprint volume among comprehensive humanities journals, 26th among university humanities journals on both volume and rate, and second in the ethnology journal category on both reprint volume and comprehensive index — with seven full-text reprints also in the Chinese language and literature category. Reprint rankings are among the most demanding measures of a journal's real influence, since they record other editors choosing its articles as the best of the national literature; on ethnic issues, this journal leads the country by that measure.

Editorial direction: the community of the Chinese nation

The university describes the journal's recent editorial course in terms that locate it within national policy discourse. The journal has followed the main line of fostering a strong sense of community for the Chinese nation (the consciousness of the Chinese national community), studying and implementing contemporary national thought and carrying that orientation through its topic selection and special columns. It has embraced an open-door policy for publication — actively soliciting and organising manuscripts beyond its own university — and expanded its editorial strategies, enhancing its focus on topics resonating with national rejuvenation and the shared identity of the Chinese people. In practical terms this means thematic planning around ethnic unity, ethnic policy, the modernisation of ethnic regions, and the cultures of China's ethnic groups, executed to CSSCI scholarly standards. The journal was also supported by the Ministry of Education's programme for the construction of famous journals of philosophy and social sciences in colleges and universities, a national scheme that funded selected university journals to raise their quality and influence — support the university credits with helping the journal contribute to academic research and discipline construction.

Scope and subject coverage

As the humanities and social sciences edition of its university's journal, the title publishes across ethnology, ethnic theory and policy, history, literature, economics, law, political science, sociology and related fields. Its centre of gravity, however, is distinctive: ethnic issues research — the study of China's ethnic groups, ethnic relations, ethnic policy, ethnic-region development and ethnic cultures — in which it is a national leader by reprint measures. Chinese language and literature is a further documented strength, with the journal ranking among leading university journals for reprints in that category as well. The combination is characteristic of a minzu university: deep specialisation in ethnic studies set within a full humanities and social sciences programme. Its articles address scholars of ethnic affairs first, but its general sections serve the same broad readership as any CSSCI comprehensive journal, and its ethnic-studies content is read by policy researchers and administrators concerned with ethnic work throughout China.

Recent recognition: most popular university journal

The journal's honours continue to accumulate in the newest evaluation channels. On 18 May 2026, in the university's reporting of National Center for Philosophy and Social Sciences Documentation releases, the Journal of SCMU (Humanities and Social Sciences Edition) was named an NCPSSD 'Most Popular University Journal of 2025', with a popularity index of 0.1247, ranking 19th among 289 university journals assessed. Popularity in the national philosophy and social sciences documentation system reflects actual reading and use of the journal's digital full texts by the national scholarly community — a usage-based honour complementing its citation-based CSSCI status and its editor-based reprint honours. The journal also received a Hubei provincial cultural award selection — the Hubei Quyuan Cultural Award — in January 2026 reporting, as the only university journal selected in that round, credited to its solid academic quality and distinctive editorial characteristics. Together these recent honours show a journal simultaneously strong on the three measures Chinese academia uses: citation indexing, expert reprinting and reader usage.

Readership and authors

The journal's authors include SCMU's own faculty and scholars nationally — its open-door editorial policy and its reprint record attract submissions from across the ethnic-studies and humanities communities. SCMU itself maintains a strong CSSCI publication culture: in 2019 its teachers published 219 papers in CSSCI journals, ranking the university 86th nationally, and the university has invited editors of leading CSSCI journals — including its own journal's editors — to judge its teachers' paper competitions and recommend award-winning work for publication. Readers are researchers in ethnology and ethnic policy, the humanities and social sciences generally, and the administrative community concerned with ethnic affairs. The journal is held and used nationally through the Chinese academic databases and the national documentation centre's platform, on which its popularity ranking was earned.

Publication details

The journal is published in Wuhan, Hubei, in Chinese, by South-Central Minzu University, as the humanities and social sciences edition of the university's academic journal; the university also publishes a natural sciences edition, and the two editions together represent the university in the national journal system — both editions were selected for the Peking University core list of 2020, the humanities edition for the eighth consecutive time on that occasion. Issues are distributed through China's academic journal channels and databases. The journal's editorial department operates within the university, and the university's English website reports its honours and rankings as institutional news — a measure of the journal's importance to its sponsor.

Significance

The Academic Journal of South-Central Minzu University (Humanities and Social Sciences Edition) is the leading journal of China's minzu-university sector on several documented measures: CSSCI source status across successive lists, Peking University core status, a national high-level authority journal award, first place nationally for reprinted articles on ethnic-issues topics, and a top-twenty national popularity ranking among university journals. Published from Wuhan by a university devoted to ethnic studies and the social sciences, it joins general humanities scholarship to a distinctive national mission in ethnic research. WorldNM lists it as the essential journal of the Chinese minzu universities and a first source for research on China's ethnic issues.