About High Voltage

High Voltage

High Voltage is an English-language, online-only, fully open-access engineering journal launched in April 2016. It is co-published by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) in the United Kingdom and the China Electric Power Research Institute (CEPRI) in Beijing, China, with support from Tsinghua University. The journal publishes original research papers and review articles on high-voltage power engineering and applications, including experimental, computational and theoretical studies, and it carries the electronic ISSN 2397-7264. It was the IET's first open-access partner journal and the inaugural journal of the IET Open programme. This profile concerns that IET journal only: it is a different publication from High Voltage Engineering, the long-established Chinese-language journal of high-voltage engineering, which has its own separate profile in this directory, and the two titles should not be conflated despite their similar names and overlapping subject matter.

Origins and launch in 2016

The IET signed an agreement with CEPRI to co-publish the journal, and High Voltage launched in April 2016, with the first issue announced on 5 May 2016. The launch was presented as a first: the new online-only journal was expected to be the first academic periodical to focus on the most recent advances in high-voltage science and technology as its sole subject. The first edition included special-issue papers on lightning and lightning protection, guest edited by Professor Rong Zeng, Dean of the Electrical Engineering Department of Tsinghua University, alongside invited review and research articles. To promote the launch, the IET and CEPRI waived all article-processing charges for High Voltage in 2016. Mrs Jin Liu, Publishing Centre Director at CEPRI, was quoted in the launch announcements on the Chinese side, reflecting CEPRI's role not merely as a sponsor but as an active co-publishing partner through its publishing centre in Beijing.

Publishers and partners

The journal's publishing partnership joins three institutions. The Institution of Engineering and Technology is one of the world's major engineering institutions and a long-established publisher of power-engineering journals; High Voltage joined the IET's Power and Control series, hosted on the IET Digital Library alongside titles such as IET Power Electronics and IET Generation, Transmission & Distribution, and its content is also available through IEEE Xplore. CEPRI, the China Electric Power Research Institute, is the research institute of China's power-grid industry, based in Beijing, and brings the journal its direct connection to the country that operates the world's largest high-voltage transmission network. Tsinghua University, whose electrical engineering department is among China's leading centres for high-voltage research, supports the journal academically. IET journals are now published in partnership with Wiley, and current journal listings record John Wiley & Sons as the publisher of record for the title.

Scope and subject coverage

High Voltage covers high-voltage power engineering and applications, including experimental, computational — including modelling and simulation — and theoretical studies. Its named fields are electrical insulation, discharge and plasmas, pulsed power, high-field effects and high-voltage engineering. The launch partners emphasised that these fields have promising applications across energy transmission, environmental protection, biomedicine and material treatment, and that breadth is reflected in the journal's practice: alongside core power-engineering work on insulation systems, overvoltage and breakdown, it publishes research in which high-voltage phenomena are tools — plasma treatment, pulsed-power applications and high-field effects in materials and biological systems. Original research papers and review articles are its article types, including invited reviews and special issues on focused themes such as the lightning collection in its first issue.

Editorial leadership

The journal's first editors-in-chief were Professor Zhicheng Guan of Tsinghua University, China, and Professor Masoud Farzaneh of the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (UQAC), Canada. That pairing — a leading Chinese high-voltage specialist and a leading Canadian authority on atmospheric icing and overhead lines — set the journal's international pattern from the outset. The editors-in-chief are supported by an international editorial board with expertise across a wide range of electrical and high-voltage engineering fields. For a journal co-owned in Beijing and London, a genuinely international editorship is not decoration: high-voltage research communities in China, North America and Europe work on related but distinct problems, from ultra-high-voltage transmission to cold-climate line performance, and the board's breadth is what allows the journal to judge submissions across all of them.

Publishing model and frequency

High Voltage is online-only and fully open access: every article is free to read, as part of the IET's mission to develop open-access quality engineering content and accelerate research and innovation. It was launched with four issues per year, available on the IET Digital Library, and Scopus coverage of the title runs continuously from 2016, its launch year. Its electronic ISSN, 2397-7264, is its sole ISSN, reflecting a journal born digital with no print edition. As an open-access partner journal it operates on article-processing charges in normal years — the complete waiver applied in the launch year 2016 was a promotional measure by the IET and CEPRI — and authors should consult the journal's current pages for the present charge and any partner or institutional arrangements that may apply.

Indexing, metrics and standing

The journal was first recognised by Clarivate's Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), and in April 2019 the IET announced that High Voltage had been accepted for the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) — a notable milestone for a journal then only three years old, and one the IET highlighted as recognition of its impact in its field. In Scopus-based listings the journal ranks in the first quartile (Q1) in both Electrical and Electronic Engineering and Energy Engineering and Power Technology, with Scopus coverage from 2016 to the present. Journal-metrics listings in 2025–2026 record a Journal Impact Factor in the region of five to six and a SCImago Journal Rank above 1.3, figures that place a specialist high-voltage title among strongly cited engineering journals generally; readers should consult the current Journal Citation Reports or Scopus record for the figure for a specific year, as these values are revised annually.

Why a dedicated high-voltage journal

Before 2016, high-voltage research was scattered across general power-engineering journals, insulation and dielectrics journals, and conference proceedings, notably those of the International Symposium on High Voltage Engineering. The launch partners' claim for High Voltage was that the field — the science of electrical insulation, discharge phenomena and equipment operating at the highest transmission voltages — merited a dedicated, open-access periodical focused on its most recent advances. The timing was closely tied to China: the country's build-out of ultra-high-voltage AC and DC transmission created an unmatched concentration of high-voltage research and engineering experience, much of it published in Chinese. A bilingual-partnership journal, co-published by CEPRI and anchored academically at Tsinghua, gave that research community a direct English-language channel to the world, and gave researchers elsewhere access to work arising from the largest high-voltage grid in existence.

Readership and community

The journal addresses researchers and engineers in high-voltage engineering, power-system insulation, discharge physics and pulsed power, in universities, research institutes such as CEPRI, utilities and equipment manufacturers. Its open-access model suits a community that spans academia and industry, since practising engineers without journal subscriptions can read its papers freely. Special issues led by guest editors from the community — beginning with the first issue's lightning and lightning protection collection under Rong Zeng — are part of how the journal organises its field, gathering dispersed work on a theme into a single, citable collection. For Chinese authors it is a home journal with international reach; for readers outside China it is a window onto Chinese transmission and insulation research that is otherwise difficult to follow.

Relationship to similarly named journals

Because two journals with near-identical names work in this field, clarity matters. This journal, High Voltage, is the English-language, online-only, open-access IET/CEPRI journal founded in 2016, eISSN 2397-7264, publishing international research and reviews. High Voltage Engineering is a separate, older Chinese-language journal published in China under its own ISSN, serving the domestic Chinese high-voltage community, and it is profiled separately in this directory. Citations distinguish them: this journal is abbreviated High Volt., and its articles carry DOIs in the IET/Wiley journal family, while the Chinese journal's articles are cited under its own abbreviation and identifiers. Authors and readers should check the ISSN and publisher before submitting to, subscribing to, or citing either title.

Practical information

High Voltage is co-published by the Institution of Engineering and Technology and the China Electric Power Research Institute (CEPRI), Beijing, with support from Tsinghua University. Electronic ISSN: 2397-7264. Launched: April 2016. Format: online only, fully open access, in English. First editors-in-chief: Zhicheng Guan (Tsinghua University) and Masoud Farzaneh (Université du Québec à Chicoutimi). The journal is indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded and Scopus, and ranked Q1 in its Scopus subject categories. It is read through the IET Digital Library and IEEE Xplore, and through the IET's publishing partnership with Wiley. Readers citing the journal use the abbreviation High Volt. Current submission requirements, article-processing charges and editorial board membership are maintained on the journal's official pages, which should be consulted directly before submitting.