About Journal of Yulin Normal University

Journal of Yulin Normal University

The Journal of Yulin Normal University is the academic journal sponsored by Yulin Normal University in Yulin, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. It is identified by the domestic publication number CN 45-1300/Z, attested in the digital object identifiers of its articles, for example DOI 10.13792/j.cnki.cn45-1300/z.2017.06.031, from the sixth issue of 2017. No International Standard Serial Number was attested for the title in the records consulted, so none is asserted here. Its sponsor is a multidisciplinary undergraduate university in southeastern Guangxi whose history began in 1945 as the Guangxi Provincial Yulin Normal School, in the home city of the great linguist Wang Li.

Identity and identifiers

The journal's CN number does the identifying work that an ISSN does for other titles. In CN 45-1300/Z, the figures 45 denote Guangxi, and the suffix Z marks a comprehensive journal. That number is embedded in its article DOIs under the pattern 10.13792/j.cnki.cn45-1300/z, followed by year, issue and article elements, so citations in databases resolve to the Yulin title specifically and not to the journal of Yulin University in Shaanxi — a different institution in a different province whose similar English name makes the CN number an essential disambiguator. The attested 2017 example comes from a sixth issue, showing the journal appearing in at least six issues within that year.

The sponsoring university and its founding

Yulin Normal University is a full-time undergraduate university directly under the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, located in Yulin in southeastern Guangxi. It was founded in 1945 as the Guangxi Provincial Yulin Normal School. In the spring of 1952 it was renamed Yulin Normal School, and in 1958 it was upgraded to Guangxi Yulin Normal College and began to recruit students at higher-education level. In 1962 it reverted to Yulin Normal School during a national restructuring of colleges. On 28 December 1978 the State Council approved its restoration as Yulin Teachers College, and in 1994 it was renamed Yulin Teachers College in the renderings of some accounts — the institution that entered the merger of 2000.

The merger of 2000

In March 2000, with the approval of the Ministry of Education, Yulin Teachers College merged with Yulin Education College (the Yulin Institute of Education), Yulin Vocational and Technical College and the Yulin branch of Guangxi Radio and Television University, and the combined institution was upgraded to the present Yulin Normal University — rendered 'Yulin Teachers College' in some English translations of its Chinese name, Yulin Shifan Xueyuan. The journal's modern title dates from this re-founding: as with other Chinese university journals, the periodical of the merged, upgraded institution took the institution's new name. In 2016 the university became the chair unit of the Guangxi Application-oriented Undergraduate University Alliance, a role recorded in its published profiles.

Scale and disciplinary range

Published profiles record a university of seventeen secondary colleges and fifty-nine general undergraduate majors, covering ten disciplines: economics, law, education, literature, history, science, engineering, management, agriculture and art. Its campus covers 1,746 mu, and its address is 299 Jiaoyu Middle Road, Yulin, Guangxi, postcode 537000. Earlier departmental lists in university profiles include Chinese language and literature, law and policy, foreign languages, science education, physical education, arts, mathematics, computer science, physics, information technology, chemistry, biology and polytechnics. A journal sponsored by such an institution is comprehensive by construction, and its record bears that out, with articles attested in literature, history, music education, sports science and the natural sciences.

Yulin, the city, and Wang Li

University introductions describe Yulin as a thousand-year-old city in southeast Guangxi, an excellent tourist city in China, and the hometown of the famous linguist Wang Li (1900–1986), one of the founders of modern Chinese linguistics, who was born in what is now the Yulin region. For a normal university — an institution whose core business includes the teaching of Chinese language — the Wang Li connection is a point of identity, and the journal operates in a city whose scholarly self-image is tied to language study. Yulin is also Guangxi's gateway toward Guangdong, a populous prefecture-level city whose university is the principal institution of higher education in its part of the autonomous region.

Evidence of what the journal publishes

The journal's content can be documented from its citation footprint. In history, it has published work on the agrarian revolution in the Zuojiang and Youjiang revolutionary base areas of Guangxi, taking Donglan and Fengshan counties as examples — regional history of the autonomous region itself. In literature, articles attested in scholarly databases include analyses of the country women in Tie Ning's novels (2008) and of narrative technique in contemporary fiction, published when the title still appeared in some listings as the Journal of Yulin Teachers College. In music education, a study of computer music technology in higher music education appeared in volume 33, issue 4. In sports science, work on the introduction of Chinese elements into sports dance appeared in volume 38 in 2017, and work on ethnic minority traditional sports in universities appeared in its 2012 issues. In language testing, a study of College English Test Band 4 reliability and validity appeared in its philosophy and social-science edition, volume 25, issue 4, in 2004, showing that in that period the journal, like many of its peers, published in named disciplinary editions.

Editions and naming in the record

Readers tracing the journal backwards meet its earlier forms. Citations from the 2000s refer to the Journal of Yulin Teachers College, and to a Philosophy and Social Science edition of that journal, while later citations use the Journal of Yulin Normal University without an edition qualifier. This is the normal archaeology of a Chinese university journal whose sponsor changed its name in 2000 and whose publishing arrangements were later consolidated. The CN number, not the changing English rendering of the title, is the thread that ties the record together, and it is the identifier under which the journal's articles carry DOIs today.

Publication pattern

Volume and issue evidence in the citation record shows a long, continuous run: volume 25 in 2004, volume 33 in the early 2010s and volume 38 in 2017 form a sequence of one volume per year reaching back to about 1980, and issue numbers run to at least six in a year, as the attested sixth issue of 2017 shows. Articles from across that span — a 2004 language-testing study, a 2008 literary study, a 2017 sports-dance study — remain visible in international scholarly databases and reference lists, which is the practical form of distribution for a provincial university journal: preservation and discovery through the national and international citation infrastructure rather than through print circulation alone.

Regional role in Guangxi

Guangxi's universities are concentrated in Nanning, Guilin and Liuzhou, and the journal's sponsor is the state undergraduate university of the Yulin prefecture in the southeast of the region. Its journal therefore serves a distinct catchment: it publishes the research of Yulin's faculty, records scholarship on southeastern Guangxi subjects — the Zuojiang-Youjiang revolutionary history attested above is one example — and gives the region's teachers, the core constituency of a normal university, a peer-reviewed periodical of their own institution. As chair unit of the Guangxi application-oriented undergraduate alliance from 2016, the university also speaks for a tier of institutions whose journals collectively form the research record of applied undergraduate education in the region.

Role and readership

The Journal of Yulin Normal University is, in sum, the comprehensive academic periodical of a multidisciplinary normal university founded in 1945, verified by its CN 45-1300/Z identifier and the DOI record built on it. It has published continuously, on the volume evidence, since about 1980, through its sponsor's life as a normal school, a teachers college and, since 2000, a university. Its readership is the academic readership of China's university journals — faculty and researchers in the ten disciplines of its sponsor, students of Guangxi regional history and culture, and database users who meet its articles through citations in fields from Tie Ning studies to sports science. It is a representative example of the prefectural university journal in south China, and its record is anchored, fittingly for its city, in the study of language, literature, history and education.