About Acta Petrolei Sinica

Acta Petrolei Sinica

Acta Petrolei Sinica (Chinese: 石油学报, pinyin Shiyou Xuebao) is a Chinese-language petroleum science journal edited by the Chinese Petroleum Society and published in Beijing. Established in 1980, it is one of China's principal academic journals for petroleum exploration, oilfield development and petroleum engineering, publishing research in Chinese with English abstracts. Its print ISSN is 0253-2697, and its articles carry DOIs in the 10.7623/syxb series, derived from the pinyin abbreviation of its Chinese title. Scopus-based journal listings rank it in the first quartile (Q1) in chemical engineering, energy engineering and power technology, and fuel technology, which places it among the most strongly cited Chinese-language journals in the energy field. This profile sets out the journal's identity and publishing arrangements, its history since 1980, its scope across the petroleum value chain, the kind of research illustrated by its recent and highly browsed papers, its indexing and citation standing, and its place alongside the other petroleum journals published in China.

Identity, Publisher and Place of Publication

The journal's Chinese title, Shiyou Xuebao, translates literally as "Petroleum Journal," and the Latin-style English title Acta Petrolei Sinica follows the naming convention of China's national academy journals. It is edited by the Chinese Petroleum Society, the national learned society for petroleum professionals in China, and published in Beijing, with Science Press recorded as publisher in Scopus and SCImago listings. Beijing is the centre of China's petroleum administration and of the headquarters and research institutes of its national oil companies, and the journal's editorial base in the capital reflects that geography. The journal maintains an official website under the Chinese Petroleum Society's domain, where current and forthcoming articles are posted with English titles and abstracts, allowing non-Chinese readers to follow its contents. A separate, related title, Acta Petrolei Sinica (Petroleum Processing Section), with its own ISSN 1001-8719, covers refining and petroleum processing and is published by the Editorial Office of Acta Petrolei Sinica; the two titles are distinct journals and should not be confused, the main journal concentrating on exploration, development and production engineering rather than downstream processing.

Founding and Development Since 1980

Acta Petrolei Sinica was established in 1980, beginning publication as a quarterly journal in Chinese with English abstracts. Its volume numbering confirms the starting date: volume 43 appeared in 2022, volume 44 in 2023 and volume 45 in 2024, a one-volume-per-year sequence that runs back to a first volume in 1980. The journal was founded at a formative moment for China's petroleum industry, when the country's established eastern oilfields were mature and exploration was expanding into western basins and offshore areas, creating demand for a national, society-run journal in which exploration and development research could be reported to the whole industry. From its quarterly beginnings it has grown in frequency and size; recent volumes run to twelve issues a year, with individual articles cited in the form volume, issue and page — for example volume 45, issue 5, pages 755–770 in 2024, and volume 43, issue 12 in 2022 — showing a monthly rhythm in its current form. Over more than four decades the journal has therefore moved from a quarterly bulletin of a developing industry to a monthly flagship title whose archive records the main phases of Chinese petroleum science, from conventional exploration of the large eastern depressions to today's emphasis on shale oil and gas, tight reservoirs and deep and ultra-deep plays.

Scope: Exploration, Development and Petroleum Engineering

The journal reports petroleum exploration, oilfield development, petroleum engineering and refining-related research, and Scopus classifies it under chemical engineering, energy engineering and power technology, and fuel technology. In practice its contents span the upstream and midstream of the industry. Petroleum geology and exploration papers address source rocks, reservoir formation, hydrocarbon accumulation mechanisms and exploration targets in China's sedimentary basins, including the Junggar, Tarim, Sichuan, Ordos, Bohai Bay and Turpan–Hami basins, all of which recur in its pages. Oilfield development papers deal with reservoir description, enhanced recovery, production behaviour and the management of mature fields. Petroleum engineering papers cover drilling, completion and production technology. Because China's petroleum endowment is dominated by continental — non-marine — sedimentary basins, the journal has a distinctive emphasis on continental petroleum geology, lacustrine source rocks and continental shale oil and gas, subjects on which Chinese research published in this journal is frequently cited by the international literature on unconventional resources.

The Whole Petroleum System Collection

The character of the journal's current research agenda is well illustrated by the special collection of papers on the Whole Petroleum System (WPS) theory that it has recently presented. The journal describes WPS research as a frontier field in petroleum and natural gas geology that has attracted extensive attention from both the petroleum industry and the academic community since the theory was proposed. Expanding beyond traditional petroleum system concepts, WPS research concerns the geological regularities and resource development of unconventional oil and gas and represents an evolution and development of petroleum system theory. Among the collection's papers, a review elucidates the fundamental principles of the theory and summarises progress including research advances and exploration practices of the Permian Whole Petroleum System in the Junggar Basin and the differential enrichment of conventional and unconventional oil and gas in sequential distribution patterns. A companion paper reports oil and gas exploration practice in northern Xinjiang under the guidance of the theory, noting three sets of organic-rich source rocks — Jurassic, Permian and Carboniferous–Devonian — with a total resource of 25 billion tons of oil equivalent, and major breakthroughs in three-dimensional multi-layer exploration across the Junggar, Tuha and Santanghu basins. Further papers apply seismic exploration technology to WPS geology in the Junggar Basin and examine tight oil and gas in the Whole Petroleum System, reviewing their accumulation mechanisms, enrichment regularities and resource prospects. The collection shows the journal functioning not only as an archive but as a venue in which a new exploration theory is debated and consolidated.

Other Recent Research in Its Pages

Alongside the Whole Petroleum System papers, the journal's recent most-read lists include work on artificial intelligence in petroleum engineering and on shale oil and gas. A review of progress on artificial intelligence methods in oil and gas drilling and production, by Sun Baojiang and co-authors, surveys intelligent methods for optimising parameters and identifying operational states, and notes that smart optimisation algorithms and predictive models still face challenges of poor timeliness, weak robustness and limited reliability in drilling and production engineering. Research on shale resources includes a paper on the classification and exploration significance of source–reservoir coupling types of shale oil and gas in China, by Guo Xusheng and co-authors, which identifies coupling configurations to guide exploration thinking and the efficient development of shale oil and gas, and a study of hydrocarbon migration constraints on continental shale oil enrichment in the Lucaogou Formation of the Jimusaer Sag in the Junggar Basin, based on lithological and reservoir pore characteristics and geochemical data. Earlier papers in the journal are routinely cited in the international literature — for example its 2024 paper on seismic exploration technologies and future directions for hydrocarbon detection in China's foreland thrust belts, and its 2023 papers on hydrocarbon accumulation in the southern Junggar Basin thrust belt and on new exploration domains in the Turpan–Hami Basin — indicating that its contents are read well beyond its Chinese-language subscriber base.

Publication Pattern and Article Form

The journal publishes in Chinese with English abstracts, a format it has used since its founding and which makes its research discoverable through English-language databases while keeping its primary readership in China's petroleum industry and universities. Articles are substantial research papers and reviews with full bibliographic apparatus, and each is assigned a DOI under the prefix 10.7623, registered to the journal's pinyin abbreviation "syxb." Citation records show monthly publication in recent years: volume 40 reached issue 12 in 2019, volume 43 issue 12 appeared in 2022 carrying a widely cited strategy paper on shale oil and gas technology progress and development strategy, and volume 45 ran through at least issue 11 in 2024. The journal posts accepted and forthcoming articles on its official website, where readers can browse the most-read papers, and its special collections — such as the five-paper Whole Petroleum System series — are promoted as thematic groups, reflecting a modern journal operation built around an originally print, society-published title.

Indexing, Metrics and Standing

Acta Petrolei Sinica is indexed in Scopus, with coverage recorded for 1985–1988, 1990–1992 and 2001 to the present in SCImago-derived listings — an unusually long international indexing history for a Chinese-language journal. The same listings place it in the first quartile, Q1, in all three of its Scopus subject categories: chemical engineering (miscellaneous), energy engineering and power technology, and fuel technology. Reported metrics vary by year and provider, as they do for all journals: a recent Scopus-based listing gives a SCImago Journal Rank of 2.545, a CiteScore of 11.2 and an h-index of 94, while an earlier compilation reported an SJR of 1.618 and an h-index of 87; on either set of figures the journal sits at or near the top of Chinese energy journals, and the journal searches listing records 147 documents published in 2025. Within China it is ranked in the first quartile among Chinese energy journals and is a long-established Chinese core journal in the petroleum field. Its standard abbreviation in citations is Acta Pet. Sin., and its DOI and Scopus presence mean its papers are routinely referenced in English-language reviews of shale oil, tight reservoirs and continental petroleum systems.

Distinguishing the Journal from Similar Titles

Several similarly named journals require care from readers and librarians. Acta Petrolei Sinica (ISSN 0253-2697) is not Acta Petrologica Sinica (ISSN 1000-0569), the petrology journal of the Chinese geological community, despite the near-identical Latin titles and the same Beijing Science Press publishing milieu; bibliographic databases occasionally cross these titles, and the ISSN is the reliable discriminator. It is also distinct from its own Petroleum Processing Section (ISSN 1001-8719), which covers refining and petrochemical processing, and from English-language Chinese petroleum journals such as Petroleum Science and Petroleum Exploration and Development, which publish in English for an international readership. Acta Petrolei Sinica remains the Chinese Petroleum Society's Chinese-language flagship: the journal of record for exploration and development research addressed primarily to China's own petroleum scientists and engineers.

Role in Chinese Petroleum Science

For more than forty years the journal has served as a central forum in which China's petroleum exploration and development community reports and debates its results. Its pages document the industry's trajectory: the development of the great continental oilfields, the growth of natural gas exploration, the turn to unconventional resources — shale gas in the Sichuan Basin, shale oil in basins such as Junggar and Bohai Bay, tight oil and gas — and the current push into deep formations and intelligent, data-driven drilling and production. The prominence of theory-building collections such as the Whole Petroleum System series, and of strategy papers on shale oil and gas technology and policy, shows a journal that publishes not only case studies but also the conceptual frameworks guiding national exploration programmes. For researchers outside China, its English abstracts, Scopus indexing and DOI registration make it the most accessible window on the primary Chinese-language literature of petroleum geology and engineering; for readers inside China, it remains, as its Q1 standing suggests, one of the most prestigious domestic outlets in the energy sciences.