About Advanced Elastomers

Advanced Elastomers

Overview

Advanced Elastomers is an English-language journal of Xi'an Jiaotong University (XJTU) in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, China, scheduled to launch in 2026. It was selected on 5 December 2025 for the 2025 High-Starting-Point New Journal Project under Phase II (2024–2028) of the China Science and Technology Journals Excellence Action Plan, in a round in which six XJTU titles were selected, ranking the university second nationally. The journal focuses on frontier materials research — including high-performance rubber, green elastomers and smart polymers — and aims to accelerate the innovation and application of elastomers in aerospace, energy equipment and biomedicine. Its Editor-in-Chief is Zhang Liqun, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and president of Xi'an Jiaotong University, himself one of the world's best-known researchers in rubber and elastomer science. The journal is co-hosted by XJTU's School of Chemical Engineering and Technology and the XJTU Journal Center, with Professor Chen Fei of that school as executive editor.

Selection Under the Excellence Action Plan

The China Science and Technology Journals Excellence Action Plan is a national programme, jointly organised by seven authorities including the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST), the Ministry of Education and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, to promote the high-quality development of China's scientific and technological journals and to build internationally competitive titles. Phase II runs from 2024 to 2028 and organises support across English-language individual journals, Chinese-language individual journals, high-starting-point new journals, talent cultivation and journal cluster pilots. The High-Starting-Point New Journal Project supports newly established, mostly English-language journals that represent the forefront of disciplinary development and have significant growth potential; the 2025 round selected 70 projects in total, covering strategic frontiers such as artificial intelligence, quantum science and technology and biomedical engineering. Advanced Elastomers was one of six XJTU journals selected in that 5 December 2025 announcement — a result that ranked XJTU second nationally in the round and took the university's total selections under the plan over the preceding five years to 16 journals. Selection at birth is the journal's founding credential: it begins life inside a funded national programme with explicit expectations of international standing, rather than having to earn programme support after launch.

The Host University: Xi'an Jiaotong University

Xi'an Jiaotong University, based in Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi Province, is one of China's major comprehensive research universities, with deep strengths in engineering and the physical sciences and a large, established journal-publishing operation run through its Journal Center. The university's existing portfolio includes internationally recognised titles such as the Journal of Pharmaceutical Analysis, which has been named among China's most internationally influential academic journals for eight consecutive years. The six-title success in the 2025 round reflects a deliberate institutional strategy: each new journal is co-hosted by an academic school — which supplies the editor-in-chief, the executive editor and the disciplinary community — and by the Journal Center, which supplies professional publishing operations. For Advanced Elastomers, the academic host is the School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, the university's home for chemical engineering, polymer processing and materials-related teaching and research, placing the journal inside the discipline it serves.

Editor-in-Chief: Zhang Liqun

Few new journals anywhere can claim an editor-in-chief whose own research field is the journal's title. Zhang Liqun, born in February 1969, has been president of Xi'an Jiaotong University since March 2024 and is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, elected in 2021. He took his bachelor's (1990), master's (1992) and doctoral (1995) degrees at Beijing University of Chemical Technology, was a visiting scholar at the University of Akron — the historic centre of American rubber research — and a postdoctoral researcher at Case Western Reserve University, and served as a professor and dean at Beijing University of Chemical Technology before presidencies at South China University of Technology (2022–2024) and then XJTU. His research covers rubber materials science and engineering, polymer nanocomposites, bio-based polymer materials and polymer processing engineering, including halloysite nanotube work on delayed antioxidant release in rubber compounds. He received the Sparks–Thomas Award of the ACS Rubber Division in 2012, has twice won the second prize of the National Technological Invention Award and once the second prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award, and his team developed the concept of bio-based engineering elastomers, including what the university describes as the world's first bio-based polyester elastomer, itaconate elastomer and polyurethane elastomer series, replacing fossil-based raw materials with renewable resources.

Executive Editor and Editorial Structure

The executive editor is Professor Chen Fei of the School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, and the journal is co-hosted by that school and the XJTU Journal Center. The structure follows the pattern used across XJTU's 2025 cohort: an academician editor-in-chief provides scientific direction and standing, a professor in the host school handles the journal's academic operations as executive editor, and the Journal Center provides the professional publishing backbone. For a new journal, that division of labour matters. The editor-in-chief's laboratory network defines the author and reviewer community the journal must attract — in this case the international rubber and polymer community in which Zhang has worked for three decades — while the executive editor and Journal Center carry the peer-review workflow, production standards and programme reporting that the Excellence Action Plan requires.

Scope: High-Performance, Green and Smart Elastomers

The journal focuses on frontier materials research, explicitly including high-performance rubber, green elastomers and smart polymers. Elastomers — polymers that return to their original shape after deformation — are among the most consequential and least glamorous materials in modern engineering: tyres, seals, hoses, vibration isolators, conveyor belts, medical gloves and implantable devices all depend on them, and their performance limits often set the performance limits of the systems they serve. High-performance rubber research addresses strength, fatigue, ageing, and temperature and chemical resistance; the XJTU announcement notes the journal's aim of accelerating elastomer innovation for aerospace, energy equipment and biomedicine, three sectors where elastomer failure is not an option and where operating conditions are extreme. Green elastomers research addresses the field's sustainability problem: conventional rubber depends on fossil feedstocks and produces difficult waste streams, whereas bio-based elastomers, recyclable networks and waste-rubber reuse — including the rubber-modified asphalt from discarded tyres that Zhang's team has deployed on more than 300 kilometres of roads in Inner Mongolia, stable from −30 to 80 degrees Celsius — offer routes to lower-carbon materials. Smart polymers add responsiveness: elastomers that sense, heal, change stiffness or convert mechanical energy, extending the material from a passive component into an active device element.

Why a Dedicated Elastomers Journal, and Why Now

Elastomer research has traditionally been scattered across general polymer journals, rubber-industry publications and applications journals in automotive, aerospace and biomedical engineering. A dedicated English-language title from a Chinese university reflects two converging facts. First, China is central to the world rubber economy, as producer, consumer and increasingly as research leader, yet the field's journal landscape has not matched that weight. Second, the research frontier has moved: nanocomposite reinforcement, bio-based monomers, dynamic covalent networks, self-healing and sensing elastomers, and computational materials design have turned a mature industrial material into a fast-moving research field again. A high-starting-point journal — launched with national programme backing, an academician editor whose name is synonymous with the field in China, and an explicit green and smart remit — is designed to capture that frontier in one place and to give Chinese and international authors a single venue of record for elastomer science.

Applications: Aerospace, Energy Equipment and Biomedicine

The journal's stated application fields repay attention because they define its review standards. In aerospace, elastomers serve in seals, damping systems and flexible components exposed to extreme temperatures and aggressive fluids. In energy equipment, they serve in seals, cables, hoses and vibration control for conventional and renewable installations alike, where lifetime prediction and ageing science are decisive. In biomedicine, elastomers serve in gloves, tubing, wearable devices, soft implants and drug-delivery systems, where biocompatibility and long-term stability in the body are the governing questions. A paper that advances any of these applications must speak both to polymer science and to engineering qualification — exactly the dual audience the journal's school-plus-journal-center structure is built to serve, and the audience its editor-in-chief has addressed throughout a career spanning fundamental nanocomposite science and deployed technologies such as recycled-rubber road surfaces.

Place in the XJTU 2025 Cohort and Launch Outlook

Advanced Elastomers is one of four brand-new XJTU titles in the 2025 high-starting-point cohort covered in this directory batch, alongside Intelligent Equipment, Quantum Devices and Systems and Frontiers of STS, and one of six XJTU selections in the round overall. It is scheduled to launch in 2026. Because it is a launch-stage journal, its record at the time of writing consists of its selection, its editorial leadership and its declared scope rather than a published archive; readers should treat claims about its future impact as aspirations set by its founders, not achievements. What is verifiable is substantial: a national programme selection won against countrywide competition, a host school and journal centre with an established publishing record, and an editor-in-chief who is simultaneously a university president, an academy member and a field-defining elastomer scientist. On those foundations, Advanced Elastomers begins publication as one of the most strongly sponsored new materials journals of the 2025 Chinese cohort.