About Chinese Journal of Lung Cancer

Chinese Journal of Lung Cancer

Overview and identity

The Chinese Journal of Lung Cancer (Zhongguo Fei Ai Za Zhi) is a Chinese-language medical journal devoted entirely to lung cancer, based in Tianjin, China. It is identified by ISSN 1009-3419, and articles in the journal carry DOIs in the series 10.3779/j.issn.1009-3419. The journal's archive reaches volume 21 in 2018, indicating continuous publication since 1998, and it is closely associated with the Tianjin Lung Cancer Institute at Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, one of China's leading centres for lung cancer research and treatment. As a single-disease journal, it occupies a specialised position in Chinese medical publishing: where general oncology journals cover lung cancer as one topic among many, this title exists solely to serve the research, clinical and public-health community working on the most common and most lethal cancer in China. Articles are published in Chinese, with English abstracts that make the work discoverable through international databases such as PubMed Central, where the journal's articles are openly available.

Institutional home in Tianjin

The journal's identity is inseparable from its host institution. The Tianjin Lung Cancer Institute, based at Tianjin Medical University General Hospital in Tianjin's Heping District, is home to the Tianjin Key Laboratory of Lung Cancer Metastasis and Tumor Microenvironment, and its researchers are among the most prominent contributors to the journal. Tianjin itself has a long history in Chinese cancer epidemiology: the Tianjin Cancer Registry has collected data since 1981, and analyses of that registry have repeatedly shown lung cancer to be the most frequently diagnosed cancer in the city, a pattern that mirrors the national picture. A specialist lung cancer journal anchored in an institute dedicated to the disease, in a city with decades of registry data, therefore has both a clinical and an epidemiological foundation. The journal functions as one of the channels through which the institute's work on lung cancer metastasis, the tumour microenvironment, screening and treatment reaches the wider Chinese profession.

Scope and subject coverage

The journal publishes research across the full spectrum of lung cancer science and care. Its pages cover epidemiology and prevention, including analyses of lung cancer incidence and mortality in China drawn from national and local cancer registry data; screening and early detection, including low-dose computed tomography and the use of deep-learning artificial intelligence for detecting pulmonary nodules in chest CT scans; pathology and molecular biology, including gene cloning and expression studies in lung cancer tissue; staging and diagnosis; surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, targeted therapy and immunotherapy; and translational work on biomarkers and prognosis. A representative article from 2019 evaluated deep-learning-based artificial intelligence for detecting malignant and non-calcified pulmonary nodules using CT data from Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, illustrating the journal's engagement with the screening technologies that dominate current Chinese lung cancer research. Reviews of dual immunotherapy in advanced non-small cell lung cancer, published in the journal in 2022, likewise show its coverage of the therapeutic frontier.

Role in guidelines and national screening policy

A distinctive feature of the Chinese Journal of Lung Cancer is its role in publishing national guidance. The journal carries the China national lung cancer screening guidelines and related expert consensus documents, giving its content a direct influence on clinical and public-health practice across the country. Lung cancer is the most common cancer and the leading cause of cancer death in China, with national registry data for 2010 recording more than 600,000 new diagnoses and more than 480,000 deaths in a single year. Against that burden, organised screening of high-risk populations with low-dose CT is a central policy question, and a journal that publishes the screening guideline, the registry analyses that justify it and the nodule-detection research that refines it performs a coordinating function for the whole field. Its guideline and consensus articles are among its most cited contributions and are routinely referenced in Chinese clinical practice documents.

Publication pattern and access

The journal publishes monthly and its articles are available open access through PubMed Central, where its content is licensed under Creative Commons terms, an arrangement that gives Chinese-language lung cancer research an unusually wide international reach for a national-language title. The presence of full texts in PMC, with structured English abstracts, means that systematic reviewers and researchers outside China can identify and use its studies even when they cannot read the Chinese full text. Its DOI pattern, embedding its ISSN in the article identifier, is characteristic of journals published through the Chinese medical journal publishing system. Volume numbering reaching the high twenties by the mid-2020s confirms an unbroken publication record of more than two and a half decades.

Relationship to Thoracic Cancer

The journal is closely related to, but distinct from, Thoracic Cancer, the English-language open-access journal also associated with the Tianjin Lung Cancer Institute and published by Wiley. The two titles form a complementary pair: the Chinese Journal of Lung Cancer serves the domestic Chinese-language profession, including guideline dissemination within China, while Thoracic Cancer presents thoracic oncology research, much of it from the same Tianjin community, to an international English-reading audience. Researchers citing work from the Tianjin school may encounter the same authors, and sometimes related studies, in both journals, and care should be taken to cite the correct title, since the two journals have different ISSNs, languages and publishers.

Readership and authorship

The journal's readership consists of thoracic surgeons, medical and radiation oncologists, respiratory physicians, pathologists, radiologists, epidemiologists and public-health specialists working on lung cancer throughout China. Its authorship is drawn from cancer hospitals, medical universities and cancer registries across the country, with the Tianjin Lung Cancer Institute as its anchor contributor. For Chinese clinicians who read and write primarily in Chinese, the journal is a core professional resource; for the international community, its English abstracts and PMC availability make it a useful source of China-specific data on lung cancer epidemiology, screening practice and treatment outcomes in Chinese patient populations.

Historical context

The journal was founded in 1998, at a time when lung cancer had already become China's dominant cancer killer and when Chinese thoracic oncology was expanding rapidly in surgical capability, chemotherapy and, soon after, molecular targeted therapy. Its founding gave the specialty a dedicated Chinese-language forum at the moment when large-scale national data collection, through the National Central Cancer Registry, was beginning to quantify the epidemic. Over the following decades the journal's content has tracked the transformation of the field: from surgery and cytotoxic chemotherapy, through the EGFR targeted-therapy era in which Chinese and East Asian patients figured prominently, to the current period of immunotherapy, antibody-drug conjugates and AI-assisted screening. That continuity makes its archive a record of how Chinese lung cancer medicine has developed over a generation.

How to cite and identify the journal

The reliable identifiers of the Chinese Journal of Lung Cancer are its exact title, its ISSN 1009-3419, its DOI prefix pattern 10.3779/j.issn.1009-3419, its Chinese language, its Tianjin base and its association with the Tianjin Lung Cancer Institute at Tianjin Medical University General Hospital. It should not be confused with Thoracic Cancer, its English-language sister title, with the Chinese Journal of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases, or with general oncology journals whose titles are similar. Cited by title and ISSN, it uniquely identifies the Tianjin-based specialist lung cancer journal described in this profile.