About Chinese Journal of Pharmacology and Toxicology

Chinese Journal of Pharmacology and Toxicology

Overview and identity

The Chinese Journal of Pharmacology and Toxicology is a Chinese-language scientific journal covering experimental pharmacology, toxicology and pharmaceutics, based in Beijing, China. It was first published in November 1986 and is jointly edited by the Chinese Pharmacological Society, the Chinese Society of Toxicology and the Academy of Military Medical Sciences. Its editorial office is at 27 Taiping Road, Haidian District, Beijing — the address of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences campus. The journal is identified by ISSN 1000-3002, and its standard abbreviation is Chin J Pharmacol Toxicol. Bibliographic coverage records its publication history continuously from 1986, and Scopus coverage runs from 1986 through the 2020s. It is a specialist journal serving China's pharmacology and toxicology research communities, publishing laboratory and experimental research on how drugs and toxic substances act on living systems.

A journal of three institutions

The journal's joint editorship by three institutions defines its character. The Chinese Pharmacological Society is China's national learned society for pharmacology, affiliated with the China Association for Science and Technology, whose other flagship is the English-language Acta Pharmacologica Sinica. The Chinese Society of Toxicology is the corresponding national society for toxicology, covering environmental, occupational, food, drug and military toxicology. The Academy of Military Medical Sciences, headquartered on Taiping Road in Beijing's Haidian District, is the Chinese military's principal medical research organisation, with historic strengths in pharmacology, toxicology, radiation medicine and the medical defence against chemical and biological hazards. The combination brought together the civilian academic community and the military research establishment in a single journal at a time, in 1986, when such collaboration in print was itself noteworthy. The journal's editorial office remains at the Academy's address.

Scope: pharmacology

On the pharmacology side, the journal publishes experimental studies of drug action: pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics, receptor and signal-transduction mechanisms, cardiovascular, neuro- and psychopharmacology, anti-inflammatory and anti-tumour agents, and the pharmacology of natural products and traditional Chinese medicines investigated by modern methods. China's pharmacological research in the journal's lifetime has ranged from the modernisation of traditional medicines — the tradition that produced artemisinin — to contemporary molecular drug discovery, and the journal records the experimental end of that work: animal and cellular studies, mechanism papers and methodological research. Its articles are typically laboratory studies rather than clinical trials, which distinguishes it from China's clinical pharmacology journals.

Scope: toxicology

On the toxicology side, the journal publishes studies of the adverse effects of chemicals, drugs and environmental agents: acute and chronic toxicity, organ toxicity, genotoxicity, carcinogenicity, reproductive and developmental toxicity, immunotoxicity and the mechanisms of poisoning and its treatment. The military affiliation of one of its editors is reflected in the field's attention to chemical defence and the toxicology of hazardous industrial and military chemicals, while the civilian side covers pesticide, drug-safety, food and environmental toxicology. Safety evaluation is a recurring practical theme: as China's pharmaceutical industry expanded and its drug regulatory system developed — culminating in the modern National Medical Products Administration and China's participation in international harmonisation — the demand for rigorous preclinical toxicology published in Chinese grew with it, and this journal is one of its principal outlets.

Pharmaceutics and methods

Journal metrics classifications place the journal in pharmacology, toxicology and pharmaceutics, and its scope includes pharmaceutics research: formulation, drug delivery and the experimental evaluation of dosage forms, together with analytical and experimental methods used in pharmacological and toxicological work. Its Scopus classification places it in the fourth quartile in pharmacology and toxicology in recent metric cycles — a modest international citation standing that reflects its Chinese language and its role as a domestic professional journal rather than an internationally oriented title. Its value lies principally in serving the Chinese research community in its own language and in documenting Chinese experimental work that is not always republished in English.

Historical development

Founded in November 1986, the journal appeared during the rapid reconstruction and expansion of Chinese biomedical research in the reform era, when the national societies were founding or refounding specialist journals across medicine and the life sciences. A joint pharmacology-and-toxicology title made sense in that period: the two disciplines shared methods, institutions and, in the military academy, a common home. Over the following decades the journal's content tracked the transformation of Chinese drug research — from descriptive pharmacology of natural products toward molecular mechanisms, transgenic and omics-based methods, and GLP-standard safety studies supporting China's integration into global drug development. Its unbroken archive from 1986 gives it one of the longer continuous records among Chinese specialist life-science journals.

Readership and authorship

The journal's authors are researchers in university pharmacology and toxicology departments, institutes of materia medica, military medical research institutes, drug safety evaluation centres and pharmaceutical company laboratories across China. Its readers are the same community, together with regulatory scientists and graduate students in the two disciplines. Publication in Chinese suits this readership, and the journal's society sponsorship — by the national pharmacological and toxicological societies jointly — gives it an official standing in both professions that a purely institutional journal would lack. Articles carry English abstracts, allowing international indexers to record their content.

Relationship to other Chinese pharmacology journals

China's pharmacology literature includes several titles that must be distinguished. Acta Pharmacologica Sinica, launched in 1980, is the Chinese Pharmacological Society's English-language, internationally oriented journal, published monthly with Springer Nature; the Chinese Journal of Pharmacology and Toxicology is the society's Chinese-language experimental journal, jointly held with the toxicology society and the military academy. The Chinese Pharmacological Bulletin is a separate monthly title from another publisher, and the Chinese Journal of Clinical Pharmacology serves clinical rather than experimental work. The joint pharmacology–toxicology scope, the 1986 founding and the Taiping Road editorial address identify the present journal within that family.

Bibliographic record

The journal's bibliographic identity is stable: one title, one ISSN (1000-3002), continuous publication from 1986. Third-party metrics services differ in the coverage end-dates they display — variously 2021, 2024 or 2025 — reflecting their own indexing cycles rather than any interruption of publication; SciJournal's database treats the journal as active across 1986–2025. Its early volumes are cited as Chin J Pharmacol Toxicol in the international literature on Chinese drug research.

How to cite and identify the journal

The reliable identifiers of the Chinese Journal of Pharmacology and Toxicology are its exact title, ISSN 1000-3002, its first publication in November 1986, its joint editorship by the Chinese Pharmacological Society, the Chinese Society of Toxicology and the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, and its editorial office at 27 Taiping Road, Haidian District, Beijing. Cited by title and ISSN, it uniquely identifies the journal described in this profile.

The journal's longevity also makes it a useful lens on the changing balance between its two disciplines in China. Pharmacology expanded enormously with the growth of the Chinese pharmaceutical industry and of university drug research, while toxicology professionalised around drug safety evaluation, environmental health and chemical regulation; a journal owned jointly by both societies had to serve both trajectories at once. Its pages accordingly contain, side by side, mechanism studies of new compounds and safety studies of industrial and environmental chemicals. That breadth is deliberate: in the Chinese system, pharmacology and toxicology are taught and practised as neighbouring laboratory sciences, often in the same institutes — most visibly in the Academy of Military Medical Sciences itself, where pharmacological and toxicological research have coexisted since the academy's early decades.