About Chinese Journal of Radiological Health

Chinese Journal of Radiological Health

Overview and identity

The Chinese Journal of Radiological Health is a Chinese-language, peer-reviewed journal of radiation protection and radiological health, based in Jinan, Shandong, China. It was founded in 1992 and is published bimonthly. The journal is supervised by the National Health Commission of the People's Republic of China and is co-sponsored by the Institute of Radiation Medicine, Shandong Academy of Medical Sciences, in Jinan, and the Chinese Preventive Medicine Association. It is identified by ISSN 1004-714X. Its subject scope covers radiation protection, occupational radiation health, radiological monitoring, radiation dosimetry, the health effects of ionising and non-ionising radiation, and the management of radiation emergencies and accidents in China. As the specialist journal of China's radiological-health profession, it serves the scientists and inspectors who monitor workplaces, medical facilities, nuclear installations and the environment for radiation safety.

Founding and institutional home

The journal was founded in 1992, in a period when China's use of radiation and radioactive sources was expanding across medicine, industry and agriculture, and when the need for a dedicated professional literature in radiological health was becoming clear. Its sponsoring institute, the Institute of Radiation Medicine of the Shandong Academy of Medical Sciences in Jinan, is one of China's provincial-level specialist institutes for radiation medicine and protection, conducting monitoring, dosimetry, research and technical support for the province and contributing to national work. The Chinese Preventive Medicine Association, its co-sponsor, is the national professional association for preventive medicine, and supervision by the National Health Commission — formerly the Ministry of Health — gives the journal official standing within the health system. This combination of a specialist provincial institute and a national association is typical of Chinese professional journals in applied public-health fields.

The field it serves

Radiological health in China covers the protection of workers, patients and the public from ionising radiation. The field's practitioners monitor occupational exposure in hospitals, nuclear power plants, industrial radiography, mining and research; they measure environmental radioactivity and natural background radiation; they assess doses from medical imaging and radiotherapy; they maintain personal dosimetry services; and they investigate radiation accidents. China's literature records the scale of this work: a survey of environmental natural penetrating radiation in Shandong Province, for example, measured 1,608 grid points across the province and calculated annual effective doses from cosmic rays and terrestrial gamma radiation for the population. The journal is the forum in which Chinese specialists publish such surveys, together with methods, standards work and case investigations.

Radiation accidents and lessons learned

A historically important strand of the journal's content is the documentation of radiation accidents in China. International reviews of Chinese radiation accidents cite the journal as a primary source: the IAEA's review of lessons from radiation accidents in China over forty years drew on analyses published in the Chinese Journal of Radiological Health, including Fan's general situation and analysis of radiation accidents in China (1998) and the report of the major 1992 Xinzhou, Shanxi accident, in which a lost cobalt-60 source caused three deaths (journal volume 2, 1993). That accident — in which a source discarded from a former irradiation facility was picked up by a worker, causing fatal exposures in his family — became a landmark case in Chinese radiation safety education and regulation. The journal's role in publishing accident investigations gives its archive long-term value for safety science: the lessons of lost-source events, interlock failures and overexposures are preserved in its pages and cited by international bodies.

Scope: occupational and medical radiation protection

The journal publishes research on occupational radiation health: dose monitoring of radiology workers, interventional physicians, nuclear medicine staff and industrial radiographers; epidemiological studies of occupationally exposed cohorts; and the design and evaluation of protective measures. Medical radiation is a second major theme, covering patient doses in diagnostic X-ray, CT, fluoroscopy and nuclear medicine, and the optimisation of imaging practice. National surveys of medical radiation usage in China, such as the Shandong Province survey of 1999 covering all hospitals in the province and more than two thousand patients, exemplify the kind of population-dose assessment work that the radiological-health community conducts and reports. The journal also covers radiation protection standards, regulations and inspection practice, serving the supervisory side of the profession.

Scope: environmental monitoring and emergency response

Environmental radiological monitoring — of air, water, soil, food and building materials — forms a third theme, including natural background radiation surveys, monitoring around nuclear facilities and the assessment of technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive material. Emergency preparedness and response is a fourth: China established its Center for Medical Response to Radiation Emergency in 1992, the year of the journal's founding, based at the National Institute for Radiological Protection, and the journal's community overlaps with the national system for medical preparedness, dose assessment and treatment of radiation injuries. After the Fukushima accident in 2011, Chinese radiological-health institutions conducted extensive environmental and food monitoring, work of the kind reported in this journal's field.

Readership and authorship

The journal's readers are radiological-health professionals: staff of radiation protection institutes at national and provincial level, CDC radiological health departments, occupational health inspectors, hospital radiation safety officers, dosimetry services and medical physicists. Its authors come from the same community, including the Shandong institute that sponsors it and counterpart institutes in other provinces, the National Institute for Radiological Protection of China CDC, and universities. The journal is published in Chinese for this domestic professional readership. Its international visibility comes largely through citations in IAEA and other international safety literature, where its accident reports and survey data are referenced.

Publication pattern and record

The journal has been published since 1992 on a bimonthly schedule, producing six issues a year, and it has maintained its title and ISSN 1004-714X throughout its history, which simplifies bibliographic tracing. Its volumes from the 1990s onward document the professionalisation of Chinese radiological health: the building of monitoring networks, the tightening of source security after the accidents of the early 1990s, the growth of medical imaging and its dose consequences, and the expansion of nuclear power in China and the monitoring systems around it. For researchers of radiation safety history in China, it is a primary source.

Distinguishing the journal

The Chinese Journal of Radiological Health should not be confused with the Chinese Journal of Radiological Medicine and Protection (ISSN 0254-5098), a separate Chinese Medical Association journal covering radiation medicine and injury treatment, nor with the Chinese Journal of Radiology, the country's main diagnostic imaging journal. The radiological-health title is concerned with protection, monitoring and health supervision rather than with clinical imaging or the treatment of radiation injury. Its Jinan base and Shandong Academy of Medical Sciences sponsorship are also distinguishing marks, since most national health journals are based in Beijing.

How to cite and identify the journal

The reliable identifiers of the Chinese Journal of Radiological Health are its exact title, ISSN 1004-714X, its founding in 1992, its bimonthly frequency, its supervision by the National Health Commission, its co-sponsorship by the Institute of Radiation Medicine, Shandong Academy of Medical Sciences (Jinan) and the Chinese Preventive Medicine Association, and its scope in radiation protection and radiological monitoring. Cited by title and ISSN, it uniquely identifies the Jinan-based journal described in this profile.

The journal also serves as a record of the professionalisation of its field's workforce. Radiological health work in China is performed by a defined occupational group with its own training, certification and technical standards, and the journal publishes the methodological and quality-assurance literature that group relies on: intercomparison of dosimetry, calibration and measurement methods, survey design for population dose assessment and the evaluation of inspection practice. Its founding in 1992 coincided with the establishment of China's national centre for medical response to radiation emergencies, and its subsequent volumes parallel the build-out of the monitoring and response system that centre leads, giving the journal a documentary value for the institutional history of Chinese radiation protection.