About Chinese Journal of Tissue Engineering Research

Chinese Journal of Tissue Engineering Research

Overview and identity

The Chinese Journal of Tissue Engineering Research is a Chinese-language journal of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine based in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, in north-eastern China. Its Chinese title is Zhongguo Zuzhi Gongcheng Yanjiu, the pinyin name under which it is cited internationally, and its best-known web identity is www.crter.org, with its current journal site also presented as www.cjter.com. It is sponsored by the Chinese Association of Rehabilitation Medicine and publishes at weekly frequency, an unusually fast cadence for a research journal, with volume numbering that reached volume 18 in 2014 and volume 30 in 2026. Its current ISSN is 2095-4344, replacing the earlier ISSN 1673-8225 under which much of its Scopus record was accumulated, and its Chinese serial number, shown on its article mastheads, is CN 21-1581/R, with CODEN ZLKHAH.

Tissue engineering sits between basic science, materials research and clinical medicine. It asks how cells, scaffolds, growth signals and mechanical conditions can be combined to repair or replace damaged tissue, and how laboratory constructs behave once they meet the far less controlled conditions of a living body and a surgical practice. A journal devoted to that field in China, publishing weekly and in large volume, is therefore not a narrow bulletin. It is a high-throughput forum in which stem-cell biologists, biomaterials scientists, orthopaedic surgeons, transplant researchers and rehabilitation specialists all encounter one another's work under a single title.

Sponsorship, supervision and the Shenyang base

The journal's sponsor, the Chinese Association of Rehabilitation Medicine, connects it to the clinical end of its subject. Rehabilitation medicine is concerned with restoring function after injury, disease and surgery, which is precisely where engineered tissue, implanted materials and transplanted cells must ultimately prove themselves. The association itself dates to April 1983, when it was established as modern rehabilitation medicine was being introduced and organised in China in the early 1980s. A tissue-engineering journal under a rehabilitation-medicine association therefore carries a consistent editorial logic: discovery is valued, but discovery oriented toward repair, implantation and recovered function.

The journal has been described as supervised under China's national health authorities, the lineage that runs from the former Ministry of Health to the present National Health Commission. Readers verifying the title should rely on the stable identifiers rather than on changing administrative wording: the Shenyang base, the Chinese Association of Rehabilitation Medicine sponsorship, ISSN 2095-4344 for current issues, ISSN 1673-8225 for the earlier record, and CN 21-1581/R. Its article files carry those identifiers directly, for example on a 2016 issue masthead that prints ISSN 2095-4344, CN 21-1581/R, CODEN ZLKHAH and www.CRTER.org together, leaving no doubt about which journal a citation belongs to.

Publication history and weekly volume

The volume sequence is the clearest public trace of the journal's continuity and pace. Volume 19 was publishing in 2015, with issue 26 dated 25 June 2015, and volume 20 in 2016, with issue 31 dated 22 July 2016. By 2024 the journal was in volume 28, with articles carrying DOIs in the 10.12307 series, such as 10.12307/2024.245 for a review of injectable alginate hydrogels. In 2026 it reached volume 30, and database records for that year already show issues numbered into the thirties, including issue 24, issue 28, issue 32, issue 34 and issue 35, a pattern only compatible with weekly or near-weekly publication through the year. A single volume thus contains dozens of issues and, in aggregate, a very large number of articles.

SCImago figures underline the scale. A recent SCImago-based ranking lists the journal with 935 total documents in 2025 and 2,657 documents over three years, with tens of thousands of references in a single year. That is the output profile of a journal operating as a major national outlet for an entire research community, not of a selective quarterly. It also explains the journal's publishing model: frequent issues, structured articles with explicit background, objective, methods, results and conclusion elements, ORCID identifiers for authors, and bilingual presentation in which Chinese full texts are accompanied by English titles, abstracts and keywords that allow the work to be found and assessed internationally.

Scope: stem cells, biomaterials and repair

The journal's documented scope covers the core territories of tissue engineering. Stem-cell research is central: recent articles include work using autologous bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells combined with collagen and fibrin sealant to repair articular cartilage defects in an animal model, a characteristic tissue-engineering design in which a cell population, a scaffold material and a surgical delivery method are tested together. Biomaterials research is equally prominent. The 2024 review of injectable sodium alginate hydrogels, for instance, surveys preparation methods and applications as cell scaffolds, wound-repair materials and defect fillers, exactly the scaffold science on which engineered tissue depends.

Orthopaedic applications form one of the journal's strongest clinical clusters, which is consistent with its Scopus subject categorisation in orthopaedics and sports medicine as well as biomedical engineering. Bone grafting and guided bone regeneration, cartilage repair, osteoporosis mechanisms, spinal disorders such as lumbar disc herniation, and joint replacement technology all recur in its recent contents. A 2026 article comparing autologous bone with mixed bone grafts in guided bone regeneration, examining angiogenesis and osteogenic effects, shows the typical question: not simply whether a material fills a defect, but whether blood vessels grow into it and new bone actually forms. Organ transplantation and related repair research, present in the journal since its earlier years under its former longer title associating tissue engineering research with clinical rehabilitation, complete a scope that runs from the laboratory bench to the operating theatre.

Article forms visible in recent issues

Reviews are a major form. The journal publishes systematic and narrative reviews that map a material, a cell type or a technique across many primary studies, as well as meta-analyses, such as a 2026 meta-analysis of robot-assisted walking training for lower-limb motor function in Parkinson's disease, which belongs to the rehabilitation side of its inheritance. Original experimental studies follow a recognisable structure, stating background and objective before describing cell, animal or clinical methods, a format visible across its 2026 volume in studies of hydrogels for infected wounds, macrophage polarisation in osteoporosis, and cartilage ageing in animal models of knee osteoarthritis.

That mixture matters. Tissue engineering advances through both kinds of paper: the experiment that tests one scaffold or one signalling pathway, and the synthesis that tells surgeons and materials scientists which of dozens of competing approaches is accumulating real evidence. A weekly journal can carry both at scale, publishing new experiments promptly while also commissioning and printing the reviews that keep a fast, fragmented field legible to clinicians who do not have time to follow every laboratory literature themselves.

Indexing and standing in Chinese evaluation

The journal is indexed in Scopus. Editage and SCImago-derived services list it as a Scopus-indexed title, categorised in Biomedical Engineering, Clinical Biochemistry and Orthopedics and Sports Medicine, with coverage recorded from 2007 and a best quartile of Q4. SCImago-derived listings give it an h-index of about 11 to 12 and a recent SCImago Journal Rank of about 0.126 to 0.130. As with other large Chinese-language journals, those figures describe its position in international citation rankings, where language and volume weigh heavily, and should not be mistaken for its domestic standing.

Domestically, the journal's own reporting of the Annual Report on Impact Factor of Chinese Academic Journals tells a strikingly different story. For 2023 it reported a compound impact factor of 2.261 and an influence index of 837.240, ranking first among 65 journals in the basic medicine category, with a fund-paper ratio of 80 percent and a total citation ratio of 93 percent. It stated that the journal had ranked first in the basic medicine influence index for five consecutive years. Those are Chinese evaluation metrics, calculated on Chinese citation data for a Chinese readership, and they are the appropriate context for judging a journal whose primary community is China's tissue-engineering and rehabilitation research base.

Relationship to rehabilitation and clinical translation

The journal's sponsorship and contents together trace the full translational path of regenerative medicine. At one end are molecular and cellular papers on signalling pathways, oxidative stress, inflammation and stem-cell behaviour. In the middle are materials and preclinical studies: hydrogels, nanoparticles, scaffolds, grafts and animal models. At the clinical end are orthopaedic implants, transplantation, spinal and joint surgery, and rehabilitation interventions, including device-assisted training evaluated by meta-analysis. Few journals attempt to hold all three stages in one title; doing so at weekly frequency is the defining editorial choice of this one.

That breadth also creates the journal's main interpretive caution for outside readers. A citation to the Chinese Journal of Tissue Engineering Research may point to a biomaterials experiment, an orthopaedic clinical study or a rehabilitation synthesis, and the article's own structured abstract, not the journal title alone, tells the reader which kind of evidence it is. Checking the ISSN resolves a second common confusion: articles before the ISSN change carry 1673-8225, current articles carry 2095-4344, and both belong to the same journal, cited in abbreviated form as Chin. J. Tissue Eng. Res.

Readership and continuing role

The journal's readers and authors are China's regenerative-medicine community in its widest sense: researchers in stem cells and biomaterials, orthopaedic and spinal surgeons, transplant and rehabilitation specialists, and the graduate students and hospital departments who supply a weekly journal with its large flow of manuscripts. Its Shenyang base distinguishes it from the many national medical journals concentrated in Beijing and Shanghai, anchoring a major title in Liaoning's medical and university centre in the north-east.

Reaching volume 30 in 2026, still publishing weekly, still indexed in Scopus and still reporting leading domestic influence in basic medicine, the Chinese Journal of Tissue Engineering Research is best understood as infrastructure for a field rather than as a single specialty voice. Tissue engineering in China produces research at a scale that needs a high-capacity, Chinese-language, clinically connected outlet, and this journal, sponsored by the national rehabilitation medicine association and organised around repair and restored function, is the title that performs that role.