About CSIAM Transactions on Applied Mathematics

CSIAM Transactions on Applied Mathematics

CSIAM Transactions on Applied Mathematics, abbreviated CSIAM Trans. Appl. Math. and also styled CSIAM-AM, is the English-language flagship journal of the China Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (CSIAM), co-published by the society and Global Science Press in Hong Kong. Founded in April 2020 as a quarterly, it publishes research on applied mathematics and its applications in science, engineering and industry, and it serves as the transactions journal through which China's national industrial and applied mathematics society speaks to the international research community. The society's secretariat is in Beijing, and the journal's founding editor-in-chief, Pingwen Zhang, is one of China's leading applied mathematicians, which gave the new title immediate standing in its field.

Identity, publisher and bibliographic record

The journal is identified by the ISSNs 2708-0560 and 2708-0579 in journal records, published by Global Science Press, whose Hong Kong base places the title in that city's mathematics publishing cluster in SCImago's country rankings. It appears quarterly, four issues a year, with coverage in bibliographic services beginning in 2020, its founding year. Its articles carry DOIs in the 10.4208/csiamam series and are hosted on the Global Science Press platform under the journal's csiamam address. The society it represents, CSIAM, is China's national society for industrial and applied mathematics and a large full member of the International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM), the world body for the field, which describes CSIAM-AM explicitly as the society's flagship journal. These identifiers distinguish it from CSIAM's later sister title, CSIAM Transactions on Life Sciences, a separate journal for mathematical life sciences and not a continuation of this one.

Founding in 2020

The ICIAM newsletter records that CSIAM-AM was founded in April 2020 as an English-language quarterly co-published by CSIAM and Global Science Press (Hong Kong). Launching an international journal in 2020, at the start of a global pandemic that disrupted conferences and editorial offices everywhere, underlines the society's determination to give its members — applied mathematicians across Chinese universities, institutes and industry — a society-owned English-language outlet of their own. The first volume appeared in 2020, and early articles already showed the journal's intended range, including work on detecting suspected epidemic cases using trajectory big data, an applied-mathematics response to the public-health emergency of that year. By 2026 the journal was publishing its seventh volume, with special issues used to build international links, including a volume 7, number 2 special issue dedicated to the African Society of Applied and Industrial Mathematics.

Aims and scope

The journal focuses on the intersection of mathematics and its applications, emphasising the development and application of mathematical modelling, numerical analysis and computational techniques to solve real-world problems. Its scope, as summarised in journal guides, covers mathematical modelling and analysis of complex systems in fields including physics, biology, finance and engineering; numerical methods and algorithms, including methods for partial differential equations and optimisation; and interdisciplinary applications in areas such as epidemiology, materials science and machine learning. Research on deep learning theory has a documented place in its pages, including a widely noticed 2021 article on the frequency principle for general deep neural networks, which connected the training behaviour of neural networks to dynamical-systems theory. The journal's identity is therefore neither pure theory nor routine application: it seeks mathematics that is genuinely motivated by, and genuinely useful to, problems outside mathematics itself.

Editorial leadership: from Pingwen Zhang to Gang Bao

The journal's founding editor-in-chief was Pingwen Zhang of Peking University, whose university profile records his service as editor-in-chief from 2020 and as president of CSIAM from 2015 through his terms ending in 2025. Zhang is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics and of The World Academy of Sciences, an invited speaker at both the International Congress of Industrial and Applied Mathematics and the International Congress of Mathematicians, and a specialist in computational mathematics, complex fluids and big-data analysis. In January 2026, according to the ICIAM newsletter, the editorial board was renewed: Academician Gang Bao of Zhejiang University, president of CSIAM, was appointed editor-in-chief, with Professor Lei Zhang of Peking University, a vice president of CSIAM, serving as managing editor. That documented succession — from one CSIAM president to the next — shows the journal's editorship is tied institutionally to the society's leadership, a common and stabilising pattern for society flagship journals.

The society behind the journal

CSIAM, the China Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, organises the Chinese community that works on mathematics for industry, technology and the sciences, and represents it internationally through ICIAM. A transactions journal is the classic instrument of such a society: the word transactions signals that the journal carries the considered research output of the society's field, refereed to an international standard. Publishing in English, quarterly, through an established Hong Kong mathematics publisher gives that output worldwide circulation, while society ownership keeps editorial priorities — which problems matter, which communities to build links with — in the hands of the applied-mathematics community itself, as the 2026 Africa special issue illustrates.

Indexing and ranking

SCImago, drawing on Scopus data, classifies the journal in Applied Mathematics and placed it in the second quartile (Q2) — a strong position for a journal founded in 2020 — with an SJR around 0.5 in recent listings and a growing document and citation record across its 2020–2024 coverage window and beyond. Journal guides likewise record its Q2 applied-mathematics standing and its ranking within the Scopus applied-mathematics list. Quartiles move annually and a young journal's metrics are still settling, but the direction is clear: within five years of founding, CSIAM-AM had entered the indexed, ranked mainstream of international applied-mathematics publishing, rather than remaining a domestic bulletin. Researchers should consult the current SCImago or Scopus record for the latest figures before citing them.

Content and research themes

Recent and trending themes identified in the journal's published output include machine learning and artificial intelligence treated mathematically, mathematical epidemiology, materials modelling, optimisation and the numerical analysis of partial differential equations. These themes track the priorities of contemporary applied mathematics: methods for learning systems whose behaviour needs theory, models for infectious disease whose parameters come from real mobility data, and computational techniques for the complex materials and fluids that industry designs with. The journal welcomes work that pushes across boundaries between these areas, and its interdisciplinary applications strand explicitly encourages papers in which a mathematical technique developed in one field is carried into another, from finance to biology to engineering.

Readership and authors

The journal's readers are applied and computational mathematicians, engineers, data scientists and researchers in the physical and life sciences who use mathematical modelling. Its authors are international, with a natural centre of gravity in China's large applied-mathematics community, whose national society publishes the journal. For Chinese researchers it offers a society flagship in English whose standards are visible worldwide; for international researchers it offers a window into, and a venue within, one of the most active applied-mathematics communities in the world, including special issues built around international exchange.

Place among applied mathematics journals

Applied mathematics has many established journals, most edited in Europe and North America by commercial publishers or by the American and European societies. CSIAM Transactions on Applied Mathematics adds the Chinese society's own flagship to that company: founded in April 2020, quarterly, co-published by CSIAM and Global Science Press, edited first by Pingwen Zhang and from January 2026 by Gang Bao with Lei Zhang as managing editor, ranked Q2 in applied mathematics and carrying ISSNs 2708-0560 and 2708-0579. Its first six years show a journal built deliberately — society backing, senior editorial leadership, international special issues and indexed, ranked output — to carry China's industrial and applied mathematics to a global readership.