About Food Science and Human Wellness

Food Science and Human Wellness

Food Science and Human Wellness (FSHW) is an open-access, peer-reviewed scientific journal based in Beijing, China, devoted to the relationship between food and human health. It publishes research in food science, nutrition, immunology and related interdisciplinary fields, with the stated aim of unveiling the correlations between food science and human health through fundamental and applied research from around the world. For most of its life it was published through KeAi, the Beijing-based publishing partnership, with publishing services by Elsevier; as of 2025 it transferred to Tsinghua University Press, which now provides its publishing services on the SciOpen platform on behalf of the Beijing Academy of Food Sciences.

The journal's title states its programme plainly. Food science alone can describe what is in food and how it behaves in processing; human wellness asks the further question of what food does in the body — how nutrients, bioactive compounds, microbes and contaminants affect health, immunity and disease. Food Science and Human Wellness was built to publish work that connects those two sides, and it has grown into one of the more visible English-language food-science journals published from China, classified in the first quartile for food science in Scopus-based rankings.

Overview and identifying details

The journal's ISSN is 2213-4530, recorded as its electronic ISSN, and its standard abbreviation is Food Sci. Human Wellness. Its articles carry DOIs in the 10.26599/FSHW series under its current publisher, and volume numbering places it in volume 14 in 2025 and volume 15 in 2026, consistent with a publication history beginning in 2012 — Scopus coverage of the title is recorded from 2012 onward. Its current editor-in-chief, named on its SciOpen journal page, is Bin Cong, and peer review is conducted under the responsibility of the Beijing Academy of Food Sciences.

The journal is open access. Articles published under its current arrangement appear under a CC BY-NC-ND licence, with copyright held by the Beijing Academy of Food Sciences and publishing services provided by Tsinghua University Press. Its current journal homepage is on SciOpen, Tsinghua University Press's platform, while its earlier volumes remain part of the ScienceDirect record from its KeAi and Elsevier period — a dual presence that reflects the publisher transfer described below.

Origins and the Beijing Academy of Food Sciences

Food Science and Human Wellness is produced and hosted by SciOpen on behalf of the Beijing Academy of Food Sciences, the institution under whose responsibility its peer review is conducted and which holds copyright in its current articles. The Academy is also connected with the wider Beijing food-science publishing community: together with China Food Publishing Co. and the journal Food Science, it has been among the organisers of the International Symposium of Food Science and the associated symposia on food science and human wellness, which had run through multiple editions by the early 2020s. A journal and a symposium series sharing the same name and sponsor reinforce each other, giving the Academy both a conference forum and an archival journal for the same research community.

The directory description of the journal records its earlier publishing arrangement: published by KeAi, Elsevier's Beijing-based joint venture, in association with Beijing Technology and Business University, a Beijing university with strong food-science programmes. That KeAi and Elsevier phase accounts for the journal's presence on ScienceDirect, where its journal page still stands with its ISSN and its back content, marked with the notice that the title would be transferred to Tsinghua University Press as of 2025.

The 2025 transfer to Tsinghua University Press

The most important recent event in the journal's history is its change of publisher. ScienceDirect's page for the journal carries the notice that it would be transferred to Tsinghua University Press as of 2025, and the journal's 2025 articles confirm the transfer in their own front matter: articles in volume 14 (2025) state that contents are available at SciOpen, give the SciOpen journal homepage, record copyright in the Beijing Academy of Food Sciences, and state that publishing services are provided by Tsinghua University Press, with peer review under the responsibility of the Beijing Academy of Food Sciences.

Transfers of this kind have become a recognisable pattern in Chinese academic publishing, as university presses — above all Tsinghua University Press, through SciOpen — have taken over publishing services for established English-language journals previously handled by international commercial partners. For readers and authors, what matters is continuity, and that is what the record shows: the same title, the same ISSN 2213-4530, the same sponsoring academy, continuous volume numbering into volumes 14 and 15, and the same open-access model, now delivered from Beijing by a Chinese university press instead of through the KeAi and Elsevier channel.

Aims: an international platform for food and health research

The journal states its objective as providing an international communication platform to disseminate the most innovative and influential research papers in food science, nutrition, immunology and interdisciplinary fields to the public in a timely manner. It aims to unveil the correlations between food science and human health through the dissemination of both fundamental and applied research outcomes worldwide. Its description in the SciOpen journal catalogue repeats the same framing: an international peer-reviewed journal providing a forum for the latest scientific results in food science, nutrition, immunology and cross-disciplinary work.

Two features of that mission are worth noting. First, timeliness and public dissemination are built into it — the journal is open access, so the public-facing part of the mission is practical rather than rhetorical. Second, the emphasis falls on correlation between food and health: not food chemistry for its own sake, and not clinical nutrition detached from food composition, but the connection between the two. That positioning explains the journal's characteristic contents, in which a paper characterising a plant polysaccharide or a food-derived peptide will typically go on to test its effect on metabolism, immunity, oxidative stress or the gut.

Scope and research disciplines

The journal organises its scope into four research disciplines. The first is food biochemistry, including basic research on carbohydrates, proteins, fats, enzymes and related components. The second is food microbiology, including basic research on food microbial physiology and genetics and on microbial interactions. The third is food nutrition and immunology, including basic research on molecular nutrition, clinical nutrition, bioactive substances and functional evaluation. The fourth is food security and toxicology, including research on safety detection and toxicological evaluation of risk compounds and metals in food products, and on foodborne diseases.

Around those four pillars, the directory description adds the applied themes the journal is known for: food chemistry, nutrition, functional foods and food safety, and the relationship between diet and human health. Bibliographic analyses of its published contents find its work concentrated in food science itself, with strong strands in antioxidants, biochemistry, pharmacology and traditional medicine — including studies of phytochemicals, polysaccharides, polyphenols and food-derived bioactive compounds, and their health effects. Work on gut microbiota, fermentation, probiotics and prebiotics also recurs, connecting its microbiology scope to its nutrition and immunology scope in a way that reflects where much of contemporary food-and-health research is concentrated.

What the journal publishes

Food Science and Human Wellness publishes original research articles and review papers reporting fundamental and applied research. Its most cited content shows the pattern clearly: a review of Moringa oleifera covering its nutritive importance and medicinal application became its most cited paper in bibliographic listings, followed by work on alpha-glucosidase inhibitors isolated from medicinal plants — reviews and studies of foods and food-derived compounds with potential health applications, exactly the territory the journal's title promises.

Recent issues show the same breadth at article level. Papers in its 2025 volume addressed, among other topics, microbial fermentation of blue honeysuckle and its effects related to insulin secretion and obesity, interactions between bifidobacteria and the neonatal gut, the effect of microstructure on the lipolysis behaviour of milk fat, antioxidant peptides from Japanese sea bass, and a framework for decoding salty taste from electroencephalography signals. Traditional Chinese food and medicine resources, dairy science, marine foods and even taste neuroscience all appear within a single volume — a breadth that is only possible because the journal's organising question, how food relates to human wellness, is deliberately wide.

Indexing and standing

The journal is indexed in Science Citation Index Expanded and in Scopus, as recorded in its directory description, and Scopus coverage runs from 2012 to the present. In Scopus-based SCImago rankings it is classified in food science, where it has been placed in the first quartile (Q1), with an SJR in recent listings of around 1.39. Bibliometric profiles record a substantial publication volume — one analysis counted more than 1,600 papers across a recent four-year window — and citation indicators that place it among the more influential food-science titles published from China.

That standing is significant in context. Food science is a field with many long-established journals in Europe and North America, and Chinese food research — produced by a large national community of food-science institutes and universities — historically published much of its best work in those overseas titles. A Beijing-based, English-language, open-access journal reaching Q1 in food science gives that community a high-standing venue of its own, while remaining open to authors worldwide; its contributor base in bibliographic profiles includes institutions in China and abroad, and its most prolific authors include researchers based outside China as well as within it.

Publication pattern and access

The journal publishes regularly through the year: bibliographic listings record a frequency of six issues a year in its earlier period, and its SciOpen page shows numbered monthly-style issues in its recent volumes, with volume 15 reaching issue 9 by September 2026. Its articles are published open access, in press and in issues, with full texts available through SciOpen for current volumes and through ScienceDirect for the KeAi-era record. Articles are identified by DOIs in the 10.26599/FSHW series, following the DOI pattern used by Tsinghua University Press journals on SciOpen.

For readers, the practical consequence is that the journal's entire recent output can be read without a subscription — a material advantage for the public-health, nutrition and food-industry audiences its mission statement addresses, who often sit outside university library systems. For authors in China's food-science institutions, whose input the directory description notes is strong, it combines that open readership with SCI-Expanded and Scopus indexing, which is what makes publication there count in institutional research evaluation.

Readership and community

The journal's readership spans food scientists, nutrition researchers, immunologists, toxicologists and food-safety specialists, together with researchers in traditional medicine and natural products whose work touches food. Its sponsoring community — the Beijing Academy of Food Sciences, its symposium series, and the wider network of Chinese food-science universities and institutes — gives it a stable home base, while its English language, open access and international indexing make its contents available to the global food-and-health research community.

It also sits within a family of related Beijing food publishing. The Beijing Academy of Food Sciences is associated with other English-language food titles hosted on SciOpen, including journals devoted to animal-origin foods, and the Academy's symposium activity — the International Symposium of Food Science, held through eleven editions, alongside dedicated Food Science and Human Wellness symposia — channels the same community's work between conference presentation and journal publication. Food Science and Human Wellness is the flagship expression of that community's central theme: the science connecting what people eat with how healthy they are.

Why the journal matters

Food Science and Human Wellness matters because the question it is organised around — how food affects human health — has become one of the central questions of applied life science, spanning functional foods, gut microbiology, food safety and chronic disease. A journal that publishes food biochemistry, food microbiology, food nutrition and immunology, and food security and toxicology under one title, in English and open access, from one of China's largest food-research communities, is a significant piece of that field's infrastructure.

Its record can be summarised in a few verified facts: ISSN 2213-4530; published on behalf of the Beijing Academy of Food Sciences; published through KeAi and Elsevier for most of its history and transferred to Tsinghua University Press, on SciOpen, as of 2025; edited under editor-in-chief Bin Cong in its current period; indexed in SCI-Expanded and Scopus with coverage from 2012; and ranked in the first quartile for food science. From its KeAi-era beginnings to its present home with a Chinese university press, it illustrates how China's English-language research journals have matured — building international standing first with a global publishing partner, and then carrying that standing into domestic publishing platforms without breaking continuity for readers or authors.