About Frontiers of Medicine

Frontiers of Medicine

Frontiers of Medicine is an English-language, peer-reviewed general medical journal based in Beijing, China. It is jointly published by Higher Education Press and Springer, and it was created to present advances in Chinese and international medicine to readers around the world. Established in January 2007 under the title Frontiers of Medicine in China, it adopted the shorter name Frontiers of Medicine in 2011. Its most recent author instructions present the journal under a further new identity, MedScience, described as formerly known as Frontiers of Medicine — a change of name that continues, rather than replaces, the publication history that began in 2007.

The journal is a general medical title rather than a specialist one. It publishes original research and review articles on the latest advances in clinical and basic medicine, with a stated focus on epidemiology, traditional Chinese medicine, translational research, healthcare, public health and health policies. That breadth — running from laboratory and clinical work through to the organisation and reform of health services — is the defining characteristic of the journal, and it explains why the title has long been counted among China's principal English-language general medicine journals.

Overview and identifying details

The bibliographic identifiers recorded for Frontiers of Medicine are consistent across publisher and library listings. Its print ISSN is 2095-0217 and its online ISSN is 2095-0225. Its Chinese domestic publication number, shown on the Higher Education Press journal site, is CN 11-5983/R. Library records give its standard title abbreviation as Front. Med., its Library of Congress Control Number as 2011243429 and its OCLC number as 728100187. The discipline recorded for the journal is simply medicine, reflecting its generalist scope.

The journal is described by its publishers as an international general medical journal. Its online version has been made available through two channels at once: the Higher Education Press journal platform, at journal.hep.com.cn/fmd, and Springer's platform, under journal number 11684. That dual presence is characteristic of the Higher Education Press–Springer co-publishing model, in which a Chinese academic title is produced in Beijing and distributed internationally through Springer's systems.

History: from Frontiers of Medicine in China to Frontiers of Medicine

The publication was originally established in January 2007 under the title Frontiers of Medicine in China. According to the editorial that later introduced the journal's MedScience identity, the editorial team came to see a need for a more influential platform for academic exchange about cutting-edge medical research as medical science advanced rapidly around the world. In 2011 the journal was renamed Frontiers of Medicine, dropping the words "in China" and broadening its scope to encompass the latest developments in clinical medicine, basic medical sciences, translational medicine, epidemiology, public health, health policy and traditional Chinese medicine.

The 2011 renaming matters because indexing and citation records divide at that point. Directories that track the journal under its current title typically record coverage beginning in 2011, while its history as a publication runs back to the first issues of 2007. Readers tracing older articles therefore need to search under both titles: Frontiers of Medicine in China for the 2007–2010 period and Frontiers of Medicine from 2011 onward.

Publisher, sponsorship and administration

Frontiers of Medicine has an institutional structure that is stated in the same terms in its successive instructions for authors. It is supervised by the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China. It is sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Engineering. It is administered by Higher Education Press together with Ruijin Hospital, affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine. And it is jointly published by Higher Education Press and Springer.

That structure gives the journal two geographical anchors. Its publishing and editorial-office functions sit with Higher Education Press in Beijing — the journal's submission and editorial enquiries have been handled by the Frontiers of Medicine office at Higher Education Press in Beijing — which is why the journal is catalogued as a Beijing title. Its administering hospital partner, Ruijin Hospital, is in Shanghai and is affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, giving the journal a direct link to a major Chinese teaching-hospital and research environment. The combination of a ministry-supervised, academy-sponsored structure and a commercial international co-publisher is typical of China's leading English-language academic journals of its generation.

Aims, scope and main topics

The journal's stated aims and scope are deliberately broad. Frontiers of Medicine is devoted to publishing original research and review articles on the latest advances in clinical and basic medicine, with a focus on epidemiology, traditional Chinese medicine, translational research, healthcare, public health and health policies. Its listed main topics are clinical medicine, basic medical sciences, epidemiology, translational research, traditional Chinese medicine, public health and health policies.

Alongside that subject scope, the journal states a wider mission: it is committed to promoting health and health care through communication among professionals in medical care, disease prevention and scientific research throughout the world. It pursues that mission by updating readers on progress in medicine, sharing experience in disease control and treatment, and exchanging views on health policies, medical services and health care reform. In other words, the journal serves two readerships at once — researchers and clinicians reporting new findings, and the policy and health-services community concerned with how those findings are delivered to populations.

The inclusion of traditional Chinese medicine as a named focus, on equal terms with epidemiology and translational research, is a distinctive feature. It reflects the journal's Chinese base and gives the title a role in presenting research on traditional Chinese medicine, within a peer-reviewed general medical framework, to an English-reading international audience.

Article types

The journal's instructions for authors describe a range of article types suited to a general medical readership. Research articles present original research on clinical medicine or basic medical science. Reviews survey and assess a field. Case reports present rare cases with in-depth discussion and significant implications. The journal has also carried a Statistics in Medicine category, along with editorials — short articles expressing opinions on a topic, usually written or commissioned by the editors.

Under the journal's current MedScience instructions, the article family also includes the Letter, presenting brief reports on novel clinical observations, preliminary research findings and urgent public health issues requiring immediate academic attention, and the Comment, providing in-depth analysis of specific research papers, including papers published in the journal itself or in other journals. Editorials under those instructions are primarily commissioned by the editor-in-chief or the journal's associate editors. Together, these formats allow the journal to combine full research papers with faster, shorter responses to new clinical and public-health developments.

Peer review, reporting standards and publication process

The journal states that it employs a rigorous peer-review and editing process to ensure the scientific accuracy, novelty and importance of the manuscripts it publishes. Its instructions specify that every article, case report, Statistics in Medicine piece and review published in Frontiers of Medicine has been peer reviewed, while occasional contributions such as editorials may be accepted without peer review. On submission, a manuscript is first read by one or more of the journal's staff editors; papers that pass that in-house stage proceed to external peer review.

The journal also advocates complete and transparent reporting of research, and its current instructions require authors to complete recognised reporting checklists before peer review and to make them available to editors and reviewers. The checklists named include SPIRIT for randomised controlled trial protocols, PRISMA for systematic reviews and meta-analyses, CARE for case reports, ARRIVE for preclinical animal studies, STROBE for observational studies, STARD and TRIPOD for diagnostic and prognostic studies, AGREE and RIGHT for clinical practice guidelines, SRQR and COREQ for qualitative research, SQUIRE for quality-improvement studies and CHEERS for economic evaluations.

For speed, the journal has used Online First publication. Articles are posted online as soon as they are ready, before print publication, after normal editing and author proof approval, appearing as PDFs on both the Higher Education Press platform and Springer's. The journal stresses that an Online First article is not a preprint: it is the full publication of the article, and at the time of posting its bibliographic information is forwarded to indexing agencies, so the article can be found in bibliographic databases and cited as published. Its research data policy likewise encourages authors, where possible and applicable, to deposit the data supporting their findings in a public repository.

Indexing and discoverability

Indexing milestones came in sequence as the journal developed. According to the editorial introducing its MedScience identity, the journal was indexed in Scopus in 2009 and in PubMed/MEDLINE in 2010, and it entered the Science Citation Index Expanded in 2016. Publisher information states the PubMed/MEDLINE point in parallel terms: since the first issue of 2010, the journal has been indexed in PubMed/MEDLINE. Journal directories also list it in Embase, alongside Scopus, PubMed and the Web of Science's Science Citation Index Expanded.

For a general medical journal, MEDLINE indexing is especially consequential, because it places the journal's articles in the main bibliographic database used by clinicians and medical researchers worldwide. Combined with Scopus and Science Citation Index Expanded coverage, it means that work published in Frontiers of Medicine under both its 2011-and-later name and, through its earlier history, its founding title is discoverable through the standard international routes for medical literature.

Editorial base and access for readers and authors

The journal's working base is its editorial office at Higher Education Press in Beijing, which has handled submission enquiries, article tracking and general information for authors. That Beijing office, together with the Higher Education Press imprint, is the reason the journal is listed as published from Beijing, in the municipality of Beijing, China, even though its administering hospital partner is in Shanghai and its sponsor, the Chinese Academy of Engineering, is a national body.

Readers can reach the journal's content through both of its online homes: the Higher Education Press journal site, which presents its issues by volume and year — reaching Volume 18 in 2024 — and SpringerLink, where the journal's aims and scope, volumes and articles are presented in Springer's standard journal format. Having the full text available through an international publisher's platform as well as the Chinese publisher's own platform has been central to the journal's purpose of carrying Chinese medical research to readers outside China.

Not to be confused with Frontiers in Medicine

Frontiers of Medicine is frequently confused with a similarly named title, and the two are entirely separate publications. Frontiers in Medicine is a Swiss journal published by Frontiers Media, established in 2014, with the single ISSN 2296-858X. Frontiers of Medicine, the subject of this profile, is the Chinese journal published by Higher Education Press and Springer, established in 2007, with print ISSN 2095-0217 and online ISSN 2095-0225. They have different publishers, different countries of publication, different founding dates and different ISSNs, and citations to Front. Med. articles from the Beijing journal should not be attributed to the Lausanne-based Frontiers Media title.

The MedScience chapter

In its most recent instructions for authors, the journal is presented under the name MedScience, "formerly known as Frontiers of Medicine", with the same supervision, sponsorship, administration and joint Higher Education Press–Springer publication, and the same aims and scope, carried over. An editorial titled "Profound changes in Frontiers of Medicine and promotion of MedScience" introduced the inaugural issue of MedScience as a new identity for the Chinese Academy of Engineering's medical journal.

The editorial explains the new name as a statement of editorial philosophy: "Med" represents medicine, underscoring the mission of serving human health, while "Science" symbolises a commitment to originality, rigour and innovation in scientific inquiry. Under the new identity, the journal aspires to transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries and to integrate insights across the spectrum of the medical sciences. The editorial places special emphasis on emerging fields including cell and gene therapy, artificial-intelligence-powered drug discovery and diagnostics, organoids, regenerative medicine, precision medicine and environmental health. For directory purposes, MedScience is best understood as the continuation of Frontiers of Medicine — the same journal, with the same institutional backing, entering a new phase under a new name.

Place in Chinese medical publishing

Frontiers of Medicine occupies a specific niche in China's academic publishing landscape. It is a generalist rather than a specialist title, published in English from the start of its life under its founding name, sponsored by a national engineering academy, administered with a leading Shanghai teaching hospital, and co-published from Beijing by Higher Education Press with Springer. Its subject mix — clinical and basic medicine alongside epidemiology, public health, health policy and traditional Chinese medicine — mirrors the breadth of the Chinese medical research system it was created to represent.

Its record supports that role. A publication history running from 2007, a broadening renaming in 2011, indexing in Scopus, PubMed/MEDLINE and the Science Citation Index Expanded, a reporting-standards regime aligned with international checklists, and a subsequent reinvention as MedScience together describe a journal built to carry medical research from China into international circulation — and to bring international medical debate, on treatment, disease control and health-system reform, to its readers in return.