About Geological Review

Geological Review

Overview and identity

Geological Review is a Chinese scholarly journal of geology based in Beijing, China, and published on the geojournals.cn platform of the Geological Society of China at the address given for this profile, geojournals.cn/georeven/ch/index.aspx. It is one of the society's journals alongside Acta Geologica Sinica, and it describes itself through its record as one of the most important core periodicals in geology in China. Its Chinese title is Dizhi Lunping, and its papers carry digital object identifiers in the form 10.16509/j.georeview, as shown throughout its recent volumes.

The word Review in the title signals the journal's traditional function in Chinese geology. Alongside original research, a review journal of a national society carries scholarly discussion, synthesis and debate: papers that argue a tectonic interpretation, reconsider the history of a concept, or review the state of a deposit type or a region. The journal's own recent contents include a section headed scholarly discussion, which is exactly that forum function in operation.

A record reaching back to 1936

The journal's longevity is documented by its own literature. A bibliometric study published in the journal in 1996, in volume 42, analysed the statistics and authorship of the articles published in Geological Review in 1936-1995, counting the authors of all articles across that sixty-year span, analysing levels of co-authorship and the types of authors' organisations, and finding that a continuous and high-level author group had been formed in the journal and that co-authorship rose gradually over the period. A journal able to be bibliometrically studied across 1936 to 1995 was already, by the 1990s, a veteran title.

The numbering visible today continues that long run. In 2026 the journal is publishing volume 72, with issue 1 containing papers paginated from the start of the volume and further articles published online in January 2026 ahead of the second, third and fourth issues of the volume, whose paper versions were announced for issue dates in March and May or July. That pattern of online-first posting followed by dated paper issues is the modern form of a journal whose archive reaches back ninety years.

The Geological Society of China

The journal's publisher and sponsor is the Geological Society of China, the national learned society for geology, founded in Beijing in 1922: sixty years of Chinese geoscience were already being reviewed in the society's name by the early 1980s, and the society's inaugural meeting in January 1922, with Zhang Hongzhao elected president among its charter members, is a matter of published record. A society of that age publishing Geological Review and Acta Geologica Sinica gives both titles their shared institutional home on the geojournals.cn platform.

The society's journals share submission infrastructure and editorial standards. The platform's instructions note that Acta Geologica Sinica operates a single anonymised review process under its editorial board, with manuscripts typically sent to a minimum of two independent expert reviewers, and they direct authors of Geological Review papers to the journal's own submission address on the same platform. Authors should note the platform's stated article requirements for society journals, including a title, author and affiliation, a substantial abstract, about five keywords, an introduction within the text, figures and tables, acknowledgements, references and an English abstract matching the Chinese abstract.

Subject scope

Geological Review covers all branches of geological science and review synthesis. Its 2026 contents show the breadth concretely: a scholarly discussion paper by Yang Wencai opening volume 72; a study of fault hydrogen volume fractions in the Wuhai Basin before and after the February 2025 Yinchuan earthquake, examining the coupling between geological structure and the physical and chemical properties of fault hydrogen in earthquake preparation; work on copper-polymetallic deposits in the border region between China and Mongolia, including the Shiertolgai copper-molybdenum deposit in Inner Mongolia; a historical study of how glaciology and its terminology entered China in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including the work of Li Siguang on glaciers; and papers on heavy metals in farmland soils, on a lead-zinc deposit in the South Qinling, and on the phases of urban geological work in China.

That mixture is the profile of a general society review journal: hard-rock deposit geology, tectonics, earthquake-related geochemistry, environmental and urban geology, and the history and terminology of the science itself all appear in one volume, because the journal's constituency is the whole geological profession rather than a single speciality.

Role as the profession's forum

Geological Review also carries the Geological Society of China's professional record. Its pages have reported the society's conferences, including the 2009 and 2017 conferences of the society, forums on the society's anniversaries, the lists of the top ten achievements of geological science and technology and top ten achievements of deposit exploration elected by the society year by year, and the society's youth prizes for geological science and technology, including the Gold Hammer and Silver Hammer awards. A journal that publishes both research and the society's honours and meetings is performing the classic learned-society function of binding a profession together.

Announcements in the journal's own pages record its external recognition as well: journal pages in its 2026 volume report the society's journals' repeated selection among China's most internationally influential academic journals in the international citation reporting released in December 2025, with Geological Review noted as holding that standing for a fourteenth consecutive time. Whatever weight a reader gives such rankings, their repetition in the journal's own record underlines that this is a title whose standing is actively tracked in Chinese scholarly publishing.

How papers are presented

Papers in Geological Review follow the Chinese society-journal pattern visible in its PDFs: Chinese text with English titles and abstracts, author biographies and affiliations, dates of receipt, acceptance and online publication, a named handling editor, funding acknowledgements, and the DOI in the j.georeview series. The Wuhai Basin paper, for example, records receipt in April 2025, acceptance in July 2025 and online publication that month, its funding by a director's fund project of the Inner Mongolia earthquake administration, and its first author's biography and research field. That apparatus makes each paper traceable to its project, its editor and its timeline, which is part of how a long-established journal maintains trust.

The journal publishes online ahead of print as a matter of routine: the January 2026 posting described twelve articles published online on 20 January 2026 that were expected to appear in the second, third or fourth issues of volume 72. For researchers, that means the citable record appears months before the paper issue, and directory users should cite the online version and DOI rather than wait for pagination.

Distinguishing similar titles

Geological Review is easily confused in English-language searching with other titles. It is not International Geology Review, the Taylor and Francis journal published in the United Kingdom and United States with a completely different ISSN and history. It is not Geology in China, the China Geological Survey journal established in 1953, nor China Geology, the English-language journal co-sponsored by the China Geological Survey and the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences. Within its own house it must also be distinguished from Acta Geologica Sinica, the society's other flagship, which publishes in Chinese and in a separate English edition and has its own submission address on the same platform.

The safe identifiers for this journal are therefore its Chinese title Dizhi Lunping, its society publisher, its georeven address on geojournals.cn and its DOI prefix pattern 10.16509/j.georeview. Any one of those distinguishes it from every near-name above.

Readership and use

The journal's readers are the Chinese geological profession in its full range: survey and institute geologists working on deposits, tectonics and regional geology; university researchers following debates in scholarly discussion; environmental and urban geologists, whose applied work now appears in its pages; and historians and terminologists of the science, for whom its history-of-geology papers and its own ninety-year archive are primary material. Its bibliometric self-study of 1996 is itself evidence of a readership that reflects on the profession's development.

How to cite and find it

The journal is found through its editorial site on geojournals.cn, cited in the form used by its own archive, as in the 1996 bibliometric study cited as Geological Review, 1996, 42(4): 382-384, and in current volumes by DOI under 10.16509/j.georeview. A core geology periodical of the Geological Society of China, with a documented article record from 1936, volume 72 appearing in 2026, a scholarly-discussion and synthesis mission across all branches of geological science, and a continuing role as the record of its society's conferences and honours, Geological Review has a long, specific and verifiable place in Beijing's geological publishing.