About Infectious Diseases & Immunity

Infectious Diseases & Immunity

Infectious Diseases & Immunity (IDI) is an English-language, open-access journal of infectious diseases and immunology based in Beijing, China. Launched in 2021, it is supervised by the China Association for Science and Technology, sponsored by the Chinese Medical Association (CMA) and published in collaboration with Wolters Kluwer/Lippincott. The journal is online only and appears quarterly under its founding editor-in-chief, Fu-Sheng Wang. Its founding editorial set out its mission plainly: to build a bridge of communication between China and other nations in the field of infectious diseases, disseminating new information on epidemiology, clinical evaluation, diagnosis, treatment and control, with particular emphasis on the links between infectious diseases and immunity. The journal's official website is idi-cma.org.

Origins in the Excellence Action Plan

The journal's origins are unusually well documented. In October 2019, the China Association for Science and Technology decided to launch a new high-quality English-language journal in contagious and infectious diseases as part of the High Notch New Journal Project within its Excellence Action Plan for Chinese scientific journals. The Chinese Medical Association Publishing House's proposal for Infectious Diseases & Immunity survived what its founding editorial calls fierce competition from potential candidates to undertake that mission. The first issue followed in April 2021, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic — a moment when a Chinese English-language infectious-diseases journal had immediate international relevance, and when China's early experience of identifying and sequencing SARS-CoV-2 was of global scientific interest.

Sponsor, supervisor and publisher

Three institutional layers stand behind the journal. It is supervised by the China Association for Science and Technology, the national body overseeing China's scientific societies. It is sponsored by the Chinese Medical Association, and supported by the Chinese Medical Association Publishing House, described in the journal's own founding editorial as the largest medical publishing organization in China. International publication is handled in collaboration with Wolters Kluwer, whose Lippincott platform hosts the journal and whose media materials list it as an online-only, quarterly title. Copyright in its founding editorial is recorded as held by the Chinese Medical Association, published by Wolters Kluwer Health. This structure — national supervision, society sponsorship, specialist Chinese publishing house and international distribution partner — is the standard architecture of China's programme of new English-language medical journals.

Scope and subject coverage

IDI focuses on new developments in basic and clinical research on the diagnosis and treatment of infectious diseases and related immunology. Its founding editorial specifies epidemiology, clinical evaluation, diagnosis, treatment and control of infectious diseases, with particular emphasis on the connection between infection and immunity. That emphasis gives the journal a distinctive angle: rather than treating infectious diseases purely as a clinical specialty, it foregrounds the immunology of infection — how hosts respond, how immunity succeeds or fails, and how that knowledge can be turned into vaccines, diagnostics and therapies. Its early content reflected the moment of its birth, carrying substantial material on COVID-19, including interpretation of China's national diagnosis and treatment plans, alongside the wider infectious-disease agenda of viral hepatitis, tuberculosis, HIV and emerging pathogens.

Article types

The journal's publisher lists the article types it covers: Original Articles, in both basic and clinical research; Consensus and Guidelines papers; Commentaries; Editorials; Reviews; Short Reports and Case Reports; Research Letters; and Perspectives. The presence of consensus and guideline papers reflects the journal's society base and its ambition to shape practice, not only to report research. Case reports and short reports give clinicians a route to publish instructive individual cases and rapid findings, while research letters and perspectives allow shorter, faster contributions to ongoing debates. The founding issue itself was fronted by an editorial from the editor-in-chief setting out the journal's bridge-building mission, a format the journal has continued to use for framing its field.

Editor-in-chief

The editor-in-chief is Fu-Sheng Wang, of the Department of Infectious Diseases at the Fifth Medical Center of the Chinese PLA General Hospital and the National Clinical Research Center for Infectious Diseases in Beijing. Wang is a prominent figure in Chinese infectious-disease and liver-disease research, with a large publication record in hepatitis, liver disease and the immunology of infection, including highly cited work on COVID-19 immune features. His research profile spans liver disease diagnosis and treatment, hepatitis B and C, and machine-learning applications in healthcare. Having the journal led by a clinician-scientist who heads a national clinical research centre for infectious diseases ties the title directly to China's front-line infectious-disease research infrastructure.

Publishing model and frequency

IDI is published quarterly and is online only — the publisher's current media information lists its format explicitly as online only, with no print edition. It is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal: articles are freely readable, and its founding editorial was distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) licence with copyright held by the Chinese Medical Association. Articles carry DOIs in the 10.1097 family used by Wolters Kluwer medical titles — the founding editorial is 10.1097/ID9.0000000000000004 — and the journal is archived in PubMed Central, where its early articles, including the founding editorial (PMCID: PMC8057311), are freely available. Four issues a year give it a measured rhythm suited to a young journal building its submission base.

Standing and recognition

The publisher's media kit reports a category ranking for the journal of 44 out of 141 in the Infectious Diseases category — a notable position for a title founded only in 2021, and evidence that the journal achieved citation-index recognition quickly. Its selection in 2019 under the China Association for Science and Technology's Excellence Action Plan, before a single issue had appeared, is itself a form of institutional recognition: the journal was chosen competitively as one of the new flagship English-language titles intended to raise the international profile of Chinese scientific publishing. Its indexing in PubMed Central, with articles carrying PMCIDs and PMIDs, places its content inside the main discovery infrastructure used by biomedical researchers worldwide.

Readership and role

The journal is written for infectious-disease physicians, immunologists, microbiologists, epidemiologists and public-health researchers. Its founding promise was explicitly international: to disseminate new information and results related to infectious diseases to researchers and clinicians worldwide, and to serve as a bridge between Chinese and international work in the field. That role matters because some of the world's most consequential infectious-disease experience — with SARS, avian influenza, COVID-19 and large hepatitis and tuberculosis burdens — sits in Chinese clinics and laboratories, and has historically been published mainly in Chinese. An English-language, open-access journal sponsored by the Chinese Medical Association is designed to close exactly that gap.

Practical information

Infectious Diseases & Immunity is an online-only, quarterly, open-access journal in English, supervised by the China Association for Science and Technology, sponsored by the Chinese Medical Association and published in collaboration with Wolters Kluwer/Lippincott, with the editor-in-chief Fu-Sheng Wang in Beijing. Its official website is idi-cma.org, and its articles are also available through the Lippincott journals platform and PubMed Central. The citation abbreviation is Infect Dis Immun. Its founding editorial, published in volume 1, issue 1 (April 2021, pages 1–2), remains the journal's own authoritative account of its origins and mission. Authors considering submission should use the journal's own site for current instructions, which describe its article categories — original articles, consensus and guidelines, reviews, case reports, research letters and perspectives among them — and the terms on which accepted work is published open access.