About International Journal of Minerals, Metallurgy and Materials

International Journal of Minerals, Metallurgy and Materials

The International Journal of Minerals, Metallurgy and Materials (IJMMM) is a monthly English-language journal sponsored by the University of Science and Technology Beijing (USTB) and co-published with Springer Nature (print ISSN 1674-4799; online ISSN 1869-103X; CN 11-5787/TF). It began in 1994 as the Journal of University of Science and Technology Beijing and took its present name in 2009, when its scope was restated around the "3M" fields of its subtitle identity: minerals, metallurgy and materials. Published from Beijing by a university historically rooted in China's steel and mining industries, and covered by SCI-E and EI, it is one of the earliest Chinese university journals to have been indexed by SCI and a principal English outlet for China's minerals and metallurgy research community.

A university journal with an industrial inheritance

IJMMM is the journal of the University of Science and Technology Beijing, an institution whose history is bound up with China's iron, steel and mining industries and which marked its seventieth anniversary in 2022. A preface published in the journal for that anniversary records the philosophy it has followed: "relying on the superior discipline of USTB, serving the national scientific and technological innovation and the university's disciplinary construction, and creating a world-class scientific journal." The journal is produced through the university's Journal Publishing Center, listed by Springer among its societies and partnerships for the title, and its editor-in-chief named on its own site is Academician Professor Aixiang Wu of USTB. This is the classic Chinese university-journal model — a title owned by a university, edited by its scholars, and used to project the university's disciplines internationally — executed at one of the strongest metallurgy universities in the country.

Three decades of publication

The journal's own thirtieth-anniversary account, published in 2024 under the title "Celebrating three decades of innovation and improvement," gives its history plainly. IJMMM has promoted research in minerals, metallurgy and materials since its inception in 1994. It grew with its field's publication volume: semiannual at first, it became quarterly in 1997, bimonthly in 2002 and monthly in 2012. In 2009 it assumed its current name, International Journal of Minerals, Metallurgy and Materials, replacing the institutional Journal of University of Science and Technology Beijing (whose fuller form included "Mineral, Metallurgy, Material") with a title that described its subject rather than its owner — a change its anniversary account says was made to better align the name with its scope. Springer records that the title transferred to Springer as publisher from 2010, placing the renamed journal in an international distribution system at the same moment it adopted its international name.

Scope: the 3M fields

The journal's aims and scope, stated identically on its USTB site and reflected on Springer's page, define it as "an international journal devoted to publishing original research articles (and occasional invited reviews) on all aspects of minerals processing, physical metallurgy, process metallurgy, and materials science and processing." Those four phrases map the whole route of metals in industry. Minerals processing covers the beneficiation of ores — crushing, grinding, flotation and separation science. Process metallurgy covers the extraction and refining operations, including ironmaking and steelmaking and their nonferrous counterparts. Physical metallurgy covers phases, transformations, deformation and the microstructure–property relationships of metals and alloys. Materials science and processing extends the remit to the wider world of engineered materials and how they are made. Few international journals keep all four under one roof; IJMMM's identity comes from refusing to split the chain.

Energy, environment and the changing scope

Within that stable frame, the journal's content has followed its industries. Its category profile in journal-ranking services spans geochemistry and petrology, materials chemistry, mechanical engineering, mechanics of materials and metals and alloys, all in the first quartile — a spread that reflects how minerals and metallurgy research now reaches into energy and environmental materials, a direction the candidate record for the journal also notes. Special issues are part of its rhythm: the journal marked USTB's seventieth anniversary with a special issue whose preface collected board members and authors who had shaped the title, and its recent volumes carry forward-looking contributions such as a 2026 article on generative artificial intelligence in extractive metallurgy and reviews of interface engineering in high-performance alloys, showing an extractive-industry journal engaging with computational methods and advanced alloys in the same volume year.

Publishing arrangements

IJMMM is sponsored by USTB and co-published by Springer Nature, distributed on SpringerLink, where its latest issues appear monthly — volume 33, issue 9 is listed for September 2026. Copyright rests with the University of Science and Technology Beijing. The journal maintains its own site at the university (ijmmm.ustb.edu.cn) alongside the Springer journal page, a dual presence typical of Chinese society and university titles co-published with international houses: domestic readers and authors use the university site, including its aims-and-scope and editorial information, while international access runs through Springer. Its stated diet is original research articles with occasional invited reviews, a research-heavy mix consistent with a journal that sees itself as a record of results in fast-moving industrial sciences.

Indexing and honours

The journal states that it is covered by SCI-E and EI — the Science Citation Index Expanded and the Engineering Index — the two databases that matter most for engineering publication in China. Its anniversary and anniversary-preface accounts add a run of domestic honours: it was, its editors record, one of the earliest university journals indexed by SCI in China; it has twice been listed among the "Top 100 Journals" by China's press and publication administration; it has been honoured seven times as one of "China's Most Internationally Influential Academic Journals"; and it is a T1-level journal — the top tier, described in USTB's reporting of the quality guide as indicating quality approaching world-class — in the fields of nonferrous metals and metallurgical engineering. In a later release of the same quality guide for nonferrous metals, USTB reported IJMMM again ranked T1 and designated an A-level China nonferrous metals journal. These national evaluations, layered on SCI-E coverage, explain the journal's standing with Chinese authors choosing where to send strong metallurgy work.

Editors and community

The editor-in-chief named by the journal is Academician Professor Aixiang Wu of USTB, a figure from the mining side of the 3M span, which fits a journal determined to keep minerals processing at its centre rather than letting it be crowded out by materials science. The seventieth-anniversary preface names a generation of senior Chinese metallurgists and materials scientists — among them Jimei Xiao, Guoliang Chen, Kuo-Chih Chou, Changchun Ge, Haizhou Wang, Meifeng Cai, Jianxin Xie, Xinping Mao and Yue Zhang — who had published in the journal or served on its editorial board, a roll call that amounts to a history of modern Chinese metallurgy in miniature. The journal presents itself as having "published a batch of important academic papers, reported many high-level scientific research achievements, and recorded and witnessed China's extraordinary journey in the development of science and technology" — the witness function being exactly what a thirty-year university journal accumulates.

Place among China's metallurgy journals

China produces and consumes more steel and nonferrous metal than any other country, and its metallurgy literature is correspondingly vast, most of it in Chinese. IJMMM's role since 1994 has been to carry a selected, peer-reviewed stream of that literature in English, from a university whose name is synonymous with the field, through a major international publisher. It sits alongside the society transactions from the nonferrous sector and the Chinese Academy of Sciences' materials titles, but it is distinguished by its 3M breadth — minerals to materials in a single monthly — and by its longevity as an SCI-indexed university journal. When it renamed itself in 2009, it declared that breadth in its title; three decades after its founding, the International Journal of Minerals, Metallurgy and Materials remains what the name promises.

Readership

The journal's readers are mineral processors, extractive and process metallurgists, physical metallurgists and materials scientists, in universities, research institutes and the mining and metals industries, together with the engineers who use their results. Its first-quartile classification across five categories suggests an audience that finds it from several directions — a geochemist, a mechanical engineer and an alloy specialist can all arrive at the same journal. For international readers it offers a monthly, English-language cross-section of research from the centre of the world's metals industry; for Chinese readers it is a home journal with international standing. That double function, sustained since 1994, is the core fact of IJMMM's identity.