About Jilin University Journal Social Sciences Edition

Jilin University Journal Social Sciences Edition

Overview and identity

Jilin University Journal Social Sciences Edition (Jilin Daxue Shehui Kexue Xuebao (吉林大学社会科学学报)) is the social sciences journal of Jilin University, published bimonthly in Changchun, the capital of Jilin Province in north-east China. It is published by the university and listed on the university's official journals page.

The journal is based in Changchun, China, and carries ISSN 0257-2834 and CN 22-1063/C. Those bibliographic facts matter because they distinguish this title from similarly named journals. Chinese academic publishing contains many near-identical English titles, translated titles and paired Chinese and English editions, and the ISSN, city and sponsor recorded here are the reliable means by which librarians, indexers and readers identify the exact journal described in this profile.

History and development

Jilin University records the date of its first issue as December 1955, giving the journal a history of more than seventy years. That founding places it among the early university social science journals of the People's Republic, established as Chinese universities rebuilt their research functions in the 1950s. It has been selected among the top 100 social science journals in China for two consecutive years, named in the Ministry of Education's famous engineering journal projects, included in the first batch of journals supported by the National Social Science Fund of China, and selected among journals recognised for both social effects and economic benefits among China's excellent periodicals, according to the university's own listing.

Scope and subject coverage

The journal covers philosophy, economics, law, history and literature, as its record states, within a comprehensive social sciences remit characteristic of a large comprehensive university journal. Jilin University is one of China's largest universities, formed from the merger of several institutions in Changchun, with particular strengths in the humanities and social sciences in the north-east. A journal of this type publishes theoretical and empirical work across its fields, provides a platform for the university's own scholars alongside authors nationally, and contributes to debates on regional as well as national questions, including the development of China's north-east.

Sponsorship, publishing and editorial practice

The journal is a source journal of the Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index, CSSCI, and is listed by its university as a National Chinese Core Journal and among the excellent journals of northern China as well as the top 100 social science journals. CSSCI, developed at Nanjing University and established in 2000, covers about five hundred humanities and social sciences journals and is used by leading Chinese universities as a basis for evaluation and promotion. Inclusion in both CSSCI and the national core lists gives the Jilin journal a recognised national standing well beyond its home province, while its Changchun base preserves a strong regional scholarly identity.

In common with the leading Chinese academic journals, the journal operates through peer review: manuscripts are assessed by specialists before acceptance, bibliographic information is provided in English as well as Chinese where the journal is internationally indexed, and publication is on a regular schedule maintained over many years. That regularity is itself significant. Sustained publication requires a stable editorial office, a continuing flow of submissions from its research community and continuing support from its sponsor, and the journal's record demonstrates all three.

Place in Chinese scholarly communication

To understand this journal, it helps to understand the system it belongs to. China publishes thousands of academic journals, most of them in Chinese, sponsored by universities, research institutes, learned societies and professional associations, and published from the institutions where their scholarly communities are based. Within that system, national systems of recognition, including the Chinese core journal lists, the Chinese Science Citation Database for science titles and the Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index for humanities and social sciences titles, identify the leading journals in each field, and inclusion affects where authors seek to publish and how universities evaluate their work.

Jilin University Journal Social Sciences Edition sits inside that system as a recognised specialist or institutional title. Its importance is therefore not measured only by international citation metrics, which understate the influence of Chinese-language journals whose readers publish and practise mainly in Chinese. It is measured also by its role in training graduate students to write and review research, in setting terminology and standards in Chinese in its field, and in providing the cumulative archive from which Chinese textbooks, guidelines and policy documents are built.

Readership and authorship

The journal's primary readers are researchers, teachers, graduate students and, where its field is clinical or professional, practitioners working in China in its discipline. Its authors are drawn principally from Chinese universities, research institutes, hospitals and agencies, with the sponsoring institution's own scholars naturally represented alongside contributors from across the country. For most Chinese-language journals, that national authorship is a strength rather than a limitation: it concentrates, in one venue, work on Chinese materials, Chinese patients, Chinese institutions or Chinese territory that international journals may treat as peripheral.

At the same time, English titles, abstracts and indexing records make the journal discoverable abroad. Foreign scholars who follow research in China in this field encounter the journal through the major databases and library catalogues, and can identify relevant Chinese work even when they subsequently need translation to read it in full. The journal thus functions at two levels at once: as a working tool for its domestic community, and as a bibliographic window through which the rest of the world can see that community's output.

Distinguishing this journal from similar titles

Careful identification matters for this title. As the introduction notes, paired Chinese and English editions, journals of the same association in different cities, and university journals with similar translated names all create scope for confusion in catalogues and citations. The facts anchored in this profile, the exact title, the city of publication, the sponsor or publisher and ISSN 0257-2834 and CN 22-1063/C, should be used together to verify that a catalogue record, a citation or a submission target is indeed Jilin University Journal Social Sciences Edition and not a namesake.

That care is particularly important for researchers compiling bibliographies, librarians maintaining serials records and authors choosing where to submit. A manuscript sent to the wrong namesake journal, or a citation attached to the wrong ISSN, creates errors that propagate through databases. The verified identifiers given here are the safeguard against those errors, and they are the reason this profile states them prominently rather than treating them as minor technical detail.

Continuing role and significance

Jilin University Journal Social Sciences Edition continues to publish from Changchun as an active Chinese academic journal. Its significance lies in continuity and concentration: continuity, in that a journal maintained over many years becomes the archive of its field in China, preserving the sequence of questions asked, methods adopted and conclusions reached; and concentration, in that it gathers into a single, peer-reviewed, regularly issued venue work that would otherwise be scattered across institutional reports, conference proceedings and general journals.

For the WorldNM directory, the journal is recorded as a magazine and journal outlet of China, based in Changchun, representing the scholarly publishing sector rather than news media. That classification reflects an important truth about China's media landscape: alongside newspapers, broadcasters and news sites, the country's thousands of scholarly journals form a large, structured and long-lived publishing system of their own, sponsored by its academies, universities, societies and hospitals, and Jilin University Journal Social Sciences Edition is one of its established titles.