About Journal of Central South University of Forestry & Technology

Journal of Central South University of Forestry & Technology

The Journal of Central South University of Forestry & Technology is the forestry journal of Central South University of Forestry and Technology in Changsha, Hunan Province. It carries ISSN 1673-923X, publishes in Chinese, and appears monthly, with issues published at the end of each month; on the SciOpen platform, where its recent volumes are hosted, articles are dated the 25th of the publication month. Its DOI prefix is 10.14067/j.cnki.1673-923x. SciOpen describes it as one of the most important professional academic core journals of forestry in China, providing a platform for forestry researchers to display scientific and technological achievements and exchange ideas. Volume 45 appeared in 2025 and volume 46 in 2026, a sequence that places the journal's first volume in the early 1980s. It is distinct from the same university's social sciences edition of the journal, and from the Journal of Central South University, the engineering journal of the separate Central South University, with which it must never be confused.

The Sponsoring University

Central South University of Forestry and Technology — CSUFT — was founded in 1958 and is located in Changsha, the capital of Hunan and a noted historical and cultural city. One of its predecessors is Hunan Forestry College, founded in 1958. In 1963 the college moved from Changsha to Guangzhou and merged with the forestry department of South China Agricultural College to form Central South Forestry College. In 1970 that college was merged into Guangdong Agricultural and Forestry College; in 1974 the school moved back into Hunan, to Xupu County, as Hunan Forestry College; and in 1978 the name Central South Forestry College was restored under the Ministry of Forestry. In 2003 the main body of the school returned to Changsha. In December 2005 the Ministry of Education approved its renaming as Central South University of Forestry and Technology, and in 2006 it merged with the former Hunan Economic Management Cadre College. The university is a key construction university of the Hunan Provincial People's Government and the State Forestry and Grassland Administration, covers nine disciplines from science and engineering to agriculture, law and art, and has a graduate school and 24 academic schools. Its journal's editorial home is at the university in Changsha, postcode 410004.

Bibliographic Identity and Platform

The journal's identity is anchored by ISSN 1673-923X, which appears in its article-level citations in the form of article numbers such as 1673-923X(2026)01-0001-22, and by its DOI prefix 10.14067/j.cnki.1673-923x, under which every recent article is registered — for example the bamboo review in volume 46, issue 1, at pages 1 to 22, DOI 10.14067/j.cnki.1673-923x.2026.01.001. Its recent volumes are carried on SciOpen, the open platform of Tsinghua University Press, which presents each article with its Chinese text, English title and abstract, received and revised dates, and publication on the 25th of the month. SciOpen article pages also display the journal's indexing markers, including CSCD, the Chinese Science Citation Database. The university publishes several other periodicals alongside this title — a social sciences edition of the university journal, Economic Forest Research, and Furniture and Interior Decoration among them — but the natural-science journal under ISSN 1673-923X is its principal forestry title.

Scope as Stated by the Journal

SciOpen's description of the journal gives its scope in detail. The journal is dedicated to reporting the latest research and progress in forestry; forestry engineering; ecology, focusing on forest ecology, environmental ecology and restoration ecology; biology, focusing on bioresources, biochemistry and molecular biology; landscape architecture, focusing on garden plants and their utilisation; environmental science and engineering, focusing on phytoremediation; food science and engineering, focusing on forest product processing; ecotourism; furniture design and manufacturing, focusing on wood processing; and forestry management. Its stated readership is the teachers and students of agricultural and forestry colleges and universities, and the researchers and management staff of agricultural and forestry research institutes and management departments, together with scholars in related subjects. Few journal scope statements in this series are as complete, and the published contents match it closely.

Forestry at the Centre: Chinese Fir and Plantation Science

The dominant subject of the journal's recent volumes is the plantation forestry of central and southern China, and above all Cunninghamia lanceolata, Chinese fir, the region's most important plantation conifer. Recent articles include a study of the impact of underplanting on carbon storage in Chinese fir plantations; a comparison of growth in Chinese fir plantations under different tree species configurations in four counties of southern Hunan, monitored over three years; an analysis of the genetic diversity and genetic structure of different generations of Chinese fir breeding populations, reconstructing breeding pedigrees and establishing a core germplasm that retained all alleles; a core-collection study of Chinese fir germplasm in Hunan using SSR markers; and a tree-ring study of the climate response of radial growth in Chinese fir plantations under different competition intensities at the Jiangle state-owned forest farm in Fujian. Chestnut research — hybrid pollination timing and the effects of pollinizer cultivars on nut quality — represents the journal's economic-forest coverage. This is plantation science of direct value to the forest farms and breeding programmes of the subtropics.

Ecology, Carbon and Restoration

A second strong strand is forest ecology under climate change. The journal has published research on mixed broadleaved, Phoebe, Chinese fir and moso bamboo plantations together; a review of research progress on the damage status and ecological restoration of natural forests in the Nanling Mountains, from the university's School of Ecology and Environment and its National Engineering Laboratory for Applied Technology of Forestry and Ecology in South China; work on spatio-temporal evolution of land use and habitat quality in a rocky desertification control area in Guizhou, using the InVEST model; and a review of measurement methods for forest carbon sequestration. Carbon storage, habitat quality and restoration ecology recur as organising themes, connecting the journal to China's national programmes for ecological civilisation and carbon neutrality, in which the forests of Hunan and the Nanling range play a documented part.

Wood, Bamboo and Forest Products

The journal's third strand serves the forest products industries. Its first article of 2026 is a substantial review of technological innovation and fundamental science for bamboo as a substitute for plastic — the international initiative co-launched by the Chinese government and the International Bamboo and Rattan Organization, INBAR — written from the university in Changsha and running to twenty-two pages. The same issue carries a study of the modulus of elasticity and modulus of rupture of bamboo-wood composite panels with different core materials. Eucalyptus research, including the molecular identification of pathogenic bacteria in eucalyptus leaves and the evaluation of phyllosphere antagonistic bacteria for their control, and a study of eucalyptus planting years' effects on soil chemistry, enzyme activities and microbial communities, reflects the importance of eucalyptus plantations in neighbouring Guangxi and the wider south. Furniture design and wood processing, named in the journal's scope, connect these laboratory studies to Hunan's manufacturing base.

Remote Sensing and Forest Measurement

Forest measurement and remote sensing form a smaller but distinctive strand. The journal has published a study fusing multi-source remote sensing data for the inversion and dynamic monitoring of forest stand age on the Google Earth Engine cloud platform, and a 2026 review of research progress on uncertainty in remote-sensing-based forest reserves estimation, written from the university's Yuelushan Laboratory and its Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Forestry Remote Sensing Based Big Data and Ecological Security. Leaf morphology and taxonomic significance in ten species of Phoebe, and the stigma receptivity and pollen viability of chestnut hybrid parents, show the journal also carrying classical botanical and breeding methodology alongside its digital work. The mixture — satellite monitoring of forest age in one issue, hand-measured leaf characters in another — is typical of a comprehensive forestry journal serving a whole university.

Frequency, Language and Readership

The journal is a monthly, published by the end of each month in SciOpen's description, and its article dates of the 25th confirm a brisk, regular production schedule; a monthly frequency makes it one of the most frequently published titles in this group of university journals, with twelve issues a year sustaining the large volume numbering — volume 46 carrying at least nine issues in 2026 alone in the platform's records. It publishes in Chinese, with English titles and abstracts provided on the platform, and its articles carry Chinese Library Classification numbers and document codes in the standard Chinese journal format. SciOpen's characterisation of it as one of China's most important professional academic core journals of forestry, and the CSCD marker on its article pages, are the documented bases for describing its standing; this profile makes no further indexing claim.

Distinguishing the Title

Cataloguers and readers must distinguish three similar names. The Journal of Central South University of Forestry & Technology, ISSN 1673-923X, is the Changsha forestry journal profiled here. The Journal of Central South University, published by Springer, is the engineering and materials journal of Central South University, also in Changsha but a wholly separate institution and title, with different ISSNs. And within CSUFT itself, the social sciences edition of the university journal — which has carried work such as a 2024 article on institutional compliance in ecological-environment accountability within the Communist Party — is a separate edition from the natural-science forestry journal. Keeping these apart matters, because citations to the three appear side by side in the literature of central China.

Reading the Journal Today

Read today on SciOpen, the Journal of Central South University of Forestry & Technology presents as a mature monthly forestry journal: volume 46 in 2026, opening the year with a major review of bamboo-as-plastic science, continuing through remote-sensing reviews, Chinese fir genetics and carbon studies, and eucalyptus pathology. Behind the current volume stand more than four decades of publication from a university that carried forestry education from Changsha to Guangzhou, to Xupu, and home again. For researchers in subtropical plantation forestry, forest carbon, bamboo materials or Nanling ecology, it is one of the principal Chinese-language journals of record, and its open platform makes it among the most accessible titles in this series.