About Journal of Clinical Pediatrics

Journal of Clinical Pediatrics

The Journal of Clinical Pediatrics (临床儿科杂志) is a monthly pediatric academic journal published in Shanghai and sponsored by Xinhua Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine. Founded in 1983, it carries ISSN 1000-3606 and the domestic registration CN 31-1377/R. It is a Chinese core journal reporting clinical pediatrics research, child healthcare and advances in the diagnosis and treatment of childhood disease, and it is one of the longest-established specialist titles serving China's pediatric clinicians.

Founding in 1983 and Professor Gao Jinglang

The journal was established in 1983 with the support of Professor Gao Jinglang, described by the journal itself as a master and internationally renowned professor of pediatrics. Its creation belonged to a period of rapid institution-building in Chinese medicine, when the major teaching hospitals were founding or reviving specialist periodicals to circulate clinical experience across a vast and unevenly resourced health system. The sponsoring institution gave the new journal an unusually strong foundation: according to the journal's official introduction, the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine — formerly Shanghai Second Medical University — is a renowned institution for training pediatric talent in China, and Xinhua Hospital is the main base for that pediatric training. A journal edited from within one of the country's principal pediatric teaching hospitals began life with direct access to leading clinicians, case material and academic networks.

Sponsor: Xinhua Hospital, Shanghai

The journal is governed by Shanghai Jiao Tong University and sponsored by Xinhua Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, with its editorial office located in the hospital at 1665 Kongjiang Road, Yangpu District, Shanghai. The journal is published by its own editorial office. Its editor-in-chief, Professor Sun Kun, is identified in the journal's official pages as an expert in congenital heart disease who serves as president of Xinhua Hospital, leader of the pediatric discipline, and chairman of the sixth Asia-Pacific Pediatric Cardiology Society, as well as an important member of the Chinese Medical Association and the Chinese Physicians Association. The editorial policies state that the editor-in-chief, deputy editors, editorial board members and editors are all pediatric physicians engaged in different specialties of pediatric clinical medicine, most of them doctoral or master's degree supervisors holding senior or intermediate professional titles — an editorial structure designed, in the journal's own words, to create a fair, responsible and high-quality preliminary screening of manuscripts.

Aim and editorial character

The journal states its aim plainly: to serve community medicine and clinical practice, integrating fundamental and advanced studies, with a focus on clinical work. That orientation shapes its contents. Each issue includes a special column devoted to a systemic disease, supplemented by reviews and expert discussions written by specialists and professors on the column's theme, so that a single issue can function as a compact state-of-the-art briefing on one area of pediatric practice. The journal declares that it is edited according to international standards, with an English copyright page, an English table of contents and English abstracts accompanying its Chinese-language articles — apparatus that makes its contents citable and discoverable beyond China while its full text serves the Chinese-speaking clinician. Submissions are held to a standardised format, with manuscripts expected to run to roughly 3,000 to 4,000 Chinese characters, concise yet expressive.

Columns and subject coverage

The journal's main columns, as listed on its official site, include Reviews, Expert Forum, columns on specific diseases, Child Healthcare, Experimental Research, Clinical Pathology (Case) Discussion, Literature Review, Clinical Medication, Diagnostic and Treatment Technology, Evidence-Based Medicine, Clinical Experience, Misdiagnosis Review, Perspective, Debates, and Standards, among others. Read together, the column list maps the working life of a pediatric department: original clinical and experimental research; guidance on drugs and on diagnostic and treatment techniques; case discussions and reviews of misdiagnosis, through which practitioners learn from difficult or mistaken cases; child healthcare, covering the preventive and developmental side of pediatrics; and standards and evidence-based medicine pieces that translate research consensus into practice. The inclusion of a Debates column is distinctive, giving structured space to contested questions in pediatric diagnosis and treatment.

Publication pattern and history

The Journal of Clinical Pediatrics is a monthly publication, a rhythm it has sustained as one of China's established pediatric titles. Since its inception, the journal states, it has been welcomed and supported by pediatric physicians nationwide. Beyond the printed and online journal, the editorial office has worked to build a community around it: the journal holds a National Pediatric Disease Diagnosis and Treatment Technology Academic Conference every two or three years, expressly to strengthen academic exchange between the editorial office, its authors, its readers and professors in the field. This conference role is characteristic of China's leading hospital journals, which function not only as publishers but as convenors of their specialty communities.

Indexing, core status and awards

The journal's official introduction records a substantial set of honours and inclusions. It is included in the Chinese Core Journal selection, is a Source Journal for the Chinese Science and Technology Paper Statistics (a Chinese Science and Technology Core Journal), and is included in the Chinese Science Citation Database. It is indexed by Chemical Abstracts (CA) of the United States — significant for a clinical journal, and a marker of its visibility in international abstracting — and domestically by the China Journals Network, China Academic Journals (CD-ROM edition), Wanfang Data's digital journals and the Chinese Science and Technology Journals Database. The journal won the 2009 Fourth East China Outstanding Journal Award. For Chinese authors, its combination of core-journal status and statistical-source status means that papers published in it count in the citation reporting and academic evaluation systems through which Chinese hospitals and universities assess research output.

Ethics and publishing standards

The journal publishes detailed ethics guidelines for authors. Authorship must meet the four criteria of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors: substantial contribution to conception, design or data work; drafting or critical revision; approval of the final version; and agreement to take responsibility for the work. Fabrication, falsification and plagiarism are strictly prohibited, and the journal has adopted a scientific journal academic misconduct literature detection system to screen for plagiarism, data falsification, fabrication and duplicate submission. For drug efficacy and safety studies involving use outside approved indications, the author's institution must be an accredited clinical trial centre following Good Clinical Practice, with trial registration details provided — requirements set out with reference to the Good Clinical Practice rules published by China's National Medical Products Administration and National Health Commission in 2021. These policies place a hospital-based Chinese journal squarely within international norms of publication ethics.

The journal among China's pediatric periodicals

China supports a family of pediatric journals — national association titles, university journals and hospital journals among them — and the Journal of Clinical Pediatrics is regularly counted among them in international scholarship: a BMC Pediatrics study of pediatric randomised controlled trials published in mainland China between 2002 and 2011 surveyed seventeen Chinese pediatric journals, including this one, and a later cross-sectional quality assessment of paediatric trials from 1999 to 2022 likewise included it among twenty paediatric medical journals. Such studies treat the journal as part of the core evidence base of Chinese pediatrics. Within that family its identity is specific: a monthly, clinically focused title, edited from a leading Shanghai teaching hospital, organised around themed disease columns and practical guidance, and committed — in its own formulation — to serving community medicine and the everyday practice of children's doctors across China.

Why the journal matters

More than four decades after its founding, the Journal of Clinical Pediatrics endures because it answers a durable need: a trusted, Chinese-language channel through which pediatric experience — a difficult case, a refined diagnostic technique, a drug-use review, a debated standard — moves from one hospital to thousands of others. Founded in 1983 under Professor Gao Jinglang's patronage, sponsored by Xinhua Hospital of Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, indexed in Chemical Abstracts and the principal Chinese databases, and recognised as a Chinese core journal, it remains a standard reference point for anyone mapping the published record of clinical pediatrics in China.