About Journal of Country and Area Studies

Journal of Country and Area Studies

Overview and identity

Journal of Country and Area Studies is a new international, open-access, peer-reviewed journal published in English on the SciOpen platform of Tsinghua University Press. It appears on the official Tsinghua University Press journal list and on the journals page of Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU), where it is listed among the university's foreign-language academic journals; its editorial office is at Beijing Foreign Studies University in Beijing, with an editorial email domain at bfsu.edu.cn. The journal is devoted to country and area studies — the interdisciplinary study of world countries and regions, their politics, economies, societies and cultures — and was launched to give that rapidly institutionalising field in China a dedicated English-language journal of its own. It welcomes contributions from academic colleagues at home and abroad, and it is published open access, so its contents are free to read on SciOpen.

What the journal sets out to do

The journal's own introduction defines a broad remit within its field. It focuses on various aspects of country and area studies, including the disciplinary development of the field itself, theoretical and methodological innovations, global experiences and practices, education on country and area studies, the relationship between country and area studies and traditional disciplines, empirical research, and case studies. It encourages discussion of Chinese studies, global studies, international organisations, global governance and international communication from a comparative perspective. That list is significant: alongside empirical studies of particular countries and regions, the journal explicitly reserves space for reflection on the field — how country and area studies should be organised as a discipline, how it should be taught, and how its context-specific knowledge relates to general theory. Few area-studies journals state a meta-disciplinary remit so directly; here it is the founding premise.

The field it serves: country and area studies

Country and area studies — often shortened to CAS in the journal's own text — is the interdisciplinary enterprise of studying particular countries and regions in depth, combining language competence with history, politics, economics, society and culture. The journal's aims statement observes that debates over the relationship between country and area studies as a field of research and as a discipline, and between context-specific knowledge and general theory, have long existed among CAS scholars around the world. It notes an emerging consensus that the field needs to develop and strengthen its interdisciplinarity in response to profound changes at national, regional and global levels, and that its disciplinary development should enhance diversity in perspectives, inclusiveness and originality, achieving depth and breadth of understanding while shifting away from the Cold War influence in the birth of the field. Area studies in its modern institutional form did expand greatly during the Cold War, particularly in the United States; the journal's programme of building the field on more plural foundations is stated openly in its founding documents.

Aims: dialogue, synthesis and a community of knowledge

The journal states that it values the traditions and experiences of country and area studies in different disciplines and in different countries and regions, and engages in equal dialogue among them in favour of achieving a synthesis of theories, methodologies and issues, so as to build up shared knowledge in the field. It will serve, in its own words, as an open, inclusive and dynamic platform for academic collaboration and innovation globally, contributing to constructing a community of knowledge with a common commitment to a better and shared future of mankind. This programmatic language places the journal within a wider movement in Chinese academia to build country and area studies into a fully fledged discipline with its own journals, training programmes and theoretical debates — and to do so through international exchange rather than in isolation. An English-language, open-access journal on a university-press platform is the practical instrument of that ambition.

Scope in practice

In practice, the journal's scope invites several kinds of submission. Empirical research and case studies of individual countries and regions form the empirical core: studies of a society's politics, economy or culture grounded in language competence and local knowledge. Comparative work is explicitly encouraged, including comparative discussion of Chinese studies and global studies, and research on international organisations, global governance and international communication. A third strand concerns education and disciplinary development: how country and area studies is taught, how its programmes are structured, and how the field relates to traditional disciplines such as history, political science, economics and literature. A fourth strand is theory and method — innovations in how regional knowledge is produced and how it can support general claims. The journal's breadth across these strands makes it a venue for the field's self-definition as much as for its research findings.

The editorial home: Beijing Foreign Studies University

The journal's editorial office is at Beijing Foreign Studies University, and BFSU lists the journal on its official journals page among its foreign-language academic journals, alongside titles such as the Journal of World Languages and the Journal of Transcultural Communication. BFSU is a fitting home for a country and area studies journal. Founded in 1941 in Yan'an — originating as the Russian-language team of the Anti-Japanese Military and Political University — it was the first institution in China specialising in foreign-language studies, and it is directly administered by China's Ministry of Education. The university is renowned as a cradle of diplomats and teaches more foreign languages than any other Chinese institution, with instruction recorded in 101 languages, covering the official languages of the countries with which China has diplomatic relations. Country and area studies at such a university grows directly out of language teaching: deep knowledge of a country's language is the foundation on which its politics, society and culture can be studied at first hand.

The publishing platform: Tsinghua University Press and SciOpen

The journal is published on SciOpen, the digital publishing platform launched by Tsinghua University Press in 2022. Tsinghua University Press, established in 1980 as a part of Tsinghua University, is one of China's leading academic publishers and publishes some 60 journals, around 40 of them in English. SciOpen provides end-to-end services across manuscript submission, peer review, content hosting, analytics and identity management, and offers free access to its collection of journals. The platform has grown to more than 200 journals across diverse disciplines, reaching users in over 200 countries and regions. For a new journal, launching on SciOpen places it from the first issue inside a large, internationally visited open-access collection with standardised production and discovery, rather than on a stand-alone website that readers would have to find for themselves.

Open access and peer review

The journal is international, open-access and peer-reviewed, and publishes in English — three choices that together define its intended audience. Open access means that scholars of a region, including scholars in the region studied, can read the journal without subscription barriers, which matters for a field whose subjects and readers are distributed across the world. Publication in English positions the journal in the international conversation of area studies rather than only in Chinese academic debate, even though much of the field-building energy behind it is Chinese. Peer review is the journal's quality mechanism, and contributions are welcomed from academic colleagues in China and abroad alike — an open door that matches the journal's stated commitment to equal dialogue among different national and disciplinary traditions of country and area studies.

Place within Chinese area-studies publishing

China's investment in country and area studies has expanded markedly, with universities building institutes, programmes and journals devoted to world regions. Within that landscape, the Journal of Country and Area Studies has a specific role: published in English, hosted by the country's premier foreign-languages university and distributed by Tsinghua University Press, it addresses the field as a whole — its theory, methods, teaching and disciplinary organisation — rather than a single world region. Regional journals publish studies of Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia or Europe; this journal publishes about country and area studies itself, and about any region within it, from a comparative standpoint. Its appearance on both the Tsinghua University Press journal list and BFSU's official journals page documents the dual institutional backing — a major university press platform and a specialist university's editorial home — behind the title.

Readership and significance

The journal's readers are scholars and students of area studies, international relations, comparative politics, world history and foreign languages, together with the growing community in China charged with building country and area studies as a discipline. For international readers, it offers a window into how Chinese academia is theorising and organising regional knowledge — a subject of wide interest as China's engagement with every world region deepens and as universities worldwide reconsider the Cold War inheritance of area studies. As a new journal, its back catalogue is short, and its significance lies in its founding programme: an open, inclusive and dynamic platform for synthesis across the field's traditions, published in English and free to read. Readers identifying the title should note its SciOpen home under Tsinghua University Press and its editorial office at Beijing Foreign Studies University in Beijing, China.