About Journal of Luoyang Normal University

Journal of Luoyang Normal University

The Journal of Luoyang Normal University is the academic journal sponsored by Luoyang Normal University in Luoyang, Henan Province. It carries ISSN 1009-4970 and the Chinese domestic publication number CN 41-1302/G4, identifiers attested in published article listings for volume 43 of 2024 and in article DOIs such as 10.3969/j.issn.1009-4970.2025.07.015, from the seventh issue of 2025. Published by a provincial undergraduate college whose predecessor, the Heluo Normal School, was founded in 1916, the journal records the scholarship of one of China's oldest teacher-training institutions, in one of China's oldest cities.

Identity and identifiers

The journal is identified by its sponsor, Luoyang Normal University, its city, Luoyang, ISSN 1009-4970 and CN 41-1302/G4 — in which 41 denotes Henan and the G4 class marks an education-category periodical. Two facts in its record are especially informative. Volume 43 appeared in 2024, a numbering that places the journal's first volume in the early 1980s and demonstrates more than four decades of continuous volume publication. And the attested 2025 DOI comes from a seventh issue within the year, indicating a publication rhythm of at least seven issues annually at that date — a frequent, monthly or near-monthly pattern for a comprehensive college journal. Its DOIs follow the standard 10.3969/j.issn pattern with the ISSN embedded.

The sponsoring institution

Luoyang Normal University's predecessor was the Heluo Normal School, founded in 1916. It passed through the stages of Henan Provincial Heluo Normal School, Henan Provincial Fourth Normal School, Henan Provincial Luoyang Normal School, Luoyang Teachers College and Luoyang Normal College. In 2000 it was upgraded to an undergraduate college and took its current name. The university is a provincial undergraduate teacher-training college located on the shore of the Yi River, beneath Wan'an Mountain, in a place where, as its introductions note, the Imperial Academy of the Eastern Han dynasty originated. It is administered by the province of Henan and has trained teachers for the Luoyang region for more than a century.

Scale and structure

The university comprises 23 colleges and two public teaching and research departments, offering 74 undergraduate majors in recent published counts across ten disciplines: literature, science, engineering, economics, management, law, history, education, art and agriculture. One of its disciplines is ranked in the top one per cent of the ESI world rankings. Its colleges include the School of Marxism, the College of Arts, the College of History and Culture, the College of Law and Society, the College of Foreign Languages, the College of Mathematical Sciences, the College of Physics and Electronic Information, the College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and the College of Information Technology. Its research bodies include an Education Science Research Institute, an Aquatic Products Research Institute and an International Research Center for Heluo Culture. A journal sponsored by such an institution can draw contributions from every one of those fields.

Luoyang, the millennium capital

Luoyang is described in the university's own introductions as the Millennium Emperor Capital, the Peony Flower City and a starting point of the Silk Road. It served as the capital of numerous Chinese dynasties, stands on the Luo River in western Henan, and is surrounded by the sites of ancient capitals, the Longmen Grottoes and the White Horse Temple. The Heluo culture — the culture of the Yellow River and Luo River confluence, where the legendary River Map and Luo Writing were said to appear — takes its name from the region, and the university maintains an international research centre devoted to it. A journal published in Luoyang therefore operates in one of the deepest historical landscapes in China, and its humanities pages have an inexhaustible regional subject in the history, archaeology and culture of the ancient capital.

Scope

The Journal of Luoyang Normal University is a comprehensive academic journal covering the disciplines of its sponsor: literature, history, philosophy, education, law, economics, management, mathematics and the natural sciences, engineering, art and agriculture. The CN classification G4 confirms its registration in the education category of Chinese periodicals, reflecting the normal-college identity of its sponsor, but its contents range across the university's ten disciplines. Heluo culture studies, the history of Luoyang, and education research for the region's schools sit alongside basic science and applied research in its issues. It publishes in Chinese, with articles identified by the DOIs described above; the attested 2025 article number, in a seventh issue, shows a journal publishing frequently and in volume.

A century of teacher education

The journal's sponsor belongs to the small company of Chinese teacher-training institutions founded before the Republic's education system took modern shape: a normal school of 1916, created to staff the schools of the Heluo region with trained teachers. Through its successive forms — provincial normal school, teachers college, normal college, and from 2000 an undergraduate university-level college — the institution has performed that single mission for more than one hundred years. Its journal is the scholarly extension of the mission: research by the college's professoriate, published for the teachers, schools and scholars of western Henan and for the national Chinese-language community.

The journal in the university's publishing life

Volume 43 in 2024 means that the journal's volumes reach back to the reform era's first years, when Chinese universities revived academic publishing after the Cultural Revolution. A college journal that has maintained annual volumes from the early 1980s to the DOI-registered issues of 2025 has passed through the whole modern history of Chinese academic periodicals: from print-only distribution to national database indexing and per-article digital identifiers. Its CN number's G4 education classification has remained constant through that history, anchoring the title in the education periodicals of Henan Province, whose CN prefix 41 it bears.

Regional role

Western Henan — Luoyang and its surrounding counties — looks to Luoyang Normal University as its normal university, and the journal is the region's college scholarly record. Its education research circulates among the schools its sponsor supplies with teachers; its Heluo-culture and historical research documents the ancient capital's past; its science and agriculture address the loess hills and river valleys of the region. The university began accepting international students in 2003 and maintains a library recorded in earlier introductions at over 1.6 million books and some 2,100 Chinese and foreign periodicals, resources that support the journal's authors and referees.

Readership

The journal's readers are the scholars of Luoyang Normal University, teachers and education researchers across Henan, historians and Heluo-culture researchers throughout China, and the libraries and databases that catalogue Chinese education periodicals by ISSN and CN number. For its sponsor, the journal is both an academic outlet and a chronicle of a college founded in 1916 in the ancient capital.

Earlier published introductions give the human scale behind the journal: a teaching staff of about 1,200, of whom more than 540 held doctoral or master's qualifications and more than 340 were professors or associate professors, with nearly one hundred national, provincial and municipal academic and technological leaders among them. Those are the scholars who write, referee and read the Journal of Luoyang Normal University.

How to identify the journal

Cite the journal as Journal of Luoyang Normal University, ISSN 1009-4970, CN 41-1302/G4, published by Luoyang Normal University, Luoyang, Henan, China, using article DOIs in the 10.3969/j.issn.1009-4970 series where available. Volume 43 corresponds to 2024. The title should not be shortened in ways that confuse it with journals of other Luoyang institutions, such as the city's university of science and technology, which is a separate sponsor.