About Journal of Macau Studies

Journal of Macau Studies

The Journal of Macau Studies (澳門研究, Aomen Yanjiu) is a comprehensive academic journal published in Macau. It is jointly edited and published by the Centre for Macau Studies of the University of Macau and the Macao Foundation. Launched in 1988 under the aim of "studying Macao and serving the community", it has published more than ninety issues of research on Macao's political, economic and cultural development, and it serves as the principal scholarly platform for multidisciplinary Macau studies — the field devoted to the history, society, economy and culture of Macau itself.

The University of Macau lists the journal among the academic journals it publishes. The University describes it as a comprehensive academic publication that has been widely recognised by all walks of life and has played an important role in promoting academic research and exchanges in Macao, highlighting a multidisciplinary, international, theoretical, innovative and forward-looking academic style in the service of Macao's political, economic and cultural development. Since 2016 the journal has conducted an expert peer review process, under which submitted papers are evaluated by specialists in the same fields before publication.

Launch in 1988 and mission

The Journal of Macau Studies was launched in 1988. The date is significant: Macao was then entering the transition period that followed the 1987 Sino-Portuguese Joint Declaration and would end with the transfer of administration to China in 1999. A journal devoted to studying the territory — its past, its institutions and its future — answered a clear need of that moment, and its founding aim joined scholarship to civic purpose: "studying Macao and serving the community", as the University of Macau renders it. Its sister rendering, "researching Macao and serving the society", appears in the University's English descriptions of the journal's style and goals.

The journal's mission, as restated in its calls for papers, is to provide an academic platform for experts, scholars, researchers and professionals to publish their latest research on the political, economic and cultural development of Macao, exchanging new ideas and insights in theoretical exploration and practice. That combination — a small territory, studied whole, by a journal published in the territory — defines the publication. Few places of Macao's size possess a dedicated multidisciplinary journal of this longevity.

The publishers: Centre for Macau Studies and Macao Foundation

The journal is jointly edited and published by the Centre for Macau Studies (CMS) of the University of Macau and the Macao Foundation. The Centre is the University's dedicated unit for research on Macao, bringing together experts and scholars across arts and humanities, social sciences, education, management, law and engineering. In 2018, at the journal's thirtieth anniversary, the Centre appointed 34 experts and scholars as part-time teaching staff to promote academic activities and policy studies in Macao and to provide suggestions for the sustainable development of the city — a measure of the research community the journal both serves and represents.

The Macao Foundation, the territory's major public foundation, acquired the University of Macau's predecessor, the University of East Asia, on behalf of the Portuguese Macao government in 1988 — the very year the journal was launched — and restructured it toward its eventual renaming as the University of Macau in 1991. The journal and the modern university thus grew up together out of the same late-1980s moment of institutional building for Macao's transition.

Macau studies as a field

Macau studies — sometimes discussed internationally under the term Macaology — is the interdisciplinary study of Macao: its more than four centuries of Portuguese presence alongside Chinese society, its trading and maritime history, its gaming-led modern economy, its heritage architecture and languages, and its position since 1999 as a Special Administrative Region of China within the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. The journal is the field's house publication: the place where its practitioners publish social studies, policy analyses and surveys about Macao.

University of Macau Rector Yonghua Song, speaking at the journal's thirtieth anniversary in 2018, said the journal publishes the foremost social studies, policy analyses and surveys about Macao, documenting social dialogues that took place during major historic changes, and noted that the research team for Macao studies had greatly expanded over the journal's first thirty years. That expansion mirrors the field itself, which grew from a small circle of local historians into an international scholarly community as Macao's global profile rose.

Scope and contents

As a comprehensive journal, the Journal of Macau Studies ranges across the whole of Macao's life. Individual issues illustrate the breadth. The 86th issue, published in 2018, carried research on Macao's future development strategies in light of the renewal of the gaming licences of Macao's gaming companies; the development of scout activities in Macao in the 1950s; the major reason behind the failure of a pilot programme for nursery services in Macao; and the city's role in the silver trade between China and foreign countries in Chinese history. Gaming policy, social history, public services and early modern trade history sit side by side — a fair sample of the journal's method.

The 88th issue focused on the development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, alongside studies of the development of underground facilities in Macao, the relationship between the Zhang clan from Xiangshan and Macao, a written record about Macao dating back to the nineteenth century, and a book on Chinese merchants and Chinese society in Macao during the late Qing dynasty. Contemporary regional policy and deep historical research are both at home in its pages.

Peer review since 2016

Until the mid-2010s the journal operated as a comprehensive edited publication; in 2016 it adopted a formal expert peer review process. The University's announcements state that since 2016 all submitted papers are evaluated by experts in the same fields before being published. The change aligned the journal with standard international academic practice and marked its maturation from a locally edited miscellany into a refereed scholarly journal.

The journal accepts submissions from scholars, researchers and professionals working on Macao, and it issues themed calls for papers. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, the journal launched a special section for articles on the pandemic's enormous and continuing impact on Macao's economy and society, noting the territory's specific measures — community quarantine, casino closures, medical surveillance, health codes, limited customs clearance, stimulus measures and vaccination programmes — as subjects for study. The call exemplifies the journal's responsiveness to Macao's immediate circumstances as well as its history.

The thirtieth anniversary

On 30 August 2018 the Centre for Macau Studies held a conference to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the Journal of Macau Studies, combined with a ceremony presenting CMS appointment letters. Rector Yonghua Song presented appointment letters to the 34 part-time experts; guests included Wu Zhiliang, president of the Board of Directors of the Macao Foundation, Professor Yang Yunzhong of the Macao Polytechnic Institute's One Country Two Systems Research Center, and Agnes Lam, director of the Centre for Macau Studies. Seminars at the event covered the integration of barrier-free facilities in smart city development, Macao's tourism industry and the reconstruction of Macaology.

The anniversary programme captures the journal's dual character. It is at once an academic publication — concerned with the theory and reconstruction of its own field — and a policy-adjacent institution, whose community advises on tourism, urban facilities and the city's sustainable development. That blend of scholarship and service is exactly what its founding aim prescribes.

The journal today

The journal has published more than ninety issues since 1988 and continues to appear under the joint editorship of the Centre for Macau Studies and the Macao Foundation. Previous issues are archived online, and the University of Macau presents the journal first among the academic journals it publishes, ahead of its other titles in the humanities and social sciences.

Its subject matter continues to track Macao's development: Greater Bay Area integration, the future of the gaming industry whose licence renewals the journal was already analysing in 2018, tourism, heritage, and the territory's social policies. For researchers anywhere working on Macao, the journal is a first port of call — both for its own articles and as a record of what the Macao studies community has considered important across more than three decades.

Significance

The Journal of Macau Studies is significant out of proportion to Macao's size because it effectively created the shelf on which a field sits. Before a territory can be studied as a whole, there must be a venue that treats it as a whole: the journal's comprehensive, multidisciplinary remit — political, economic and cultural development studied together — embodies the idea of Macau studies itself. Its launch in 1988, on the eve of Macao's transition; its documentation of the social dialogues of that transition and of the Special Administrative Region era; and its professionalisation through peer review in 2016 trace the institutional history of Macao scholarship in miniature.

For the University of Macau and the Macao Foundation, the journal is also a standing instrument of public service, connecting academic research to the community it studies. "Studying Macao and serving the community" remains an accurate summary: more than ninety issues on, the Journal of Macau Studies is still the principal scholarly platform for understanding Macao.