About Journal of Propulsion Technology

Journal of Propulsion Technology

Overview and identity

The Journal of Propulsion Technology (Chinese: 推进技术; pinyin: Tuijin Jishu) is a Chinese-language aerospace propulsion journal published in Beijing in association with China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC), China's large aerospace and defence industrial group. Founded in 1980, it carries ISSN 1001-4055 and covers aero-engine and rocket propulsion, propellants, combustion and propulsion system design and testing. Bibliometric services record it in Scopus, with CiteScore and SCImago data maintained under its pinyin title Tuijin Jishu.

Propulsion is the enabling technology of flight: every aircraft, missile and launch vehicle is, in engineering terms, a structure built around its engine. A journal devoted solely to propulsion — to the thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, combustion and materials of the machines that produce thrust — therefore sits close to the centre of an aerospace nation's research effort. The Journal of Propulsion Technology has occupied that specialist position in China since 1980.

History and founding

The journal was founded in 1980, as China's aerospace industry was rebuilding its research and publication systems and as the country's aero-engine and missile programmes were expanding. A dedicated propulsion title, sponsored from within the aerospace industry itself rather than by a university, signalled that engine research had grown large and specialised enough to need its own journal, separate from general aeronautics titles.

The journal has been published continuously since. Bibliometric records show its Scopus-indexed run extending from the 1990s to the present, with the journal still active in 2025–2026 listings and a 2025 impact factor of about 1.13 recorded by journal-metric services, its h-index around 30 — figures that reflect a steady, specialist citation community in propulsion engineering rather than a generalist audience.

Publisher and industry sponsorship

The journal is published in Beijing in association with China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation, the state-owned aerospace group whose institutes design and build missile systems and their propulsion. Researcher.Life's journal record lists the publisher in its historical form as the China Aerospace Industry Corporation entity (Zhongguo Hangtian Gongye Zonggongsi), reflecting the journal's origin inside the aerospace ministry system that later corporatised into groups such as CASIC.

Industry sponsorship shapes the journal's character. Its authors are drawn heavily from the research institutes and factories that actually design China's engines, alongside university propulsion departments, and its pages carry the applied, test-centred research that a development-driven industry produces: engine ground-test results, component rig experiments and system design studies as well as theory.

Scope: aero-engines and gas turbines

A central strand of the journal is air-breathing propulsion: turbojets, turbofans, turboprops and the gas-turbine core machinery — compressors, combustors and turbines — from which they are built. Papers address aerodynamic design of turbomachinery, combustion stability, cooling of hot-section components, engine control and the testing of complete engines and their parts.

This work sits within one of the most demanding areas of mechanical engineering. Aero-engine components operate at temperatures above the melting point of their alloys, at extreme rotational speeds, and must do so reliably for thousands of hours. Research published in the journal on compressor aerodynamics, turbine cooling or combustor design speaks directly to the efficiency, thrust and durability of the engines China flies, and the same gas-turbine science transfers to power generation and marine propulsion.

Scope: rocket propulsion and propellants

The journal's second great strand is rocket propulsion: liquid and solid rocket engines, propellant chemistry and formulation, combustion in rocket chambers, nozzle design and the thermal protection of propulsion systems. Its coverage of propellants — their energy content, stability, manufacture and behaviour — connects it to the chemistry and materials communities as well as to mechanical engineering.

Solid propulsion in particular is central to the sponsor's world of missile systems, while liquid propulsion underpins launch vehicles and spacecraft. By covering both in one title, alongside air-breathing engines, the journal maps the whole propulsion landscape of Chinese aerospace: from the turbofan on a wing to the solid motor in a missile and the liquid engine under a space launcher.

Scope: combustion, design and testing

Running through both strands is combustion science — the journal publishes work on ignition, flame stability, combustion instability and the modelling of reacting flows — and the engineering disciplines of design and testing: propulsion system integration, numerical simulation of internal flows, measurement techniques for high-temperature and high-speed flows, and the analysis of ground and flight test data.

The emphasis on testing distinguishes an industry journal. Propulsion advances are proven on test stands before they are proven in flight, and papers that report rig design, instrumentation and test methodology are as much a part of the journal's contribution as new theory. Its research-article flow — metric services recorded 41 articles in 2025 under one counting method, and the journal continues to publish regularly — is that of a steady specialist title.

Indexing and standing

The journal is indexed in Scopus, where its records run from the 1990s onward, and it is tracked by SCImago and other metric services under Tuijin Jishu, with a recorded SJR of about 0.344 and an h-index of 30 in recent listings, and a CiteScore of 1. Within China it is an established title in the aerospace core-journal system, published in Chinese with English abstracts in line with national practice.

A caution the journal's profile should carry: its English title and ISSN have been imitated by unrelated websites that misuse the name 'Journal of Propulsion Technology' and ISSN 1001-4055 for unrelated content. The genuine journal is the Beijing-published Chinese-language propulsion title described here; readers should rely on established indexing services and the journal's recognised records rather than look-alike sites.

Readership and authors

Readers are propulsion engineers and researchers: engine designers in the aerospace institutes, university staff and doctoral students in propulsion and power engineering, combustion specialists and test engineers. For them the journal is the domestic archival record of Chinese propulsion research — the place where institute work that may never be translated is published in full technical detail.

Its authorship pattern, mixing industry institutes and universities, mirrors the structure of Chinese aerospace research itself, in which the large state groups employ much of the engineering workforce while universities supply fundamental research and trained people. The journal is where those two halves of the system meet in print.

Place in Chinese aerospace publishing

Chinese aerospace publishing includes general titles such as Acta Aeronautica et Astronautica Sinica and astronautics titles such as the Journal of Astronautics; the Journal of Propulsion Technology is the specialist of the family, the one title whose entire remit is the engine. Founded in 1980 and still publishing under industry sponsorship in Beijing, it has documented more than four decades of Chinese work on jet, rocket and missile propulsion.

In the WorldNM directory it is profiled as a Beijing-based Chinese-language magazine-category journal. Its significance is disproportionate to its size: propulsion is the pacing technology of aerospace, and this journal is the long-running Chinese-language record of how China has pursued it.

One further feature of the journal's record deserves note: its longevity within a single industrial system. Chinese aerospace organisation was repeatedly restructured between 1980 and the present — ministries became corporations, and corporations became today's great groups — yet the journal's identity, title and Beijing base persisted through every reorganisation, and bibliometric services continued to record it without interruption into the 2020s. For a specialist title, that institutional persistence is itself a form of quality signal: successive generations of the industry's own leadership kept the journal because the propulsion community used it.