About Journal of Yunnan Minzu University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition)

Journal of Yunnan Minzu University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition)

Overview and identity

The Journal of Yunnan Minzu University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition) is the Chinese-language philosophy and social sciences edition of the journal of Yunnan Minzu University in Kunming, Yunnan Province. It is identified domestically by its Chinese publication number, CN 53-1191/C, which appears in the DOIs of its articles in the form 10.13727/j.cnki.53-1191/c. The prefix 53 designates Yunnan Province in the CN numbering system, and the suffix /C designates the social sciences — a compact registration identity that Chinese readers recognise at once.

What sets this journal apart from the other local-university titles in this series is its national standing. It is a CSSCI source journal — included in the Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index compiled at Nanjing University, the principal citation index for Chinese social science — and a Chinese core journal in comprehensive humanities and social sciences. CSSCI inclusion is the most consequential quality mark a Chinese social-science journal can hold: it determines where scholars seek to publish, how universities evaluate research, and which journals libraries prioritise. A philosophy and social sciences edition from an ethnic university in Kunming holding that status is a significant actor in national scholarship, not merely a house journal.

The two editions: philosophy and social sciences, and natural science

Yunnan Minzu University publishes its journal in two editions. The Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition — the subject of this profile — carries the humanities and social-science scholarship of the university and its national community of contributors. Its companion, the Natural Science Edition, carries the university's science and technology research and has its own distinguished record, including continuous listing since 2012 among the Statistical Source Periodicals of Chinese Science and Technology Papers and recognition as an excellent science and technology journal of Chinese universities. Institutional accounts describe the two editions together: the philosophy and social sciences edition as a national Chinese core journal, a national top-30 and top-100 social science journal and a CSSCI source journal, and the natural science edition as ranking highly among comparable journals in Yunnan.

The division into editions is a common pattern among larger Chinese university journals, allowing each edition to be evaluated within its own citation culture — CSSCI for the social sciences, the science and technology core lists for the natural sciences. For Yunnan Minzu University the arrangement has clearly worked: both editions hold national core status in their respective systems, a double distinction that few provincial universities achieve.

The sponsoring university: founded 1 August 1951

Yunnan Minzu University was founded on 1 August 1951 in Kunming, as one of the earliest ethnic universities established in the People's Republic of China. It was formerly known as Yunnan Institute for Nationalities, and it took its present name — Yunnan Minzu University, rendered in earlier English usage as Yunnan University for Nationalities — in April 2003. It is a comprehensive university for training high-level professionals from all ethnic groups, jointly built by the Ministry of Education, the National Ethnic Affairs Commission and the People's Government of Yunnan Province, and designated a provincial key university.

Its history includes the characteristic disruptions and restorations of its era: an institute of ethnic minorities established within it in the 1950s, restoration as an ordinary university in the early 1970s with approval confirmed in March 1973, the establishment of its Institute of Ethnic Studies in 1978–1979 jointly with the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences, bachelor's degree granting rights in the first national list of 1982, and master's degree granting rights in 1984 as part of the second national batch. In 2015 the joint-building arrangement with the provincial government, the State Ethnic Affairs Commission and the Ministry of Education was renewed. The journal's philosophy and social sciences edition is the mature scholarly organ of this seventy-year institutional history.

Disciplines and scholarly advantages: ethnology at the centre

The university covers ten disciplines — philosophy, economics, law, education, literature, history, science, engineering, management and art — and has formed a pattern of specialisation with ethnology, sociology, national language and literature, and Southeast and South Asian language and culture as its advantages, with twelve provincial key disciplines recorded in institutional accounts. Those advantages are the journal's centre of gravity. The edition is noted, in the record on which this profile is based, for ethnology and ethnic-minority studies — the fields in which a minzu university in Yunnan, China's most ethnically diverse province, has an unmatchable fieldwork base.

Yunnan is home to more recognised ethnic groups than any other Chinese province, and the university's scholars work among Dai, Yi, Bai, Hani, Zhuang, Miao, Hui, Lisu, Lahu, Wa, Naxi, Yao, Tibetan, Jingpo, Blang, Pumi, Nu, Achang, Jinuo, De'ang and Drung communities, among others. Ethnology published from Kunming is therefore fieldwork-based scholarship of a depth that institutes elsewhere cannot replicate, and the journal — read nationally through CSSCI — is the channel through which much of it reaches Chinese social science. Its pages also serve the university's other strengths: sociology, ethnic languages and literatures, and the study of Southeast and South Asia, Yunnan's neighbouring world across the borders with Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam.

CSSCI and core-journal standing: what the evaluations mean

The journal's evaluations deserve explanation, because they structure its role. CSSCI, the Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index, selects its source journals by citation performance and scholarly standing, and inclusion places the edition in the company of China's leading social-science periodicals. Its status as a Chinese core journal in comprehensive humanities and social sciences reflects the parallel Peking University core-journal evaluation. Institutional accounts add the distinctions of national top-30 social sciences journal and national top-100 social sciences journal. Together these listings mean the edition competes for manuscripts nationally: authors from universities across China submit ethnology and social-science papers to Kunming because publication there counts, in evaluation systems, at the highest level available to a university journal.

That national competition changes a journal's character. Where a house journal publishes mainly its own faculty, a CSSCI journal must select on quality from a national pool, build a distinguished editorial and reviewer network, and maintain the citation performance on which its listing depends. The Yunnan Minzu edition's longevity in the index shows it sustaining that performance — an achievement rooted in the genuine scholarly distinctiveness of its ethnic-studies niche, which guarantees it a flow of significant manuscripts that general journals cannot attract.

Ethnic studies and the university's wider publishing

The journal does not stand alone in the university's publishing landscape. Institutional accounts note that the university also holds a large-scale periodical devoted to ethnic studies — described as playing an important role in the study of cultural anthropology in China and the world — alongside the journal's two editions. Together these titles make Kunming, through its minzu university, one of the principal publishing centres for Chinese ethnology. The philosophy and social sciences edition's contribution within that landscape is the broad one: it carries ethnology at its heart but ranges across philosophy, economics, law, education, literature and history as they bear on ethnic regions and peoples.

The scholarly stakes of that work are high. China's ethnic policy, the documentation of minority languages — some of them endangered — the history of the southwest frontier, and the development of ethnic regions are all fields in which primary research from Yunnan is nationally important. When such research appears in a CSSCI journal edited in Kunming, it enters national debates with the authority of both the index and the fieldwork behind it.

Identifiers, DOIs and access

The edition is identified by CN 53-1191/C, and its articles carry DOIs under the prefix 10.13727/j.cnki.53-1191/c, in which the CN number is embedded — a form that allows any article to be traced to the edition even from a bare DOI. Its contents are distributed through the Chinese academic database system and tracked by CSSCI, making its articles among the most discoverable of any journal in this series of profiles. No ISSN was separately attested in the source material for this profile, and the CN number and DOI prefix are the identifiers on which the available evidence rests.

For international researchers, the practical route to the journal is through the citation record: CSSCI-indexed articles are extensively cited in Chinese social-science literature, increasingly translated and discussed in English-language scholarship on Chinese ethnology, and individually retrievable through their DOIs. Scholars of ethnic China who read only English should be aware of the edition as a source even if they access it through citation and abstracting services, because a significant share of China's best ethnological research appears in its pages in Chinese.

Kunming and the university's setting

The university sits in Kunming, Yunnan's capital — the "Spring City" — from which its scholars reach every prefecture of the province. Its comprehensive structure, covering ten disciplines with strength in ethnology, sociology, minority languages and Southeast and South Asian languages and cultures, reflects a deliberate positioning: Yunnan is China's gateway to Southeast and South Asia as well as its most diverse province, and its minzu university studies both. Doctoral training developed through cooperation, including joint doctoral recruitment in sociology with Renmin University of China from 2003, connects the university's research school to national networks, and the journal's standards rise with them.

Campus teaching teams recognised at provincial level — in Chinese minority language and literature, Chinese language and literature, Thai language, chemistry and computer science — and provincial innovation teams in philosophy and social sciences, including one for Yunnan cross-border ethnic studies, map closely onto the journal's subject profile. A journal is, in the end, the printed form of a scholarly community; at Yunnan Minzu University that community is one of China's principal centres for the study of ethnic peoples.

Place among China's ethnic-university journals

China's minzu universities — in Beijing, Wuhan, Lanzhou, Chengdu, Kunming and elsewhere — each publish journals, and several of their social-science editions hold CSSCI status. Within that distinguished company, the Journal of Yunnan Minzu University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition) represents the southwest: the province with the richest ethnic diversity, the borderlands facing Southeast Asia, and an institutional tradition reaching back to 1951. Its CN registration, its DOI record, its core and CSSCI listings and its ethnological distinction make it the most nationally prominent title among the eight journals profiled in this batch — a local university's journal that long ago became a national scholarly institution in its own right.