About Polymer Materials Science & Engineering

Polymer Materials Science & Engineering

Polymer Materials Science & Engineering, known in Chinese as Gaofenzi Cailiao Kexue Yu Gongcheng (高分子材料科学与工程), is a Chinese-language scientific journal devoted to polymer science and polymer engineering, published in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province in south-western China. It was founded in 1985 and carries the International Standard Serial Number ISSN 1000-7555. The journal is sponsored by Sichuan University through its College of Polymer Science and Engineering, one of China's oldest and largest centres of polymer education and research. Its contents cover polymer synthesis, polymer processing, polymer composites and functional polymeric materials, and it is recognised in China as a Chinese core journal of its field. International bibliographic services record the title with its ISSN, list its subject areas as chemical engineering and materials science, and track its coverage in Scopus over a run stretching, with the journal's long history, from the 1990s to the present. This profile brings together the verified facts of its founding, sponsorship, scope and indexing.

Founding in 1985 and identity

The journal was founded in 1985, a year that places it in the generation of specialist Chinese scientific journals created as China's research system rebuilt and differentiated in the 1980s. Before that decade, Chinese polymer research appeared mainly in general chemistry journals; a dedicated title joining the words "materials science" and "engineering" signalled that polymers were to be treated not only as substances to be synthesised but as materials to be processed, structured and applied. The Chinese title makes the programme explicit: Gaofenzi (macromolecular/polymer) Cailiao (materials) Kexue (science) Yu (and) Gongcheng (engineering). The English rendering used by international databases is Polymeric Materials Science and Engineering, while the title under which the journal is profiled in this directory, Polymer Materials Science & Engineering, conveys the same four-part remit. The journal has kept that identity for four decades: founded in 1985, it was still publishing in the 2020s, with Scopus coverage records running to 2025 in current journal databases. Its ISSN, 1000-7555, has remained the constant identifier through that run, cited in the form 1000-7555 in Chinese records and 10007555 in international metric services.

Sichuan University and its polymer college

The journal's sponsor and editorial home is Sichuan University in Chengdu, acting through the university's College of Polymer Science and Engineering. That college is a substantial institution in its own right. Its official overview describes an undergraduate major in Polymer Materials and Engineering recognised as a national-level distinctive major, among the first pilot majors for the Ministry of Education's "Cultivation of Excellent Engineers" initiative, the first polymer materials major to pass engineering education certification, and a national-level first-class undergraduate major, supported by a national-level excellent teaching team and a national experimental teaching demonstration centre for materials science and engineering. For graduate students the college offers majors in materials science, materials processing engineering, biomedical engineering and materials engineering; materials science and biomedical engineering are key national primary disciplines, and the polymer materials engineering discipline was designated a key discipline under both the national "211 Project" and "985 Project". The college's research environment includes the State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering. A journal sponsored by such a college sits inside one of the densest concentrations of polymer expertise in China, and its author and referee pools reflect that position. International directory records have at times listed the publisher as Chengdu University of Science and Technology — the institutional predecessor name associated with the Chengdu campus from which Sichuan University's polymer strength descends — while current records list Sichuan University (Sichuan Daxue) as publisher; the continuity is of one Chengdu polymer school and its journal since 1985.

Scope: from synthesis to processing

The journal's scope, as stated in its sponsoring record, covers polymer synthesis, processing, composites and functional polymeric materials, and journal databases describe it in matching terms as a professional scientific journal of polymer chemistry, polymer physics and processing technology, publishing original research articles, reviews and technical reports on the development and application of polymeric materials. Each element of that scope corresponds to a stage in the life of a polymer material. Synthesis covers the creation of new polymers and the improvement of polymerisation methods. Polymer physics and characterisation cover structure, morphology and properties — how chain architecture and processing history produce mechanical, thermal, electrical or optical behaviour. Processing covers the engineering heart of the Chengdu school: extrusion, injection moulding, blending and the other operations by which raw polymers become products, including the novel processing technologies for which Sichuan University's polymer research is noted. Composites cover polymer matrices reinforced or filled to achieve properties no single polymer can reach, including the polymer nanocomposites prominent in the university's research. Functional materials cover polymers designed for a job — for energy, sustainability, the environment and biomedical applications, to use the terms in which the university's own research strengths are described.

The Chengdu polymer research environment

A special issue of an international journal devoted to polymer research at Sichuan University summarised the institution's fields as novel polymer processing technologies; polymer nanocomposites; multicomponent polymer systems and solution thermodynamics; macromolecular synthetic methodology; and functional polymers for energy, sustainability, the environment and biomedical applications, with contributing units including the State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering, the College of Polymer Science and Engineering, the Polymer Research Institute, the College of Chemistry, the College of Chemical Engineering and the National Engineering Laboratory of Eco-Friendly Polymeric Materials (Sichuan). Polymer Materials Science & Engineering is the Chinese-language journal of that same environment. The value of that connection for readers is twofold. First, the journal's pages reflect a coherent research school rather than a random sample of submissions: processing-led, materials-focused, and strong in multicomponent systems. Second, the journal gives that school a domestic forum in the language in which its students are taught and its industrial partners work. Sichuan University's polymer programme has been celebrated internationally — a 2024 special issue marked the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the polymer programme at the university — and the journal, founded thirty years into that programme's history, is one of its long-running instruments.

Publication pattern and bibliographic record

Bibliographically, the journal is recorded under its Chinese title Gaofenzi Cailiao Kexue Yu Gongcheng and its English title, with ISSN 1000-7555 and Chengdu, China, as its place of publication. Scopus coverage, as summarised by journal databases, is recorded for 1993–1995, 1998, and from 2001 through to 2024–2025 — an unusually informative record, since it shows both the journal's longevity and the reality that international indexing of Chinese-language journals has sometimes proceeded in phases. Journal-metric services classify it under Polymers and Plastics and under Process Chemistry and Technology, with a best quartile recorded as Q4, and under the broader headings of chemical engineering and materials science. Those classifications align precisely with the journal's stated scope of synthesis, processing, composites and functional materials. The journal publishes research articles, reviews and technical reports, the standard article types of a Chinese core scientific journal, and its issues are distributed through China's academic journal infrastructure to university and institute libraries. For citation purposes, authors and indexers abbreviate the title as Gaofenzi Cailiao Kexue Yu Gongcheng or Polym. Mater. Sci. Eng., both forms appearing in international databases.

Core journal standing in China

Within China, the journal's standing is expressed by its recognition as a Chinese core journal in its field — the classification, maintained through China's core-journal selection systems, that identifies the leading national titles to which libraries subscribe and in which researchers seek to publish for career evaluation. Core status is the domestic counterpart of international indexing, and for a Chinese-language specialist journal it is arguably the more consequential of the two: it determines the journal's place in the daily working literature of Chinese polymer science. Combined with its Scopus-tracked record, its sponsorship by a key national discipline at Sichuan University, and a publication run from 1985 to the present, core standing completes the picture of an established national journal. Directory users comparing Chinese polymer titles should note the distinctions this creates: this journal is a university-sponsored, Chinese-language, engineering-weighted title from Chengdu, different in language, sponsor and emphasis from the English-language Chinese Journal of Polymer Science published in Beijing, and from Acta Polymerica Sinica, the academy-and-society title in the same field.

Readership and authors

The journal's readers are the polymer community of China: researchers and engineers in universities and institutes, graduate students in polymer materials programmes, and technical staff in the plastics and materials industries who follow research in their working language. Its authors come from the same community, with a natural concentration in the sponsoring university and the wider south-western research region, alongside submissions from polymer groups across China. The subjects that recur — synthesis of new macromolecules, processing science, nanocomposites, multicomponent systems, functional polymers for energy, environmental and biomedical use — are the subjects on which China's polymer industry and its universities collaborate most closely, from eco-friendly polymeric materials to biomedical polymers. A Chinese-language journal at the centre of a major teaching college also serves an educational function: its reviews and research articles are reading material for the graduate cohorts of one of China's largest polymer programmes. That teaching connection, through a college with a national experimental teaching demonstration centre and a national excellent teaching team, is part of what has kept the journal embedded in its discipline since 1985.

Distinguishing the title

Because polymer science in China supports several similarly named journals, a precise identification is worthwhile. Polymer Materials Science & Engineering (Gaofenzi Cailiao Kexue Yu Gongcheng), ISSN 1000-7555, is the Chengdu journal sponsored by Sichuan University, founded in 1985 and published in Chinese. It is not the Chinese Journal of Polymer Science, which is an English-language journal sponsored by the Chinese Chemical Society and the Institute of Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, first published in 1983 as Polymer Communications and renamed in 1985 — a coincidence of dates that makes confusion easy and identification by ISSN essential. Nor is it Acta Polymerica Sinica, the Chinese-language academy journal founded in 1957. The three titles divide the field by sponsor, city and emphasis: society-and-institute English-language reporting from Beijing, academy basic polymer science, and — in this journal — university-based materials science and engineering with a distinctive processing strength from Chengdu. WorldNM lists each under its own name and ISSN so that readers can keep them apart.

Summary

In summary: Polymer Materials Science & Engineering (Gaofenzi Cailiao Kexue Yu Gongcheng) is a Chinese-language polymer journal founded in 1985, published in Chengdu under ISSN 1000-7555 and sponsored by Sichuan University through its College of Polymer Science and Engineering — the home of a key national polymer discipline, a State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering and one of China's largest polymer teaching programmes. It publishes original research, reviews and technical reports on polymer synthesis, polymer physics, processing technology, composites and functional polymeric materials. It is recognised as a Chinese core journal, is classified internationally under polymers and plastics, process chemistry and technology, chemical engineering and materials science, and holds a Scopus coverage record extending from the 1990s to the present. For anyone mapping China's polymer literature, it is the established journal of the Chengdu school of polymer materials science and engineering.