About Quantum Review Letters

Quantum Review Letters

Quantum Review Letters is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, fully open-access journal published in Beijing by KeAi Communications, dedicated to cutting-edge research in quantum information sciences, from fundamental science to technology and applications. It is owned by KeAi Communications Co., Ltd. itself — one of the titles the Beijing publisher holds directly rather than for a partner institution — and it entered its second volume in 2026, having begun publication in 2025. Its subject is one of the most competitive in modern physics: how quantum systems can compute, communicate, encrypt and measure. The journal's name signals its intended format and pace — review and letter-style contributions surveying and advancing a field whose results, from quantum algorithms to quantum networks, are appearing faster than traditional review cycles can easily follow.

From fundamental science to applications

The journal defines its remit as the whole span of quantum information sciences, from fundamental science to technology and applications. That single sentence does considerable work. Quantum information science begins in fundamental physics — superposition, entanglement and measurement — but it now extends to engineered devices, communication networks and computing systems. A journal that claims only the fundamentals would exclude the engineers building the machines; a journal that claims only the technology would exclude the theory that tells the engineers what is possible. Quantum Review Letters claims both ends and the middle. Its stated areas of interest are quantum computation; quantum cryptography; quantum communication; quantum precision measurement; quantum materials and devices; and quantum states of matter. Together those six areas describe a field in which a theoretical result about an entangled state, a new material for a qubit, and a working protocol for secure communication are all parts of the same scientific enterprise.

Quantum computation and simulation

Quantum computation heads the journal's list of interests, and its early contents show what that means in practice. Recent articles include work on scalable simulation of the quantum measurement process with quantum computers, quantum simulation in the entanglement picture, pulse-based variational quantum algorithms, and the QPanda 3.0 framework, described as a scalable and high-performance compilation framework for large-scale quantum programs. Variational quantum algorithms — hybrid procedures in which a quantum processor and a classical optimiser work together — recur in the journal's most-downloaded lists, reflecting their status as leading candidates for practical use of today's noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices. The journal also published an investigation of entanglement and parameter sensitivity in the quantum approximate optimisation algorithm (QAOA) using quantum Fisher information. Compilation frameworks, simulation methods and algorithm analysis sit side by side here, because progress in quantum computing depends on all three: hardware must be programmed, algorithms must be understood, and classical simulation remains the benchmark against which quantum advantage is judged.

Quantum cryptography, communication and networks

Quantum cryptography and quantum communication form the second pillar of the scope. Among the journal's early articles is a study of quantum network coding with adjustable fidelity, by Yuchen Liu, Tao Shang and Jiayu Liu, which addresses the multicast of unknown quantum states — described by its authors as an unavoidable issue in the construction of quantum networks. Work on on-chip quantum frequency conversion of a 2-micrometre photon in a thin-film lithium niobate waveguide addresses another practical network problem: quantum devices operate at different optimal wavelengths, and frequency conversion provides a bridge among them. These papers illustrate the journal's applied end. A future quantum internet will require exactly this kind of component-level and protocol-level research — ways of converting, routing and distributing quantum states without destroying the information they carry — and Quantum Review Letters gives that work a home alongside foundational theory.

Precision measurement, materials, devices and states of matter

The remaining stated interests — quantum precision measurement, quantum materials and devices, and quantum states of matter — cover the physical layer of the field. Quantum precision measurement uses quantum effects to measure time, fields and forces beyond classical limits; quantum materials and devices supply the superconducting circuits, trapped ions, photonic chips and other platforms on which computation and communication run; and quantum states of matter are the exotic phases whose properties may themselves become resources. The journal's early contents range across this layer, from a review of progress towards Bose–Einstein condensation with laser-cooled molecules — work relevant to quantum information, quantum chemistry and precision measurement — to a study of mechanical cat-like states generated via optomagnomechanics, and a quantum formulation of the Jarzynski equality in a superconducting optical cavity with a Kerr medium, which identified a classical regime at high temperatures and low Kerr intensities and a quantum regime at low temperatures and high Kerr intensities. A 2026 review on quantum effects in natural photosynthesis, by Kai-Ya Zhang and co-authors, shows the journal also reaching into quantum biology, where molecular architecture may exploit quantum effects.

First volumes and early articles

Quantum Review Letters began publication in 2025; by 2026 it was in its second volume, with articles paginated in the hundreds, indicating a substantial first two years for a new title. Its articles carry Elsevier-style digital object identifiers in the journal's own series — the Jarzynski equality study, for example, is DOI 10.1016/j.qrl.2025.06.001 — and are published by Elsevier on behalf of KeAi Communications, with peer review under the responsibility of the journal's editorial board, as the published articles themselves record. The early table of contents is notably international and notably applied as well as theoretical: Brazilian-funded work on quantum thermodynamics appears alongside Chinese work on quantum compilation and network coding. For a directory reader, the practical conclusion is that this is an active, publishing journal with a real article flow in 2025 and 2026, not merely an announced title.

Editorial leadership

The editor-in-chief is Zhengfu Han of the University of Science and Technology of China. Associate editors are Guilu Long of Tsinghua University, Shiliang Zhu of South China Normal University, Qiang Lin of Zhejiang University of Technology and Zhejiang University, and Heng Fan of the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The editorial board includes Jun-Hong An of Lanzhou University, Jianming Cai of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Dongling Deng of Tsinghua University, Hongqi Xu and Zhiliang Yuan of the Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences, Lixing You of the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, and Yang Yu of Nanjing University, together with international members such as Jiangbin Gong and Mile Gu in Singapore, Hui Hu of Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, Jaewan Kim of the Korea Institute for Advanced Study, Anirban Pathak in India, Giovanni Piero Pepe of the University of Naples, Ferruccio Renzoni of University College London and Vlatko Vedral of the University of Oxford. An early-career editorial board, including Xiao Yuan of Peking University and Qiang Zhou of the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, completes the structure.

Open access and article charges

Quantum Review Letters is a peer-reviewed, fully open-access journal owned by KeAi Communications Co., Ltd., which retains copyright of the overall compiled journal and the compiled issues. Every article is universally and freely accessible via the internet in perpetuity, in an easily readable format immediately after publication, so readers anywhere can use the journal without a subscription. The open-access publication fee is USD 1,000 plus taxes, payable by authors or on their behalf by their research funder or institution — but all article publishing charges for articles submitted to the journal before 31 December 2027 are fully waived, making the journal free to publish in during its launch period. Peer review is under the responsibility of the Editorial Board of Quantum Review Letters, and the journal is published continuously throughout the year rather than in fixed issues, a model well suited to a fast-moving field. The journal's contact is Ms Jessie Guo, and its address is 16 Donghuangchenggen North Street, Dongcheng District, Beijing, China — the Beijing home of KeAi itself.

The KeAi publishing home

KeAi Communications is a Beijing-based joint venture co-founded by two major scientific publishers, China Science Publishing & Media and Elsevier. Since it was repurposed as an open-access journal publishing service provider in 2013, KeAi has developed a portfolio of more than 280 scholarly journals across all scientific disciplines, leveraging the publishing and technology capabilities of its parent companies, including ScienceDirect hosting and established editorial platforms. Most KeAi titles are published on behalf of universities, institutes and societies; Quantum Review Letters is distinctive because KeAi is recorded as the journal's owner in its own right. That gives the publisher a direct stake in the title's development and places the journal alongside KeAi's other directly held letters and review titles, distributed internationally through Elsevier's platforms while editorially rooted in China's quantum research community, whose institutions — in Hefei, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and elsewhere — dominate its board.

Readership and significance

The journal addresses researchers across quantum information science: theorists working on computation, cryptography and communication; experimentalists building materials, devices and measurement systems; and scientists studying quantum states of matter or quantum effects in complex systems such as photosynthetic molecules. Its significance is a matter of timing and focus. Quantum information is a field in which China invests heavily and publishes prolifically, yet dedicated review-and-letters venues remain relatively few; a continuously published, open-access journal with waived charges through 2027, an editorial board drawn from the leading Chinese quantum centres and international figures of the standing of Oxford's Vlatko Vedral, and an early contents list already spanning algorithms, networks, devices and quantum biology, is positioned to capture the field's output as it grows. For readers, Quantum Review Letters offers a single Beijing-published window onto that output, free to read from the day each article appears.