About Science China Information Sciences

Science China Information Sciences

Overview and identity

Science China Information Sciences is the English-language journal of the Science China series covering computer science, information science, automation and microelectronics. It is co-sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Natural Science Foundation of China and published by Science China Press with Springer in Beijing. It is indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded and in EI Compendex, the engineering index, reflecting its dual identity as a science and an engineering journal. It descends from the series' information sciences line, formerly Science in China Series F.

Information science is the field in which China's technological rise is most visible, in telecommunications, supercomputing, artificial intelligence and microelectronics, and the journal is the flagship English record of the fundamental research behind it. Bibliometric compilations credit it with strong metrics, an SCImago h-index above 90, an SJR around 1.5 and recent impact-factor reports around 7 to 8, placing it among the most influential China-based journals in computing and electronics. Its most cited papers include a literature survey on smart cities, a survey of link prediction in social networks and the account of the Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer, each cited hundreds of times.

Scope across computing and information

The journal publishes research and reviews in computer science, information science, automation and microelectronics, including work on networks, signal processing, control and artificial intelligence. Computer science coverage spans algorithms, architecture, software, data and computer vision. Information science spans communications, information theory and signal processing. Automation spans control theory, robotics and intelligent systems, a traditional Chinese strength anchored by the Academy's automation institutes. Microelectronics spans devices, circuits and systems at the semiconductor frontier.

Content analyses show artificial intelligence as the journal's largest theme, with machine learning, pattern recognition, computer vision and control theory prominent, alongside algorithms and mathematical optimisation. That mix captures the field's modern centre of gravity: learning systems built on information infrastructure, controlled and communicated at scale. The journal's publication of the Sunway TaihuLight paper, documenting China's domestically developed supercomputer that led the world rankings, illustrates its role in recording nationally significant computing achievements for the international literature, refereed and in English.

The shared history of the Science China series

All Science China titles descend from a single ancestor. The series began in 1950 with the founding of a Chinese Academy of Sciences journal, published in Chinese as Zhongguo Kexue and in English as Scientia Sinica, which became China's flagship general science journal and published landmarks including the artificial synthesis of crystalline bovine insulin and Chen Jingrun's work on the Goldbach conjecture. In 1982 the journal divided into series, in 1989 the English version took the name Science in China, in 1996 it branched into lettered sub-journals by discipline, and in 2010 the whole family was renamed Science China, the letter designations replaced by discipline names, and publication in cooperation with Springer began in order to expand international distribution.

Today the series is jointly sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Natural Science Foundation of China and published by Science China Press, also rendered Science Press or Science China Magazine Press, in Beijing, in cooperation with Springer Nature. It comprises Chinese and English editions across the major disciplines of the natural sciences and engineering, all monthly and peer-reviewed, and indexed in the Science Citation Index system and Scopus. Each English discipline journal is the counterpart of a Chinese Scientia Sinica title, and each carries the series' founding mission: to present China's best fundamental research to the world in China's own flagship journals.

Indexing and standing

Science China Information Sciences is indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded and in Scopus, with additional field-specific indexing noted in its profile where applicable. As a member of the Science China series it shares the series' standing: these are among China's oldest and most prestigious scientific journals, supervised by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and publication in them carries particular weight in Chinese research assessment. Their citation performance places them among the leading China-based journals in their disciplines.

The series model concentrates prestige. Rather than dispersing Chinese fundamental research across hundreds of domestic titles, the Science China journals collect the strongest work discipline by discipline under one historic brand, published monthly in English with global distribution through Springer. For international readers, a Science China title is therefore a reliable filter: its contents represent work that China's own flagship system judged significant, refereed to international standards.

Readership and authorship

Readers of Science China Information Sciences are researchers, graduate students and specialists in information sciences and computing worldwide, together with science-policy readers who use the Science China series to follow Chinese fundamental research. Authorship is led by Chinese institutions, the Chinese Academy of Sciences institutes and the research universities, whose scientists produce a large and growing share of world output in information sciences and computing, and includes international contributors. All papers appear in English, the series' deliberate choice for its international editions.

For authors within China, the journal offers the combination of national prestige and international visibility: the imprimatur of the Academy-sponsored flagship series, monthly publication, and distribution through Springer Nature's platform into the libraries and search systems of the world. For the journal, that combination sustains a strong submission flow in a competitive market for China's best papers.

Assessment and continuing role

Science China Information Sciences carries forward, in its discipline, a publishing tradition that began in 1950 and has documented Chinese science through its entire modern development. Its English edition exists so that the world's researchers can read that record directly, and its monthly volumes continue to add to it. In information sciences and computing, where Chinese research now stands at or near the world frontier across many topics, the journal's role as the flagship English channel is more consequential than at any time in the series' history.

The journal continues monthly publication from Beijing under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Natural Science Foundation of China. Science China Information Sciences remains the Science China series' journal of record for its field, and one of the principal titles through which Chinese fundamental research enters the international literature.

Disciplinary significance

Within Chinese information science, the Science China title occupies a position that no commercial journal can reproduce: it is the discipline's own flagship, owned within the national academy system, edited by its leading scientists and continuous with a journal tradition reaching back to 1950. When the history of Chinese information science in the twenty-first century comes to be written, its volumes will be a primary source, because the community's own institution chose this channel for a significant share of its most considered work, including the reviews in which research programmes are summarised and assessed.

The journal's international significance follows from the same fact. Foreign specialists in information science who cannot read the Chinese literature, which remains far larger than the English literature of any single country, use the Science China journals as their systematic point of access to Chinese work, confident that the series' refereeing and prestige have already filtered it. In fields such as artificial intelligence and communications, where Chinese groups now set part of the world agenda, that filtering function carries genuine authority in the international discipline.

The English edition and its Chinese counterpart

Each Science China English journal exists alongside a Chinese-language counterpart in the Scientia Sinica family, and the relationship between the two is one of parallel flagship publication rather than simple translation. The English edition selects and presents work for the world literature, in the world literature's language, while the Chinese edition serves the domestic scholarly community in its own language. Together they enact the series' founding purpose in both directions: Chinese science speaks to itself and to the world through journals it owns.

For the individual researcher, the English edition is the version that travels: it is the version indexed internationally, distributed by Springer, cited abroad and counted in global assessments. The sustained investment by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Natural Science Foundation of China in maintaining these English editions, monthly and to international production standards, is therefore a strategic investment in the visibility of Chinese science, and this journal is its instrument in information science.