About World Journal of Pediatrics

World Journal of Pediatrics

Overview

The World Journal of Pediatrics (WJP) is a monthly, peer-reviewed medical journal in English published from Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. It is published by Springer on behalf of the Children's Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine, and its editorial office is at that hospital, at 3333 Binsheng Road, Binjiang District, Hangzhou 310052. Founded in 2005, it was created specifically to report Chinese paediatric research to the world in English, and Chinese journal records describe it as China's only English-language academic journal of paediatrics. Its print ISSN is 1708-8569 and its electronic ISSN is 1867-0687. The journal offers peer-reviewed original papers, reviews and special reports focusing on clinical practice and research in paediatrics, presenting contributions on new developments in all areas of the discipline from paediatricians worldwide. Its editors-in-chief are Zheng-Yan Zhao and Qiang Shu of the Children's Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine. In 2025 the journal marked its twentieth anniversary, a milestone few English-language journals founded in China in the mid-2000s have reached.

History and Development

The journal was established in 2005 and was initially published quarterly. In 2009 it began its cooperation with Springer for online publication, the arrangement through which it still reaches international readers. Its frequency increased as it grew: it became bimonthly in 2017 and monthly in 2022, the schedule it keeps today. Chinese records note that the journal received its CN publication number in March 2014 and that it is organised by Zhejiang University, the Children's Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine and Zhejiang University Press. A long-serving contributor's account of the journal's first two decades, published in WJP itself, records that the hospital's researchers were publishing in its inaugural 2005 issue, and the journal's twentieth-anniversary special issue, prepared for 2025 under the theme of shaping the future in paediatrics, invited work exploring significant developments and future directions in paediatric healthcare. Springer has announced that the World Journal of Pediatrics will become a fully open access journal on 1 January 2027, with article publication charges applying to submissions received from August 2026 unless a waiver applies — the next structural change in a history that has already moved the journal from quarterly print origins to a monthly international title.

Publisher, Hospital and Editorial Leadership

The journal is co-published by Springer Nature and Zhejiang University interests on behalf of its owner, the Children's Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine, which holds the copyright. The hospital is one of China's largest children's hospitals and, as the affiliation lines in WJP articles attest, it also hosts the National Clinical Research Center for Child Health, so the journal draws on the clinical volume and research programmes of a national centre for child health based in Hangzhou. That anchoring shows in the journal's content: articles published in WJP have documented the hospital's own service innovations, including its Child Life programme, piloted from March 2014 with support from a team from Loma Linda University Children's Hospital in the United States and described in the journal a decade later as having spread to children's hospitals across China. The chief editor listed by Springer is Zheng-Yan Zhao, and the journal's Wikipedia and publisher records name Zheng-Yan Zhao and Qiang Shu as editors-in-chief, both of the Children's Hospital. Manuscripts are handled through the journal's editorial office at the hospital's Binsheng Road address, with the office email published for authors and for anniversary-issue submissions.

Scope and Subject Coverage

Springer's description of the journal is broad by design. Coverage includes the most current progress in paediatrics, paediatric surgery, preventive health care in paediatrics, pharmacology, stomatology and biomedicine, with a particular focus, as the journal's own summaries put it, on internal medicine within paediatrics. Its aims-and-scope statements add the medical, surgical, radiological, pathological, biochemical, physiological and historical aspects of paediatric subject areas, together with basic sciences relevant to child health. In practice that scope takes in neonatology, child health care, developmental medicine and paediatric public health alongside hospital-based clinical specialties — the areas named in directory descriptions of the journal. A reader of a single issue can therefore move between a clinical study from a children's hospital ward, a review of a drug's use in children, a surgical technique paper and a preventive-health study, provided each contribution reports peer-reviewed clinical practice or research in paediatrics. That breadth is deliberate: as a general paediatrics journal rather than a subspecialty title, WJP aims to serve the whole discipline as practised in large children's hospitals.

Article Types and Peer Review

WJP publishes peer-reviewed original papers, reviews and special reports, and its submission records also recognise brief communications and continuing-education material. Original papers present complete clinical or basic studies in child health. Reviews synthesise earlier work for clinicians who need an entry point into a fast-moving topic, and special reports carry material of wider professional interest, including the reflective and anniversary pieces through which the journal has recorded its own and its hospital's development. All submitted papers are peer reviewed, with journal information for authors stating that papers are reviewed by at least two referees who are experts in the field of the submitted paper. That double-referee standard, applied by an editorial office inside a working children's hospital, is the journal's stated quality-control basis. Authors should consult Springer's current journal pages for formatting, ethics and open access requirements, because the announced move to full open access in 2027 will change the publication-charge arrangements that apply to new submissions.

Indexing and Discoverability

The journal is abstracted and indexed in the main biomedical services. Springer's journal page lists, among others, MEDLINE, the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), Scopus, EMBASE, Chemical Abstracts Service, EBSCO, ProQuest, CNKI, the Chinese Science Citation Database, Dimensions, Google Scholar and Baidu. Its own information-for-readers statements likewise record abstracting and indexing in Chemical Abstracts, MEDLINE/PubMed, the VINITI database and SCIE. Inclusion in Index Medicus/MEDLINE/PubMed and SCIE is the core of that position: it means WJP articles are searchable in the databases paediatricians actually use, and that citations to them are tracked in Web of Science. This profile records that indexing position and deliberately does not rest the journal's standing on any single year's citation metric, since such figures change with each annual release; readers who need a current metric should consult the Journal Citation Reports release for the year in question.

Audience and International Role

When WJP was founded in 2005, Chinese paediatric research was published overwhelmingly in Chinese, and the journal was among the first Chinese medical journals created specifically to report that research to the world in English. Its title states the ambition plainly: a world journal of paediatrics, edited in Hangzhou but addressed to paediatricians worldwide, and Springer describes its contents as contributions from paediatricians worldwide rather than from China alone. Its audience is therefore the international paediatric community — clinicians in children's hospitals, academic paediatricians, paediatric surgeons, pharmacologists and child-public-health researchers — together with the Chinese researchers for whom it remains a principal English-language route into the indexed international literature. For librarians and directory users, it is best filed as a Chinese English-language medical journal in paediatrics, monthly, published by Springer for the Children's Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine in Hangzhou, with print ISSN 1708-8569 and electronic ISSN 1867-0687.

Place in Chinese Medical Publishing

WJP belongs to the generation of English-language journals that Chinese university hospitals founded in the 2000s to internationalise their research output, and it is one of the clearest successes of that model: twenty years of continuous publication by 2025, a move from quarterly to monthly frequency, a long-running Springer partnership dating to 2009, indexing in MEDLINE and SCIE, and an announced transition to full open access in 2027. What distinguishes it within that generation is its single-specialty focus and the scale of its sponsoring hospital, whose national clinical research centre gives the journal a deep base of clinical material from one of China's largest children's hospitals. Researchers considering submitting work should read recent issues to judge fit and follow the submission guidance on the journal's Springer pages. Readers encountering the journal for the first time can use this profile's history, scope and publishing facts as a reliable starting point, and then go to the journal's own site for its current editorial board, latest issue and author information.