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About

Aims and scope

The mission of the journal is to facilitate the development of the discipline of sociology in China, and promote the academic progress of sociological studies on Chinese society around the world. The Journal aims to build a first-rate international platform for academic exchange and collaboration between Chinese sociologists and their overseas peers.

The Journal of Chinese Sociology is a peer-reviewed, open access journal and welcomes high-quality work from all areas of sociology and sociologically informed contributions from anthropologists, economists, historians, psychologists and political scientists.

Sponsored by the Institute of Sociology, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, The Journal of Chinese Sociology is Chinese mainland's first English journal in sociology. It mainly publishes empirical studies on contemporary Chinese society with important theoretical and policy implications. Key topics include the changing social stratification/social inequality in China; social movements and contentious politics; the sociological studies on economic reform and development; social organizations and social governance; family and demographic studies; migration, migrant workers and urbanization; cultural and ideological change since the reform; the sociological understanding of the environment; social security and social policy.

Benefits of publishing with SpringerOpen

High visibility

The Journal of Chinese Sociology's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience. 

Speed of publication

The Journal of Chinese Sociology offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles will be published with their final citation after acceptance, in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF; the article will then be available through The Journal of Chinese Sociology and SpringerOpen.

Flexibility

Online publication in The Journal of Chinese Sociology gives you the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other articles).

Promotion and press coverage

Articles published in The Journal of Chinese Sociology are included in article alerts and regular email updates. 
In addition, articles published in The Journal of Chinese Sociology may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in The Journal of Chinese Sociology

Copyright

Authors of articles published in The Journal of Chinese Sociology retain the copyright of their articles and are free to reproduce and disseminate their work (for further details, see the copyright and license agreement).

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal from SpringerOpen, please click here.

Open access

All articles published by the The Journal of Chinese Sociology are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.

As authors of articles published in the The Journal of Chinese Sociology you are the copyright holders of your article and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate your article, according to the SpringerOpen copyright and license agreement.

For those of you who are US government employees or are prevented from being copyright holders for similar reasons, SpringerOpen can accommodate non-standard copyright lines. Please contact us if further information is needed.

Article-processing charges

The publication costs for The Journal of Chinese Sociology are covered by Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, so authors do not need to pay an article-processing charge.

Indexing services

The full text of all articles is deposited in digital archives around the world to guarantee long-term digital preservation. You can also access all articles published by SpringerOpen on SpringerLink.

The Journal of Chinese Sociology has been indexed in Scopus, EBSCO Discovery service, DOAJ, ISTIC, OCLC, Google Scholar, ProQuest Sociology, ProQuest Central, ProQuest IBSS, ProQuest Sociology Science Collection.

Peer-review policy

Peer-review is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published. Independent researchers in the relevant research area assess submitted manuscripts for originality, validity and significance to help editors determine whether the manuscript should be published in their journal. You can read more about the peer-review process here.

The Journal of Chinese Sociology operates a double-blind peer-review system, where the reviewers do not know the names or affiliations of the authors and the reviewer reports provided to the authors are anonymous.

Submitted manuscripts will generally be reviewed by two to three experts who will be asked to evaluate whether the manuscript is scientifically sound and coherent, whether it duplicates already published work, and whether or not the manuscript is sufficiently clear for publication. Reviewers will also be asked to indicate how interesting and significant the research is. The Editors will reach a decision based on these reports and, where necessary, they will consult with members of the Editorial Board.

Additional Information

Submitted manuscripts are generally assigned to a handling editor. If they are deemed suitable for peer review, they will be peer-reviewed by two or more experts who will be asked to assess whether the manuscript is scientifically sound and coherent, whether it duplicates previously published work, and whether the manuscript is sufficiently clear for publication. The Editor-in-Chief will make a decision based on the Handling Editor's recommendation based on the reviews, and will consult with members of the Editorial Board as necessary.

When manuscripts are submitted to a collection, they will be assigned to a handling editor or guest editor, as appropriate 

Editorial Board members will not be involved in reviewing their own academic work. Submissions authored by Editorial Board members will be assigned to at least two independent external reviewers. Final Decisions are made by Editor-in-Chief who have no conflict of interest with the author. Journal staff will not be involved in the processing of their own papers submitted to the journal.

Editorial policies

All manuscripts submitted to The Journal of Chinese Sociology should adhere to SpringerOpen's editorial policies.

Once your article is accepted, it will be processed by production and published shortly afterwards. In some cases, articles may be held for a short period of time prior to publication. If you have any concerns or particular requirements please contact the Journal.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Citing articles in The Journal of Chinese Sociology

Articles in The Journal of Chinese Sociology  should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Article citations follow this format:

Authors: Title. J Chin Sociol [year], [volume number]:[article number].

e.g. Roberts LD, Hassall DG, Winegar DA, Haselden JN, Nicholls AW, Griffin JL: Increased hepatic oxidative metabolism distinguishes the action of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor delta from Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor gamma in the Ob/Ob mouse. J Chin Sociol 2009, 1:115.

refers to article 115 from Volume 1 of the journal.

Appeals and complaints

Authors who wish to appeal a rejection or make a complaint should follow the procedure outlined in the BMC Editorial Policies.

Annual Journal Metrics

  • 2022 Citation Impact
    1.5 - 2-year Impact Factor
    1.026 - SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper)
    0.455 - SJR (SCImago Journal Rank)

    2023 Speed
    30 days submission to first editorial decision for all manuscripts (Median)
    192 days submission to accept (Median)

    2023 Usage 
    456,084 downloads
    83 Altmetric mentions

This journal is indexed by

  • ESCI
  • Scopus
  • Google Scholar
  • DOAJ
  • EBSCO Discovery Service
  • OCLC WorldCat Discovery Service
  • ProQuest-ExLibris Summon
  • ProQuest-ExLibris Primo
  • Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China 
  • Naver
  • ProQuest International Bibliography of Social Sciences(IBSS)
  • ProQuest Social Sciences
  • ProQuest Sociology
  • ProQuest Central