China releases list of world's leading sci-tech journals

China released a list of the world's leading science and technology journals at the opening of the 2026 Pujiang Innovation Forum in Shanghai on Saturday.

The 2025 list covers 6,132 journals from 55 countries and regions, published in 23 languages.

The list includes 353 Chinese journals.

The Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China compiled the list, together with related research institutions, based on the world science citation database and an evaluation index system for world-class sci-tech journals.

In the 2025 list, the US and the UK ranked first and second among the top ten countries, with 1,845 and 1,815 journals respectively, followed by the Netherlands, Germany, China, Switzerland, Japan, France, South Korea and Singapore ranking from third to tenth.

The top ten languages used by these journals were English, French, German, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Polish.

In terms of the founding history of the journals, 384 journals have a history of more than 100 years, 1,360 were established 50 to 100 years ago, 1,871 were founded 30 to 50 years ago, 2,266 journals were founded 10 to 30 years ago, and 251 were launched within the past decade.

Among the countries that have launched the largest number of world-class scientific and technological journals in the past ten years, China ranked first with 83 journals, followed by the US with 67, the UK with 56, the Netherlands with 14 and Switzerland with 9.

The release of the list provides a fair and impartial evaluation standard for sci-tech journals across different countries and languages, giving journals from emerging countries and newly founded journals equal evaluation opportunities.

The release is also significant for promoting high-quality development of sci-tech journals, optimizing the global academic ecosystem, and advancing exchanges and cooperation in sci-tech innovation. (With input from Xinhua)