Staff founded journal included in international journal citation indices

An academic journal founded by staff from Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University has been included in two international journal citation index databases.

The ‘International Journal of Computer-Assisted Language Learning and Teaching’, founded by Dr Bin Zou from the Language Centre at XJTLU, has been included in Scopus and the Emerging Sources Citation Index.

Dr Zou, who is also chief editor of this journal, said “This represents wide international recognition of the quality of the journal and significant in enhancing its brand awareness.”

Professor Zhoulin Ruan, head of the Department of English and Dr Steve Jeaco are members of the periodical review board of this journal.

Commenting on the inclusion in the Scopus and ESCI databases, Professor Ruan said that this shows the academic quality of this journal and is widely recognised by the academic circle. This will also is significant for further development of the journal in the future and give more qudos to XJTLU.

Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. It provides scholars a comprehensive overview of global research results in the domain of science technology, medicine, social sciences, art and humanities.

ESCI is a new index in the Web of Science™ database. It targets active new journals which have potential and have already had regional impact in academia.

Professor Zhou said: “Being included in ESCI will greatly enhance the visibility and popularity of the ‘International Journal of Computer-Assisted Language Learning and Teaching’. In the short term, this achievement will be helpful to improve the quantity and quality of journal submissions. In the long term, with further improvement of the quality of the journal, the influence of academics both in XJTLU and China will increase, as well as, international recognition.”

The ‘International Journal of Computer-Assisted Language Learning and Teaching’ was established in 2011 by Dr Zou. Over the years, he has focused on the research of academic English, computer-assisted teaching and corpus. Since he joined XJTLU, he has published five monographs and more than 20 papers, including four SSCI periodicals in this field.

During the completion of his doctoral thesis on computer-assisted English teaching, Dr Zou found that there was a limited number of influential journals on relevant subjects, and none of which were founded by Chinese scholars.

In order to provide a platform for more Chinese and foreign scholars to share their research achievements, as well as improve the influence of Chinese scholars in this area, Dr Zou applied to IGI Global Press in the United States for the establishment of ‘International Journal of Computer-Assisted Language Learning and Teaching’.

IGI Global is an international publishing company set up in 1988. Their main publications are academic research periodicals in terms of the use and management of information technology. IGI Global owns more than 150 different kinds of periodicals and publishes more than 3,000 academic books each year. The content of the publication covers all aspects of information technology research, such as, commerce, education, hygiene and social sciences.

By Qiuchen Hu, photos by Liping Tian
Translation by Ruotong Jiang and Sihan Liu, edited by Guojuan Wang and Jacqueline Bánki