Arid Zone Research is an academic journal (bimonthly, 195×270mm and 144 pages, ISSN1001-4675，CN65-1095/X) charged by Chinese Academy of Science and sponsored jointly by Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography of CAS and Chinese Association of Soil Sciences. The journal was established in 1984 and was published by Science Press.
The journal carries mainly the innovative research papers, monography overview and comment, research methods and new technology application, academic discussion and contend, domestic and oversea academic trends and forums and introduction of new books concerning arid zone in such aspects of water, soil, biology, climate and environment etc. Arid Zone Research insists the aim of running a journal of serving the readers and authors and focusing on promotion of subject development, makes efforts to enhance the quality and grade of the journal, expand the academic exchange with Central Asia and other countries and establish the subjects and columns with common concern of the arid zone in Central Asia with purposes and plans. water circulation and rational utilization of water resources——the core scientific issues in focused regions and arid zone, the regional characteristic is extruded more. At the same time, the special column “Tarim River Basin” is set up to push forward the research on the arid zone with rivers as the tie and with local water circulation as the main body and to encourage to connect the water circulation with the bioprocess of various function units of the inland river valley and human activities closely.
In arid zone, the geographical process mainly shows the processes of desertification and oasis-making. For over half a century, the scholars of both China and the countries of Central Asia place the emphasis of research on the process and prevention and control of desertification, and the oasis-making process and oasis-making construction are strengthened in the latest decade or so, but it is still too weak; therefore, the column of “sustainable development of oasis” was specially set up in 2007 and the journal will pay a long-term attention to research on oasis subject and the extensive readers and authors are welcome to continuing to discuss the issues.
Arid Zone Research carries mainly the arid zone response of global change, inland water circulation and water resource, countermeasures of the adaptation of the fragile ecosystem in arid zone to climate change, construction of oasis ecological system and oasis subject development and other basic scientific problems of arid zone and desert transformation and application and other achievements. At the same time, China’s arid zones are the mineral resources, energy resources, native pasture, farming resources and agricultural characteristic industry resources of immense development potential and are the resource regions on which the social economy development of China depends at present and even in the future, and they are the good succession for search for effective development of resource, and the coordinated development between social economy and environment in arid zone is the important mission to realize the sustainable development in arid zone and even the whole world. Arid Zone Research, on the basis of the preliminary work, spreads the latest domestic and oversea scientific and technological achievements in time, carries forward the academic spirit of originality, takes the “priority of scientific discovery” as the highest pursuing goal and gives priority to publish the original academic document of high quality and adheres to the periodical running principle of “quality-oriented and quality based”.
As for Arid Zone Research, when the quality of the content is improved, the editing and proofreading is strengthened, so the quality and effect the journal are greatly enhanced. According to the Chinese S&T Journal Citation Reports distributed by Institute of S&T Information of China, the influencing factor of Arid Zone Research was increased from 0.125 in 1999 to 1.111 in 2007, with the higher influencing factor of 1.500 (2004); the total time cited was increased from 77 times of 1999 to 926 times of 2007; and the number of citing journals was increased from 41 kinds of 2001 to 165 kinds of 2007; and the half-life is increased from 3.90 years of 2003 to 5.25 years of 2007. The journal will depends on the full support from the people in scientific and technological industry and will be work together with extensive readers and authors and devote to the development of the subject and cultivation of talent in the field.
Arid Zone Research is the core journal of Chinese natural science and national excellent geological journal . It is the sourcing journal of many Chinese periodicals such as Chinese Academic Journal Comprehensive Evaluation Database, Chinese journal s’ Full-text Databases, Chinese Science Citation Database, Agricultural Science & Technology Database, Land and Resources Database and so on. Moreover, it is collected fully by Chinese Core Journal (Selected) Database, Chinese Academic Journal (CD version), and China Info. It is collected by Chinese Biological Abstracts, Environmental and Scientific Abstracts, Chinese Geographical Science Abstracts, Geographical Abstracts Abroad, Chinese Science Abstracts, Chinese Document Database of Japan Science and Technology Agency, Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International (England) and Ulrich's Periodicals Directory and other international retrieval systems.
The target readers of the periodical are the scientific research and education workers in such fields of biology, ecology, geonomy, hydrology, meteorology, agricultural science, environmental protection and economy and society and so on and the scientific and technological management personnel of the related decision-making sections, and the graduate students and college students and so on.
More information about Arid Zone Research is available at http://azr.xjegi.com.
