Chinese researchers have introduced a new methodology for evaluating medical and life science journals that moves beyond the traditional reliance on journal impact factors, in a development seen as part of wider efforts to strengthen the country’s “academic discourse power”.
According to the South China Morning Post two new Dongbi Index journal lists – covering 4,027 medical and 3,064 life science titles – were unveiled in Shanghai on March 21. The rankings draw from a pool of more than 40,000 journals worldwide and were developed by Shenzhen-based Dongbi Data in collaboration with the Institute of Medical Information & Library at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.
The initiative combines large-scale data analysis with a new evaluation framework. According to Wu Dengsheng, founder of Dongbi Data and a professor at Shenzhen University, the team had built “a multidimensional, multilevel evaluation system centred on research quality”.
“This provides crucial support for moving beyond the dominance of the impact factor – a measure of citations published within a given journal over a fixed period – and paper counts, while enhancing China’s academic voice,” he said.
Rather than simply counting citations, the Dongbi Index assesses their quality, constructing a citation network based on the assumption that high-quality papers cite work published in similarly strong journals. Using data from 2023 to 2025, journals are grouped into four tiers – A, B, C and D – forming a pyramid structure.
“We are not ‘rating’ the journals per se; our analysis is rather a reflection of how researchers actually assess journals within their fields,” Wu said.
Supporters argue the approach addresses known weaknesses in the impact factor. In 2025, Chinese authors contributed more than 110,000 of the 520,000 articles published in indexed medical journals, and nearly one-third of global life science papers. However, relatively few Chinese journals rank highly, underlining a continued gap in domestic publishing capacity.
