HIT Media (Shang Yankai, Xiao Mengchen, and He Weidong/text; Electron/photos)
Electron, an international scholarly journal sponsored by HIT and published in partnership with Wiley, received its first Impact Factor (IF) of 15.2 in the 2025 Journal Citation Reports (JCR), released by Clarivate on June 17.
The journal ranks among the top 10 percent worldwide in both the Materials Science (472 journals) and Chemistry (250 journals) categories, placing it in JCR Q1 in both fields. It also achieved the highest debut IF of any engineering journal published by Wiley this year.
Screenshots of the 2025 Journal Citation Reports. [Photo/hit.edu.cn]
Launched in August 2023, Electron is led by Han Jiecai, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) and president of HIT, as editor-in-chief of the journal, with CAE academicians Huang Wei, Yu Shuhong, Gu Ning, and other scholars serving as deputy editors.
Its editorial board includes more than 90 leading experts and scholars, among them 35 academicians from China and abroad, 27 Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers, 28 Elsevier Highly Cited Chinese Researchers, and more than 10 editors-in-chief or associate editors of internationally recognized journals. International members account for 63 percent of the editorial board.
The journal focuses on the electronic properties of emerging materials, addressing the scientific opportunities and challenges presented by the transition toward carbon neutrality. It publishes cutting-edge research on fundamental materials science and device applications in energy, environmental science, biomedicine, artificial intelligence, and electronics. Committed to advancing interdisciplinary research at the frontiers of materials science, the journal aims to establish itself as a leading international journal in low-carbon new materials.
The journal has published 12 issues and is indexed in ESCI, Web of Science, CAS, Scopus, DOAJ, and CSCD. It has also been selected for China's Excellence Action Plan for Scientific and Technological Journals under the High-Starting-Point New Journal Program. More recently, it was granted a China National Serial Publication Number (CN 23-1630/TB) by the National Press and Publication Administration, formally authorizing its publication and nationwide distribution in China.
The cover of Electron. [Photo/hit.edu.cn]
The IF is a key metric published annually in Clarivate's Journal Citation Reports. It is calculated by dividing the number of citations received in the current JCR year by the number of articles published in a journal during the preceding two years, and then by the number of citable articles published during the same period. The IF measures the average number of citations received per article and is one of the world’s most widely used indicators of a journal's scholarly influence and citation impact.
Editor: Liu Peixiang
Reviewers: Song Ling; Li Shoubin; Yang Wenyu