Journal Title Change
Journal Title Change
The Reasons and the Procedures of Changing This Journal’s Name
This journal began publication in 1997 and changed to biannually publishing in 2007. Since 2010, this journal has been selected for inclusion in the Taiwan Humanities Citation Index Core (THCI Core ) journals. The journal officially changed its name to Chung Cheng Chinese Studies, starting from the June issue of 2012 ( the 19th issue). Since the journal title change is an important issue, the reasons and the procedures of this journal's name change are outlined below.
Beginning from the inception of this journal, previous scholars had used the name of Chung Cheng University Annual Chinese Literature Journal, which was edited stringently and published diligently for more than ten years, building the indelible and solid foundation of this journal. In the meantime, domestic and international scholars have been expressing concern over this journal’s name, including the name length, for an international version of the title, and other comments. Many teachers of the department had been considering the idea of changing the journal’s name for a long while. However, early on, the name change involved the determination of the citation rate of new and old journals in the database, resulting in the decision to not change the name suddenly. The name change was thus pending. After this journal has been listed as one of the Taiwan Humanities Citation Index Core (THCI Core ) journals since 2010. In order to meet all aspects of high quality, the chief editor endeavored to communicate with the Research Institute for the Humanities and Social Science, Ministry of Science and Technology and learned that the current THCI journal database has been upgraded. The citation rate of old journals could now be accurately credited to changed journal names. The previous concerns had thus been eliminated. While the editorial board held a meeting for the 18th issue publication of the journal, in January 2012, the chief editor proposed to change the title of the journal and received positive feedback and input from both internal and external editorial board members, hoping that the journal can continue to operate under a name that is more in line with its high academic standard. As a precaution, the editing board members unanimously recommended consultation with the editorial advisors. The opinions from the editorial advisors could then provide a reference for the departmental meeting’s voting for the proposal of changing the journal’s name.
This journal had diligently recruited 13 domestic and international editorial advisors (see editorial advisors listed on the journal’s cover). In 2012, on behalf of the editorial board, the chief editor emailed the 13 editorial advisors to ask them to first choose one of the options: "maintain the current title" or "recommend to change the title" options. Advisors who chose the latter option of "Recommend to change the title" were next asked to choose from four options, all following the principle of "no more than six characters" in the title:
1. "Chinese" as the core name: (1) Chung Cheng Chinese; (2)
Chung Cheng Chinese Studies.
2. "literature and philosophy" as the core name: (1) Chung Cheng Literature and Philosophy Studies; (2) Chung Cheng Literature and Philosophy Collection.
3. "Chinese literature" as the core name: (1) Chung Cheng Chinese Literature Journal; (2) Chung Cheng Chinese Literature Collection.
4. Other suggestions
A total of 11 advisors responded with valuable suggestions. The summary is as follows: a total of 3 advisors suggested to "maintain the current journal title" (Among them, two advisors thought that changing the journal title is also good). A total of ten advisors "recommend to change the title." As a result, changing the journal title was the consensus of the editors and advisors. Next, the number of advisors who picked "Chinese" as the core name: 3, the number of advisors who chose "literature and philosophy" as the core name: 2, the number of advisors who chose "sinology" as the core name: 5, and the number of advisors advised not to use "Sinology" as the core name: 1. Therefore, the chief editor used the survey questionnaire results as the basis for a proposal to submit to the departmental meeting held on June 19. 2012. The department members considered the editorial advisors’ opinions, discussed the proposal repeatedly, and voted carefully. The final decision was to use "Chung Cheng Chinese Studies" as the updated journal title, beginning from the June issue, 2012 (the 19th issue) and to continue edit, publish, print.
Stated by Chief Editor Wen-Fang Wen on June 30, 2012