FROM CHINESE SCIENCE BULLETIN TO SCIENCE BULLETIN: CELEBRATE THE COMING 50TH BIRTHDAY

As the only multidisciplinary journal supervised by Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Science Bulletin will usher in its 50th anniversary in 2016. A fifty-year history for a journal is always remarkable. However, the more important reason to celebrate besides the great age is: the fifty-year old journal continues to be vigorous and influential. Sixteen years after the establishment of the Chinese version of Kexue Tongbao, the version of foreign languages (mainly in English) was founded and named Chinese Science Bulletin in 1966, to further accomplish its role of introducing breakthroughs of Chinese scientists to the world.

For a very long time (from 1966 to 2013), papers published in Chinese Science Bulletin are primarily or partially translated from their Chinese correspondences. To further distinguish these two versions and achieve their goals, respectively, the English version of the journal was re-launched with a new name—Science Bulletin, and the inaugural issue started to publish from January 2015, declaring a new era of this traditional journal with ‘‘the beginning of a rejuvenated excellence’’, as said by Prof. Chunli Bai, in his editorial for the opening issue [1]. In its rather glorious history, Science Bulletin has published many landmark discoveries of Chinese scientists, including the synthesis of bovine insulin in 1966 [2] and the well-known Chen’s theorem on Goldbach conjecture [3]. In 1977, the journal published a paper entitled ‘‘A new type of sesquiterpene lactone—artemisinin’’.

In this paper, scientists from the ‘‘Artemisinin structure research group’’ for the first time reported the synthesis of artemisinin, an anti-malaria chemical, which was later extensively applied as anti-malarial medicine [4]. The artemisinin research received many awards including the most exciting 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine awarded to Prof. Youyou Tu, one of the leading scientists of this project. In 1987, the journal reported another ground-breaking study on the superconductivity of Ba-Y-Cu-O [5] and greatly promoted the development of high-temperature superconductor materials world widely. In those early days,

Science Bulletin mainly published papers in the subjects of physics, chemistry and earth sciences, which reflects the key developing areas of the newly founded People’s Republic of China. After a long suspension period, the publication of Chinese Science Bulletin resumed in 1980 with its publishing scope expanded to every areas of life sciences, especially the following topics: plant and crop sciences, genetics, evolution, developmental biology, pathogen and human health, psychology and cognitive sciences, marine biology, ecology, etc. Some research fields are rather unique to China, for example the freshwater fish study, the conservative biology of panda and the golden monkey (Cercopithecus kandti). In this brief summary, we will review part of milestone studies published in Science Bulletin, focusing on life and medical sciences, to commemorate the glorious history of the journal.