Academic Journals Hosted by CityU and CityU Press

One flagship law journal founded over three decades ago that broke into SSCI back in 2008; a law review edited by current law students yet indexed in Scopus and Westlaw; and a university press with a stubborn specialism in the hard end of China studies — these are the three tangible results CityU has delivered on the academic publishing track, a lane that rarely makes headlines. This article documents the peer-reviewed journals hosted and published by City University of Hong Kong (or its colleges/departments), international journals whose editorial offices sit at CityU but whose publishers lie elsewhere, and the founding, governance and publishing trajectory of City University of Hong Kong Press (CityU Press).

"Hosted/published" must be distinguished from "scholarly participation": many CityU faculty serve as editorial board members, guest editors or editors-in-chief of international journals, but those journals are typically affiliated with international publishers (e.g. SAGE, Elsevier, Springer) and are not CityU publications. This article records in detail every case where "CityU as host/publisher" can be verified; cases of mere "scholarly participation" are flagged as such; claims that cannot be verified are marked "unverified". The Press's catalogue is vast and changes year by year; this article records only what can be verified through official pages or public book announcements. Any "flagship" or "bestseller" claim that cannot be verified is marked "unverified", and no ranking verdict is imposed on the Press on this site's behalf.

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# 1. Academic journals hosted by the School of Law: from flagship title to student-edited review

The School of Law is the only School at CityU that simultaneously hosts two academic journals in stable operation with international distribution channels — one being the outward-facing flagship title with three decades of history, the other a review run by students themselves. The two occupy different niches and do not substitute for each other.

# 1.1 Asia Pacific Law Review (APLR) — the School's flagship journal

As far as the earliest-founded, highest-ranked institutionally hosted CityU journal goes, the title in question is not the City University of Hong Kong Law Review discussed below, but the founded in 1992^※ Asia Pacific Law Review (APLR) — a date that actually predates the formal merger of the School into the Faculty of Law (1993), and precedes the City University of Hong Kong Law Review (2009) by a full 17 years (see 01-academics/school-of-law.md).

In 2008^※, APLR became the first Asia-based law journal to be included in Thomson Scientific's Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), earning praise as "a well-produced legal journal with a focus on the Asia-Pacific region" — a significant, verifiable academic publishing milestone for the School of Law that year (that 2008 assessment is a historical data point; subsequent indexing status is subject to the publisher's current platform data and does not imply that APLR is necessarily on today's SSCI list). As of 2025 the journal has reached Volume 34, publishes steadily on an annual schedule, and in recent years has carried papers on front-line topics such as investment protection and cross-border data governance in the Asia-Pacific (e.g. an article in the 2025 Volume 34 issue on investor protection and sovereign taxation^※). Professor Jiangyu Wang also serves as Director of the Centre for Chinese and Comparative Law (CCCL), and APLR's research focus substantially overlaps with the Centre's (see the "four research centres" section in 01-academics/school-of-law.md).

# 1.2 City University of Hong Kong Law Review (CityU LR)

The second academic journal hosted by the School of Law is the student-edited, peer-reviewed City University of Hong Kong Law Review (CityU LR) — where APLR addresses the international academic community and practitioners, this review doubles as a training ground in legal scholarship for law students.

# 1.2.1 Basic information

# 1.2.2 Editorial model and operation

CityU LR operates on a "student editors + faculty guidance" model: each year around 20 editors are selected from the School's LLB and JD students^※, working under the direction of a faculty editor and an International Board of Advisors. This "law review" model is inherited from the Anglo-American law school tradition — it functions both as an academic publishing platform and as a component of legal training.

# 1.2.3 Content and focus

The journal publishes articles, notes, legal development updates and book reviews, focusing on contemporary legal issues in Hong Kong, mainland China, Macau and the Asia-Pacific region. All submissions go through double-blind peer review, with an emphasis on original perspectives and rigorous research on cutting-edge Asia-Pacific legal questions. On publication frequency, official accounts differ slightly (the School's introduction says "annually"; some records list "two issues per year / biannual") — the actual issues published by the School in a given year are authoritative.

# 1.3 International journals with deep scholarly participation (not CityU publications)

CityU scholars are extensively involved across the international journal landscape, but the journals below are not CityU publications; they are noted only for their connection to CityU scholars, to avoid confusion with "hosted by CityU":

• Media and communication studies: scholars from the Department of Media and Communication serve on editorial/guest-editorial roles for multiple SAGE communication journals (e.g. Global Media and China). These journals are published by SAGE and other international publishers; CityU scholars serve as board members/guest editors, not as the publishing institution.
• Similarly, in CityU's other strong disciplines — materials science, engineering, energy and environment — many faculty serve on the editorial boards of top international journals. This counts as individual academic service, not institutional publishing, and is not enumerated here.

Distinguishing principle: whether the journal cover/copyright page names CityU or one of its Schools as the "publisher" is the test for "hosted by CityU"; an individual scholar's editorial position does not change a journal's affiliation.

# 1.4 Editorial office at CityU but not published by CityU: The Chinese Journal of Comparative Law as a case study

Between the two poles of "hosted by CityU" and "individual scholarly participation" lies a third, more easily confused intermediate form: journals whose editorial office is physically based at CityU, but whose host institution and publisher are both elsewhere.

The Chinese Journal of Comparative Law (CJCL) is exactly such a case. The journal was founded in 2013 by Oxford University Press^※, is affiliated with the International Academy of Comparative Law (IACL), and its initial editorial office was located at Xi'an Jiaotong University's Silk Road Institute for International and Comparative Law (SRIICL), with the then-Dean of Xi'an Jiaotong's Law School, Shan Wenhua, as founding editor-in-chief. Today, the journal's editorial office has moved to the Centre for Chinese and Comparative Law (CCCL) at CityU's School of Law^※, and it is co-edited by Qiao Liu and Jiangyu Wang (CityU professor and CCCL Director)^※. The journal is indexed in ESCI, Scopus and LexisNexis^※, with public metrics for 2025 of impact factor 0.6 and CiteScore 1.4^※.

# 1.5 Other possible CityU publications

Over the years, various CityU Schools and research centres have produced faculty-level journals, working papers, yearbook-style academic collections and the like. However, such publications are mostly internal or irregular, lacking stable public ISSNs and third-party indexing records, making it difficult to verify their current status one by one. CityU operates an institutional repository, CityU Scholars (scholars.cityu.edu.hk), which aggregates faculty papers and research outputs, but that is a repository platform, not a "journal" (the broader layout of the University's digital platforms is covered in digital-learning-and-it.md). CityU has nothing resembling CUHK's Twenty-First Century bimonthly — a signature general humanities journal with a long public run — no corresponding publication exists as far as this review can ascertain.

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# 2. City University of Hong Kong Press (CityU Press)

# 2.1 Founding and positioning

City University of Hong Kong Press was established in 1996^※ as the University's publishing arm. Its official mission is stated as: "by way of publishing high-quality titles, to promote scholarship; enhance knowledge transfer; and disseminate knowledge and creative works to society at large."

The Press's governance sits under the University Press Committee^※. This arrangement is comparable to other Hong Kong university presses — the publishing direction is vetted by an academic committee to maintain scholarly independence and quality rather than running on a purely commercial basis.

# 2.2 Publishing focus and subject scope

According to its official introduction, the Press publishes three categories of works^※: academic works, professional books, and books of general interest and social concern aimed at the general public. Its subject coverage is broad, including business, history, cultural studies, education, law, political science, social sciences, science and engineering^※, with China studies, Hong Kong studies, Asian studies, and politics and public policy as priority areas. This positioning differs from peers that lean towards purely scholarly monographs: CityU Press places "professional books" and "social concern titles for the general reader" alongside academic works as core publishing lines, seeking to serve both academia and the wider public.

# 2.3 Flagship book series

Public materials show the Press maintains several themed book series that collect related works in a given field. According to the catalogue of the Independent Publishers Group (IPG) and the Press's own pages, series directions include:

Note: series names follow the English used on the Press/distributor pages; the in-print titles within each series change year by year. This table records directions only and is not a complete series list.

# 2.4 Representative titles

One of the Press's best-known works is tied to former CityU President Professor H.K. Chang (张信刚, term 1996–2007). His English-language book From Movable Type Printing to the World Wide Web: Essays on Civilizations, Cultures and Education was published under the CityU Press imprint^※, collecting cross-disciplinary essays on the history of civilisations, culture and education. A biomedical engineer by training, Chang drove CityU's disciplinary expansion during his tenure; his personal writings span the humanities and popular science, and many were issued in Chinese by publishers across the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan (e.g. 大中东行纪, 茶与咖啡, 大学之修养). Those Chinese-language editions were mostly printed by publishers other than CityU Press and should not be attributed to the Press.

In April 2026, the Press published A Legacy on the Track: The 75-Year Story of The Hong Kong, China Association of Athletics Affiliates, distributed by CityU Press^※ — a recent title in its "Hong Kong studies / local history" direction.

# 2.5 Distribution channels

In addition to direct sales, the Press's books are distributed internationally through overseas independent bookseller networks such as the Independent Publishers Group^※, and it maintains official accounts on LinkedIn, Facebook and Issuu for book announcements and previews. The Press has also participated in local reading-promotion initiatives such as "Open Books Hong Kong" in recent years — according to the Press's blog, "Open Books Hong Kong" was shortlisted for the THE Awards Asia 2026^※.

# 2.6 The wider CityU scholarly publishing ecosystem (beyond the Press)

Scholarly publishing at CityU is not confined to the Press. Schools and departments host or co-host several peer-reviewed academic journals, the most representative being the School of Law's City University of Hong Kong Law Review discussed above; scholars in creative media, media and communication, energy and environment and other fields also publish monographs and articles widely with international publishers and journals. CityU also maintains the institutional repository CityU Scholars (scholars.cityu.edu.hk), aggregating faculty research output.

Compared with Hong Kong University Press and The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, CityU Press was established later (1996) and has a comparatively smaller scale and shorter history, but it publishes steadily in China studies, Hong Kong studies, public policy and related areas. The differences among the three university presses in output, history and positioning reflect each institution's own choices; this site makes no ranking judgement among them. CityU's overall standing and strengths within Hong Kong's "eight UGC-funded universities" are covered in 香港专上格局中的城大.

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