Currently, it is the Chinese national standard that scientific periodicals published in mainland China in the Chinese language should contain English abstracts for every original research article and English titles for selected important articles (e.g. editorials, reviews, forums and short research articles, depending on the judgement of the editorial board) [31] . The English table of contents is available online, free of charge, through the Wan Fang database. However, the English abstracts are only available in the full text PDF file from the Wan Apart from impact factors published by Thomson Scientific in JCR, VIP Information also publishes bibliometric data of some of the journals indexed in its database [40] . A handful of journals listed in Table 4 have their VIP impact factor and immediacy index available, which can contribute towards evaluation of their quality.