On the afternoon of October 26th, 2021, a group led by Prof. WU Aixiang, former Vice President of USTB, current Associate Head of the University Council and Chief Editor of  International Journal of Minerals, Metallurgy and Materials  (IJMMM)  and  Chinese Journal of Engineering (CJE) , visited Mr. YIN Ruiyu, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. The group also includes Ms. JI Shujuan, Head of the Journal Publishing Center; Ms. JIANG Wei, Associate Head of the Journal Publishing Center; Ms. CAO Bing, Head of the Editorial Office of CJE; and Ms. HUANG Donghua, Head of the Editorial Office of IJMMM. Mr. YIN Ruiyu extended his welcome to the group.

Prof. WU expressed his heartfelt appreciation to Mr. YIN for his long-term support and concern towards USTB. Prof. WU introduced the university leaders’ great attention and support to the construction of academic journals, and the construction and development of two journals: CJE and IJMMM, and sincerely invites Mr. YIN to support the publication of the two special issues commemorating the 70th anniversary of USTB.

MR. YIN expressed his concern about the discipline construction of USTB, especially the metallurgical discipline construction and the development orientation of the two journals, and talked about his views on the future development orientation of the metallurgical discipline. He pointed out that we must break through the shackles of the “isolated system” in traditional thermodynamics, and adopt concepts like holism, open vector, networking, time-space synergy and dissipative structure to describe the physical essence of the dynamic operation of metallurgical manufacturing processes, and emphasized the concept of “flow” (material flow, energy flow and information flow), along with the substantive “flow network” it attaches in the processes of flowing or deformation, and fundamental factors such as the “operational procedures” of synergy and coupling.

In the end, Ms. CAO and Ms. HUANG reported the details of contributions solicited for the Special Issue Commemorating the 70th Anniversary of USTB, and the publicity work on the Special Journal of Metallurgical Process Engineering and Intelligent Manufacturing in 2021, the 8th issue of IJMMM. Academician YIN was very happy after hearing this and gave full affirmation and recognition to the work of the two journals, placed high expectations on the future development of the academic journals and said that he would continue to support the construction of the journals of his Alma Mater. And encouraged the editorial offices of the two journals to work hard and strive for the first class.