Northwest Minzu University is located in Lanzhou, an important city for the “Belt and Road” initiative. It is the first institution of higher learning for nationalities established after the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Affiliated to the National Ethnic Affairs Commission, it is a university jointly built by the National Ethnic Affairs Commission and the Ministry of Education, and by the State Ethnic Affairs Commission and the People’s Government of Gansu Province. It is identified as a high-level university construction unit in Gansu Province. The university was founded by the Communist Party of China in Yan’an in 1941 as the Institute for Nationalities, which was later merged into Yan’an University. In 1949, Yan’an University was renamed Northwest People’s Revolutionary University. In August 1950, Northwest Institute for Nationalities was formally established on the basis of the third division of Northwest People’s Revolutionary University Lanzhou Branch, and was renamed Northwest Minzu University in April 2003. In 2007, the university passed the undergraduate teaching level evaluation initiated by the Ministry of Education with “excellent” results. After more than 70 years of development, the university has formed a spirit characterized by “Yellow Land” and “Yellow River” and centered on “unpretentious, willing to be poor, indifferent to fame and wealth, selfless dedication” and “aiming high, flowing, indomitable, courageous”. It has trained more than 180,000 professionals of all kinds at all levels for the country.

IEEE and DRAA, the Digital Resource Acquisition Alliance of Chinese Academic Libraries, have entered into an open access read and publish agreement. This agreement makes it more convenient for corresponding authors to publish open access articles with IEEE’s industry leading journals and magazines as eligible authors pay reduced article processing charges (APCs) and may have the opportunity to pay no APCs as some of these costs are waived under the agreement.