It's more than a pleasure to note that this is Volume 160 of the Journal of Agricultural Science (Cambridge), which is now in its 117th year, having been published without interruption since 1905. Our current (2020) impact factor is 1.476 and Citescore is 2.8. We believe that one of the strengths of the journal is that it covers a broad range of topics within the Agricultural Sciences, covering both soil/crop sciences and animal sciences rather than a more specialist journal limited to a narrower subject base. We would of course welcome an improvement in these scores but are pleased to report that the journal is ‘healthy’.
Our grateful thanks to the Editorial Board whose continued hard work in finding reviewers for submissions and then co-ordinating responses is invaluable to the success of the journal, particularly as we celebrate our 160th Volume. We would like to thank the following, who have recently stood down, and wish them all the success in their future work: Fangsen Xu (Huazhong Agricultural University, China), Lucie Büchi (University of Greenwich, Natural Resources Institute, UK), Randy Dinkins (University of Kentucky and USDA-ARS, USA) and Sandeep Kumar (South Dakota State University, USA). In addition, we would like to welcome the following new Editors who have been appointed recently: one new Animals Editor, Randhir Bhatt (Central Sheep and Wool Research Institute, India) and one for Crops & Soils, Bruno Pedreira (Kansas State University, USA). The role of reviewers themselves is of course vital and we are delighted to present their names alongside this editorial. The Editors-in-Chief would also like to acknowledge the tremendous inputs from our ‘back-room’ office colleagues in ensuring a more than smooth overall administrative process.
We are always reviewing journal policy and are pleased to note the following recent developments that we believe will appeal to potential authors. All submissions are now single-blind thus all papers must begin with the title page, including author names, affiliations and the email address of the corresponding author. Accepted manuscripts are now published (without typesetting) a few days after papers are finalized and sent to Production. These have a DOI and can be cited. This is replaced in due course with the typeset version, as the version of record. There is now a link on the ScholarOne homepage to Paperpal Preflight (a service that instantly checks a manuscript against submission guidelines and flags any potential issues that might prevent the paper from passing the initial checks made by the Editorial Office). The tool is free to use, although there is also an optional paid-for service that provides a tracked-changes version of the submission in a report with suggested modifications. These also include recommendations about spelling, punctuation and grammar. Format-neutral submission is employed for original submissions only (revised papers should make use of the Word formatting template), though line numbers are still mandatory, and for research papers the Results section must be separate from the Discussion. Finally, we have introduced ‘Statements of Authors’ Contributions’, which are now required for every submitted paper.
The journal is also reviewing its subject remit to ensure that it continues to cover existing and developing themes in the Agricultural Sciences. For example, we continue to welcome submissions in ‘Climate Change and Agriculture’ and ‘Modelling Animal Systems’. We will now consider submissions that are based on cell/molecular biology as long as an agricultural impact is evident. Another new topic area we are happy to consider is ‘Environmental impact of agricultural systems’. Traditionally, our two broad themes are Crops/Soils and Animals; now we have a third and new topic area, the integration of Crops/Soils and Animals, and would be delighted to consider appropriate submissions.
We hope that all involved in the journal together with our very wide readership continue to be inspired and informed by its contents.
Supplementary material
The supplementary material for this article can be found at https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021859622000260.
