Agronomy for Sustainable Development

Agronomy for Sustainable Development is a peer-reviewed scientific journal publishing research on the interactions between cropping systems and other activities in the context of sustainable development. It is one of the seven journals of the French Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (Institute of Agronomical Research, INRA). Journal issues are produced by the scientific publisher Springer Science+Business Media. Its impact factor increased from 0.566 in 2003 to 2.972 in 2010, ranking the journal 4th out of 74 in the category "Agronomy".

History

Agronomy for Sustainable Development was originally entitled "Agronomie", and was founded in 1981. At that time, less than 10% of articles were in English. The journal was greatly reformed from 2003 to 2006, major changes including:

• the setting up of a pre-selection committee at the submission stage
• an increase in the number of Field Editors from 14 to 32;
• novel topics focusing on sustainable agriculture
• novel format instructions for more concise articles
• a novel title
• a switch from hardcopy to fully electronic managing
• 100% of articles in English and a novel journal cover
• 7 review reports produced per manuscript
• active commissioning of review articles by the Editor-in-Chief

As a consequence, an important increase was observed in the impact factor, the rejection rate, the number of submissions, the number of article downloads at the journal's website, the number of subscribers to the free e-mail alert, and the number of published review articles.

Major journal topics

Since 2003, the journal changed topics from classical, production-oriented agronomy to sustainable and ecological agriculture. Major journal topics currently include:

• Agriculture and global changes
• Agricultural production of renewable energies
• Ecological pest control and biopesticides
• Organic farming
• Genetically modified organisms in cropping systems
• Environmental impact on soil, water, air and biodiversity
• Risk assessment for food, ecotoxicology
• Decision support systems and companion modelling
• Social and economic issues of agricultural changes
• Innovation in farming systems
• Pollutants in agrosystems

Editorial process and management

The journal is managed by a collaboration of two INRA departments, the Departments of Environment and Agronomy and of Sciences for Action and Development. The editorial board collaborates with 2 associate editors and 32 field editors for manuscript peer-review. Submitted articles are first evaluated by a pre-selection committee that rejects about 50% of incoming manuscripts. Selected submissions are then sent to field editors for more in-depth evaluation.

From 2005, review articles are published both in the journal and in the book series Sustainable Agriculture.

See also

• Agronomy for Sustainable Development
• Sustainable Agriculture
• Sustainable Agriculture Reviews