Agronomy Journal

About Agronomy Journal

Agronomy Journal: Journal Overview

Agronomy Journal is the official journal of the American Society of Agronomy (ASA), published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of the society through the ACSESS — Alliance of Crop, Soil and Environmental Science Societies — publishing programme. It is one of the oldest continuously published agricultural science journals in the world: its first volumes appeared as the Proceedings of the American Society of Agronomy, containing papers from 1907 to 1909, it became the Journal of the American Society of Agronomy from 1913 to 1948, and it has carried the name Agronomy Journal since 1949. Its subject is agronomy in the full, practical sense: how crops, soils, water, weather and management interact to produce food, forage and fibre, and how that production can be made more productive, more efficient and less damaging.

The stored JournalsWorld record for this post lists three identifiers — 0002-1962, 1072-9623 and 1435-0645. OpenAlex, resolved through its ISSN endpoint for 0002-1962, returns exactly those three for a single source record for this title, with 1435-0645 as the electronic ISSN used in the journal's Wiley address and 0002-1962 as its long-standing print ISSN. The template previously on this page gave the publisher as a bare number and printed a garbled string of coverage years; both are corrected in this profile from the society and publisher sources listed in the accompanying sources file. Do not confuse this journal with the MDPI journal titled simply Agronomy, a different, much younger open-access title discussed in the disambiguation section below.

History: the journal of a society founded in 1907

The American Society of Agronomy was founded on 31 December 1907, with 43 individuals present, in the society's centennial timeline. In 1909 its executive committee approved publication of a Proceedings, with C. R. Ball as first editor, and the ASA Editors' Handbook records that the journal was launched in 1910 with the first four volumes titled Proceedings of the American Society of Agronomy — the first volume containing papers from 1907, 1908 and 1909. In 1912 the society decided to replace the Proceedings with a journal proper, and from 1913 the title was the Journal of the American Society of Agronomy. That title ran through 1948; in 1949 the name changed to Agronomy Journal, the name it still carries.

The handbook's publication history fills in the format changes that matter to archive users. The journal appeared first in annual bound volumes, then at greater frequency; from 1923 through 1960 it was a monthly periodical, and afterwards bimonthly in print. It was published in both print and online formats from 1998 and moved to online-only publication in 2013 — so the print ISSN in the table is a historic identifier, while current reading, submission and citation all happen through the Wiley / ACSESS digital library. One scope event deserves emphasis: when the Journal of Production Agriculture, a joint ASA, Crop Science Society and Soil Science Society publication, ceased in 1999, the scope of Agronomy Journal expanded to take in papers that would previously have appeared there, strengthening its applied, production-oriented side.

The centenary literature gives a sense of the accumulated record. A hundred-year review published in the journal itself counted, across its first hundred volumes, more than 29,000 authors and more than 15,000 articles, with the largest single volume in 2004 running to more than 200 articles. Those are the review's figures for the journal's first century, quoted here as history rather than as current metrics; the current database totals are given, attributed, in the metrics section.

Scope: soil–plant relationships and production agriculture

The classic description of the journal's scope, quoted in university journal guides from the journal's own description, lists original research in soil–plant relationships; crop science; soil science; biometry; crop, soil, pasture and range management; crop, forage and pasture production and utilisation; turfgrass; agroclimatology; agronomic modelling; statistics; production agriculture; and computer software for agronomy. The societies' current publications guide puts the same territory more vividly: a leading source for research in agriculture, soil science, crop science and agroclimatology and beyond, publishing innovative studies and applied research from modelling and instrumentation to real-world production agriculture, for researchers shaping the future of agronomy.

Read together, those two descriptions define a journal that is deliberately both scientific and applied. A soil physics measurement, a nutrient-use-efficiency field trial, a crop model validated against multi-site data, a remote-sensing method for estimating evapotranspiration and a whole-farm production study can all be at home here, provided each connects to agronomic practice or understanding. A current call for papers on advances in evapotranspiration measurement and modelling illustrates the modern edge of the scope: it invites work from field measurements to artificial-intelligence-based predictive modelling, spanning sensors, remote sensing, geographic information systems and data analytics, across agronomy, crop physiology, soil physics, hydrology, meteorology and ecosystem science — with a submission deadline in November 2026 stated in the call itself.

Fit, in practice, turns on agronomic consequence. Pure plant molecular biology with no field or production implication, pure soil chemistry with no plant or management connection, and farm economics with no agronomy in it all have better homes in neighbouring society journals or specialty titles. The strongest Agronomy Journal papers report a management, genotype, soil or weather effect in a way that a researcher or adviser in another region can judge for transferability — which is why site, soil, cultivar, weather and management history reporting is not bureaucratic detail in this journal but the substance on which its readers act.

Article types and how manuscripts are built

The journal's author instructions, published by the science societies, state that full papers must be reports of Original Research, Reviews, Forum pieces, or Notes and Unique Phenomena, and that the journal also publishes book reviews and letters to the editor. Submissions are made as a Word file containing, in the societies' listed order, a title page, the abstract, a Plain Language Summary, abbreviations, the text, a supplemental material statement, an AI declaration statement, a data availability statement (listed as optional in the instructions), author contributions, acknowledgments — added at acceptance — references, figure captions and figures, which may also be supplied separately in specified image formats. Authors are directed to the societies' Publications Handbook and Style Manual for formatting.

Two of those requirements deserve an author's early attention. The Plain Language Summary is a society-journal signature: a short account of the work that a farmer, adviser, policymaker or journalist can understand, and it should be written as communication, not as a dumbed-down abstract. The AI declaration and data availability statements reflect current society policy; decide what you will say about both before submission rather than at the proof stage, and make the statements in the manuscript, the submission system and any repository agree with each other.

Editorial structure

The Editors' Handbook describes a layered board: the ASA editor-in-chief, the journal's editor, technical editors who are experts in various areas, associate editors covering numerous subject areas, and the journal programme manager, publications director and chief executive as ex officio members. The editor is appointed by the ASA editor-in-chief on behalf of the ASA president, and appoints associate editors after consultation. The current Editor is Silvia Pampana of the University of Pisa, Italy — named as Editor in the societies' publications guide and reappointed to a second three-year term as Editor of Agronomy Journal in the societies' journal editor appointments for 2025. For authors, the layered structure means manuscripts are usually handled by an associate editor close to the subject, and that fit and reporting completeness are screened before review; a paper sent to the wrong society journal is a common and avoidable delay, so compare the sister titles in the similar-journals section before submitting.

Metrics and indexing — attributed figures

The societies' own publications guide gives the journal's official headline figures: a 2023 Journal Impact Factor of 2.0, a 2023 five-year impact factor of 2.5, 23,549 total citations in 2024, and a 2024 submission-to-first-decision time of 22 days. Those are the figures the publisher itself chose to advertise, attributed here to that guide with their years attached; a current impact factor should be taken from the latest Journal Citation Reports, not extrapolated from them. OpenAlex, resolved through its ISSN endpoint to source S139950591 and fetched for this profile, records 25,358 works and 633,367 citations at checking time, with a summary h-index of 237 and a two-year mean citedness of about 2.05. The older template on this page carried an h-index of 165; database totals of this kind differ by coverage and counting date, which is why this profile attributes rather than averages them.

On listing: OpenAlex records the journal as not in the Directory of Open Access Journals, and the DOAJ search API returned no result for ISSN 0002-1962 in the fetch for this batch — consistent with a hybrid subscription society journal rather than a fully open-access title. The journal is a Web of Science–covered title, as its published Journal Citation Reports impact factors show, and its long archive is covered by Scopus, the basis of the quartile information in the stored record, which placed it in the second quartile of its category.

Open access and charges

Agronomy Journal sits in the societies' guide among their hybrid subscription journals, alongside Crop Science and the Soil Science Society of America Journal, rather than among their gold open-access titles. Authors may therefore publish under the subscription route, with an open-access option on acceptance. OpenAlex records an article publishing charge of 1,800 US dollars for that optional route at checking time, rising across recent years in its by-year record — another reason to confirm the live figure, licence and any Wiley agreement covering your institution in author services at submission, rather than budgeting from any profile, including this one.

Not the same journal: Agronomy Journal and Agronomy

The most damaging catalogue confusion for this title is with Agronomy, an MDPI open-access journal founded in 2011 with ISSN 2073-4395. It is a different journal, with a different publisher, editor, history and article charges, despite the near-identical name and overlapping subject words. A citation to Agronomy is not a citation to Agronomy Journal, an impact factor for one says nothing about the other, and a manuscript submitted to one has not been submitted to the other. Check the ISSN — 0002-1962 / 1435-0645 for the society journal profiled here — whenever a search result, an invitation email or a reference list leaves any doubt, because predatory and careless invitations alike exploit exactly this kind of name collision.

How to read this journal well

Reading Agronomy Journal well means reading it as an edited conversation rather than as a pile of separate papers. An issue, a themed collection or a run of recent articles usually shows what the editors currently regard as unsettled, clinically or scientifically important, and ready for evidence. Start with reviews, guidelines, editorials and commentaries in your area, because those pieces map the argument; then read the original research that the reviews cite, checking whether the primary papers support the summary that later writers have built on them. That order saves time and, more importantly, it prevents a common error: citing a review's compressed version of a finding as if it were the finding itself.

Pay close attention to methods sections and to the population, species, site, exposure or system actually studied. Agronomy Journal publishes work whose value often depends on fit between question and design. A strong result in one setting may travel poorly to another, and the journal's best papers are usually explicit about that boundary. Tables, figures, supplementary files and data statements are part of the paper, not decoration. In several of the fields covered here, the decisive detail — a dose, a characterisation method, a field history, a diagnostic rule or a statistical model — lives in a supplement rather than in the abstract.

Finally, use citation chasing in both directions. Earlier papers cited by a new article show the tradition the authors claim; later papers citing it show whether the community accepted, corrected or ignored it. Citation counts quoted in this profile are database totals at checking time, attributed to their source, and they describe the journal as a whole. They say nothing reliable about any single article, and they should never be used as a substitute for reading the article itself.

Peer review and what editors look for

Peer review at a long-established journal of this kind is normally a test of three things at once: importance, soundness and fit. Importance asks whether the question matters to the journal's readers beyond the authors' own laboratory, clinic or field site. Soundness asks whether the design, analysis and reporting can carry the conclusions. Fit asks whether this journal, rather than a more specialised or more general venue, is where the paper will be read, used and challenged by the right audience. A manuscript can be technically competent and still be returned without external review if one of those three tests fails clearly.

Editors also read for honesty in framing. Abstracts that claim more than the data show, introductions that ignore directly competing work, and discussions that treat a limitation as a footnote rather than as a boundary on the conclusion are frequent reasons for scepticism. Conversely, a paper that states its question narrowly, reports negative or mixed results plainly, deposits or describes its data clearly, and explains why its setting matters tends to earn reviewer goodwill even when its findings are modest.

Authors should expect revision to be substantive. Reviewers for Agronomy Journal are typically drawn from the same community that will cite the work, and they commonly ask for added analyses, clearer reporting of methods, toned-down claims, or a fuller account of how a result compares with prior studies. A good response letter answers every point, quotes the change made, and disagrees only with reasons and evidence. Treating revision as collaboration rather than as combat measurably improves a paper, whatever the final decision.

How to submit, step by step

First, test fit before polishing prose. Read at least a dozen recent items in Agronomy Journal that are close to your topic and write, in two sentences, what your paper adds to that specific conversation. If those sentences are hard to write, the journal is probably the wrong venue, however strong the work is.

Second, follow the journal's current author instructions on its publisher platform exactly: article type, word and figure limits, abstract structure, reporting checklists, data and code statements, ethics approvals, author contribution statements and disclosure forms all differ between publishers and change over time. In this profile, fees and submission routes are stated only where a source fetched for this batch verifies them; where a figure could not be verified it is described as not published or as could not be verified, and authors should confirm the live figure on the publisher page on the day they submit.

Third, prepare the manuscript for a reader outside your subfield. Define abbreviations at first use, state the study design or experimental system in the abstract, give exact sample sizes, sites, dates or cohorts where the discipline requires them, and make every figure legible without the text. Fourth, write a cover letter that does real work: the question, the main finding, why it belongs in this journal, and any prior discussion with the editors or related submissions the editors should know about.

Fifth, check the submission as a reviewer would. Are references complete and current? Do numbers in the abstract match the tables? Are ethics, funding and competing-interest statements present and consistent across the files? Small inconsistencies invite a larger doubt about the science. Sixth, after submission, respond to queries promptly, keep all co-authors informed at each stage, and do not submit the same work elsewhere while it is under consideration.

Who should submit — and who should look elsewhere

Agronomy Journal is a good home for work that speaks to its whole declared readership: a finding, method, synthesis or argument that a reader in a neighbouring part of the field would want to know about. It is usually a poor home for work whose interest is confined to a single institution with no wider lesson, for routine replications presented without a reason why the replication matters now, and for papers whose real audience is a narrower specialty that has its own journals. That is not a judgement about quality; it is a judgement about where a paper will be found and used.

Early-career authors often ask whether a famous journal is worth the longer odds. The honest answer given by editors across scholarly publishing is that venue should follow audience. A paper read, cited and applied by the right community in a respected field journal does more for a career and for the science than a paper placed, after long delay, in a general venue where nobody in the field looks. Agronomy Journal sits in that decision in a particular way, described in the fit sections of this profile, and authors should weigh its history, audience and metrics together rather than chasing a single number.

Similar and neighbouring journals

The titles below are neighbouring venues in a broad sense — journals a reader or author comparing Agronomy Journal commonly weighs alongside it. Listing here implies no affiliation, no shared publisher unless stated in the text above, and no ranking. Check each title's own record and publisher page before treating it as an alternative.

• Crop Science — the Crop Science Society of America's flagship journal — the first alternative for breeding, physiology and crop systems work.
• Soil Science Society of America Journal — the sister society journal for basic and applied soil research in agricultural and other settings.
• Field Crops Research — an Elsevier journal for field-level crop ecology, physiology and management research.
• European Journal of Agronomy — a European-focused agronomy journal covering crop production and agroecosystems.
• Journal of Environmental Quality — an ACSESS sister journal where environmental fate and quality, rather than production, is the centre.

Frequently asked questions

What are the ISSNs of Agronomy Journal?

Print ISSN 0002-1962 and electronic ISSN 1435-0645; source records also list 1072-9623 for this title. OpenAlex returns exactly those three for one source.

Who owns and publishes Agronomy Journal?

It is the official journal of the American Society of Agronomy, published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of the society through the ACSESS programme.

When did the journal start, and what was it called before?

Its first volumes were the Proceedings of the American Society of Agronomy (papers from 1907–1909, launched 1910). From 1913 to 1948 it was the Journal of the American Society of Agronomy; the name Agronomy Journal dates from 1949.

Who is the editor?

Silvia Pampana of the University of Pisa, reappointed to a second three-year term as Editor in the societies' appointments for 2025.

What is the journal's impact factor and decision time?

The societies' publications guide reports a 2023 impact factor of 2.0 (five-year 2.5) and a 2024 submission-to-first-decision time of 22 days. Take the current impact factor from the latest Journal Citation Reports.

Is Agronomy Journal the same as the journal Agronomy?

No. Agronomy is an MDPI journal founded in 2011, ISSN 2073-4395. Agronomy Journal is the ASA society journal dating from the early twentieth century. Check the ISSN when in doubt.

What article types does it publish?

Original Research, Reviews, Forum pieces and Notes and Unique Phenomena as full papers, plus book reviews and letters to the editor, per the societies' author instructions.

Is it open access, and what is the charge?

It is a hybrid subscription journal with an optional open-access route. OpenAlex records a 1,800 US dollar charge for that route at checking time; confirm the live figure with Wiley. It is not listed in DOAJ, per the API fetch for this batch.

What must a submission file contain?

Per the societies' instructions, a Word file with title page, abstract, Plain Language Summary, abbreviations, text, supplemental material and AI declaration statements, data availability and author contributions, references, figure captions and figures, formatted to the Publications Handbook and Style Manual.

Verification notes

This profile is anchored to the live record for post 2457, whose title, slug and stored ISSN set match the journal described and are confirmed as one source by OpenAlex. Garbled stored values are corrected here: the publisher, shown as a bare number, is Wiley on behalf of the American Society of Agronomy, and the coverage string, printed as a broken list of years, is replaced by the documented title history from the society's own handbook and timeline. The MDPI title Agronomy was checked as a disambiguation and is a separate journal, not a twin of this record; no duplicate with overlapping own ISSNs was found.