Agrosystems Geosciences & Environment

About Agrosystems Geosciences & Environment

Agrosystems, Geosciences & Environment — Journal Profile

Agrosystems, Geosciences & Environment (commonly abbreviated AGE) is a gold open access, peer-reviewed scientific journal covering agriculture, plant science, environmental science and soil science. It is a joint publication of the American Society of Agronomy (ASA) and the Crop Science Society of America (CSSA), published on their behalf through Wiley on the ACSESS / Wiley Online Library platform. Its electronic ISSN is 2639-6696, which serves as both the online and print ISSN listed by Wiley. The journal was launched in 2018 to give the agronomy and crop science communities a dedicated open access home for sound, useful research that might not fit the narrower novelty thresholds of the societies' flagship titles.

That founding purpose shapes everything about the journal. AGE explicitly welcomes studies that are limited in geography or time — for example a single site-year field experiment — as well as confirmatory studies, replications, soil survey data papers and other significant datasets, and reports of negative or null results that nonetheless support agronomic principles or extend earlier conclusions to new conditions. In an era when publication bias toward positive, novel findings distorts the evidence base farmers and advisers rely on, a society-backed journal that values correctness and usefulness over novelty fills a genuine gap.

At a Glance

Scope and Subject Coverage

The journal's scope spans all aspects of agriculture, plant, environmental and soil science. Its content is organised under headings that include Agrosystems, Geosciences, Environment, Statistics, Reviews and Notes, and it also considers Letters to the Editor. In practice this means the journal publishes work on cropping systems and crop production, soil fertility and soil health, nutrient management, water quality and irrigation, forage and turf systems, precision agriculture and remote sensing, agroecology, climate adaptation in farming systems, geoscience applications in agriculture such as soil survey and land evaluation, and statistical methods for field experimentation.

A distinctive feature of the scope is the explicit welcome for several article families that many journals marginalise. First, geographically or temporally limited experiments: a well-conducted variety trial, fertiliser response study or tillage comparison from one location and season can be published if its methods are sound and its conclusions are appropriately bounded. Second, confirmatory research: repeating an earlier experiment under new conditions is treated as a contribution, not a redundancy. Third, negative results: trials that find no significant treatment effect are publishable when they are well designed, because a null result honestly reported prevents other researchers and practitioners from repeating an unproductive path. Fourth, data papers: soil survey datasets and other significant collections of measurements can be published as citable contributions in their own right.

Manuscripts can be submitted directly to AGE, or transferred from other ASA, CSSA and Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) journals. The transfer pathway matters: an author whose paper is judged a poor fit for a flagship title such as Agronomy Journal or Crop Science because its scope is local rather than general can move the manuscript, with its reviews, into AGE instead of starting again elsewhere. This cascade keeps good applied science inside the society publishing ecosystem and shortens time to publication.

Article Types

The journal publishes several defined contribution types. Original Articles report research that advances knowledge or improves understanding of existing agronomic concepts. Reviews are longer, more comprehensive articles interpreting a body of previously published data, and Invited Reviews are commissioned by members of the editorial board. Technical Notes are shorter contributions reporting apparatus, observations and experimental techniques or methods, usually limited to studies of unrepeatable phenomena or unique circumstances. The editorial board also considers Letters to the Editor. Authors should consult the current author instructions maintained by the science societies for formatting, reference style and submission requirements, because those instructions are periodically revised.

Publisher and Societies

The American Society of Agronomy, founded in 1907, and the Crop Science Society of America, founded in 1955, are non-profit scientific societies based in Madison, Wisconsin, where they share headquarters and a cooperative publishing operation with the Soil Science Society of America. Together the three societies are often referred to through their shared ACSESS digital library platform. Their journals — including Agronomy Journal, Crop Science, Soil Science Society of America Journal, Journal of Environmental Quality and others — are among the most established titles in the agronomic sciences. AGE sits within this family as its broad, open access, sound-science outlet. Wiley provides the publishing platform, production and hosting through Wiley Online Library, while editorial ownership and standards rest with the societies.

Because the journal is society-owned, its governance follows society practice: the editor is appointed through the society leadership — for AGE, by the ASA President in agreement with the CSSA President and the Editor-in-Chief, confirmed by the ASA Board of Directors — for a three-year term, renewable once. Editors are expected to provide leadership for the journal, promote scholarship in its fields, maintain quality standards and act as ambassadors to the international research community.

Peer Review and Editorial Standards

Submissions undergo peer review managed by the editor and associate or technical editors. Journal metric listings describe the process as blind peer review, with a median time to first decision reported by Wiley of about 69 days. Wiley's journal page has also reported an acceptance rate of around 54 percent, a figure that signals selective but accessible standards consistent with the journal's mission: papers are judged primarily on methodological soundness, relevance to the journal's applied scope and clarity of reporting, rather than on perceived novelty alone. Authors receive decisions with reviewer feedback, and revised manuscripts may undergo further review before acceptance. As with all ASA-CSSA-SSSA publications, authors are expected to follow society publication ethics, report experimental designs and statistics transparently — replication, randomisation and appropriate error terms matter greatly in field research — and to make the limitations of single-site or single-season studies explicit in their conclusions.

Open Access and Charges

AGE is a gold open access journal: every published article is freely readable immediately on publication, without subscription or embargo. Articles are published under Creative Commons licences, with CC BY and CC BY-NC-ND among the licence types reported for the journal. Open access is funded through an article processing charge paid on acceptance. Metric listings have reported the charge as USD 1,350; because charges change over time and may vary by licence choice or society membership arrangements, authors should verify the current amount on the Wiley journal homepage before submission and check whether their institution holds a Wiley open access agreement that covers the fee. There are no subscription charges for readers, which makes the journal's applied findings directly accessible to extension specialists, consultants, agency staff and farmers as well as academics.

Indexing and Metrics

The journal is indexed in Scopus, and its content is discoverable through the major scholarly search services that cover Wiley journals. Wiley reports a Journal Impact Factor of 1.5 and a CiteScore of 2.1 for the journal (figures displayed on the journal homepage at the time of writing; both metrics are updated annually and readers should consult the journal page for the latest values). SCImago listings place the journal in the agronomy and related subject categories with an SJR in the region of 0.475 in recent listings. For a journal founded in 2018 with an intentionally inclusive scope, these metrics reflect a steadily growing citation footprint, particularly for papers on soil health, nutrient management and cropping systems that practitioners cite alongside researchers.

Authors evaluating the journal should weigh fit and audience alongside metrics. AGE's readership is precisely the community that conducts and uses applied agronomic research in North America and internationally: university agronomists, extension researchers, soil scientists, crop consultants and graduate students. A locally scoped but methodologically strong study will typically reach its intended audience faster, and be read more, in AGE than in a generalist outlet where it competes outside its discipline.

Who Should Submit — and Who Should Read

The journal is a strong fit for: researchers with single-location or short-duration field experiments that are sound but not globally generalisable; teams reporting confirmatory trials or replications in new environments; authors with well-documented null results that close off an unproductive line of inquiry; soil surveyors and data curators publishing significant datasets; authors transferred from sister society journals with reviewer reports intact; and practitioners in extension and industry research whose studies meet academic reporting standards. Readers benefit most if they work in agronomy, crop and soil science, environmental quality, agricultural geoscience or applied statistics for field research.

Conversely, authors seeking a highly selective flagship venue for broadly significant advances may prefer Agronomy Journal or Crop Science within the same society family, accepting their higher rejection risk. AGE does not publish purely opinion pieces outside its Letters format, nor studies whose methods cannot support their conclusions — the sound-science model raises, rather than lowers, the importance of design and reporting quality.

Submission Guidance

Prepare manuscripts according to the society author instructions for AGE: structure the paper clearly, describe site, soil, weather, design and statistical methods in enough detail for the work to be evaluated and repeated, bound your conclusions to the environments actually tested, and state limitations plainly — the journal's ethos rewards candour about scope. Choose the correct article type at submission, note any transfer from a sister journal, and ensure data underlying soil survey or dataset papers are deposited or described as the instructions require. Confirm the current article processing charge and licence options on the Wiley page at submission time, and check institutional open access agreements before acceptance so invoicing is not delayed.

History and Position in the Field

AGE arrived in 2018 as part of a wider shift in scholarly publishing toward open access, sound-science venues. The ASA and CSSA already published respected subscription and hybrid journals; what they lacked was a fully open journal that could absorb the large volume of competent applied research their communities produce each year — research that documents how crops, soils and management interact in specific places. Place-based knowledge is the working capital of agronomy: fertiliser recommendations, cultivar choices and conservation practices are all local. A journal that treats local evidence as publishable, citable and permanent therefore strengthens the whole evidence chain from experiment station to farm. Its continuous-publication model, society governance and integration with the ACSESS platform give it durability that independent start-up journals often lack.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Agrosystems, Geosciences & Environment open access? Yes. It is a gold open access journal; all articles are free to read immediately under Creative Commons licences, funded by an article processing charge.

What is its ISSN? 2639-6696, listed by Wiley as both the online and print ISSN.

Who publishes it? It is a joint publication of the American Society of Agronomy and the Crop Science Society of America, published with Wiley.

Does it accept negative results and single-site studies? Yes — both are explicitly within scope, provided methods are sound and conclusions are appropriately bounded.

What are its impact metrics? Wiley has displayed a Journal Impact Factor of 1.5 and CiteScore of 2.1; check the journal homepage for the current year's figures.

Can a paper be transferred from another society journal? Yes. Manuscripts can be transferred from other ASA, CSSA and SSSA journals, typically carrying their reviews with them.

Summary

Agrosystems, Geosciences & Environment (ISSN 2639-6696) is the open access, sound-science journal of the American Society of Agronomy and the Crop Science Society of America. Since 2018 it has published methodologically reliable research across agriculture, plant, environmental and soil science — including the local, confirmatory, null-result and dataset studies that applied agronomy depends on but prestige journals often decline. With society governance, Wiley platform delivery, Scopus indexing and immediate free access for readers worldwide, it is a durable and appropriate home for applied field research whose value lies in correctness and usefulness.

Research Themes in Recent Volumes

Recent content illustrates the journal in action. A multi-year monitoring study of sewage sludge application on agricultural soils in Wallonia tracked seven heavy metals across more than fourteen years of regulatory analysis, finding concentrations stable and below applicable limits and no measurable effect of sludge application on soil metal content — exactly the kind of long, careful, policy-relevant but geographically bounded dataset the journal exists to publish. A study of farming management effects on soil health and leachate water quality in Kentucky, from a land-grant university team, similarly shows the journal serving regional applied research with national methodological interest. Work on winter grazing within integrated crop–livestock systems in the southeastern United States, which found neither positive nor negative soil impacts over two years, demonstrates the journal's welcome for honestly reported null findings: a grazing result of “no effect” is valuable knowledge for producers deciding whether to adopt the practice, and in a novelty-driven outlet it might never have been published. Research on the timing of potassium fertiliser application in potatoes, examining chloride uptake and tuber specific gravity, shows the journal's classical agronomic core — nutrient management questions answered through replicated field trials.

Across these examples a pattern emerges: experiments conducted at experiment stations and on farms, analysed with appropriate statistics, reported with full site and season context, and concluded with claims proportioned to the evidence. That pattern is the journal's contribution to research culture. Agronomy advances cumulatively, through many local results that together reveal which practices generalise and which do not; a literature that publishes only the striking results cannot support that accumulation. By giving the incremental result a permanent, citable, indexed home, AGE strengthens meta-analysis, extension guidance and evidence-based farm advice.

How the Journal Fits the Societies' Portfolio

Within the ASA–CSSA–SSSA portfolio, each journal occupies a distinct niche. Agronomy Journal carries broad agronomic advances; Crop Science serves crop breeding, physiology and production for the CSSA community; the Soil Science Society of America Journal anchors soil science; Journal of Environmental Quality covers environmental contamination and quality at the agriculture–environment interface; and specialised titles serve plant registration, natural sciences education, plant phenomics and other communities. AGE complements all of them by accepting the sound work that falls between their novelty and scope thresholds, and by doing so under full open access, which the older hybrid titles offer only article by article. The transfer system binds the portfolio together: editors can redirect a well-reviewed but mis-fitting manuscript to AGE rather than rejecting it outright, preserving the societies' investment in peer review and keeping authors within a trusted system.

For librarians and research evaluators, the practical points are these: the journal is a legitimate society publication with established editorial governance, not an independent start-up; its articles are indexed and citable with DOIs through Wiley; and its metrics, while modest beside flagship titles, reflect a young journal with a deliberately inclusive mission. Evaluating an AGE article by the journal's impact factor alone misreads its purpose; the correct unit of judgement is the individual article's methods and the use its community makes of it.

A Note on Evidence and Currency

Metrics, charges and editorial personnel in this profile are those displayed by Wiley and established journal listings at the time of writing. Impact metrics are recalculated annually, editorial appointments rotate on society cycles, and processing charges are revised periodically; the journal homepage on Wiley Online Library is the authoritative current source for all three, and this profile should be read as a guide to the journal's identity, mission and fit rather than as a substitute for that page at the moment of submission.