Alexandria Journal of Agricultural Sciences

About Alexandria Journal of Agricultural Sciences

Alexandria Journal of Agricultural Sciences: Seven Decades of Egyptian Agricultural Research From Alexandria University

The Alexandria Journal of Agricultural Sciences is the agricultural research journal of the Faculty of Agriculture, Alexandria University, Egypt, published today on the Egyptian Knowledge Bank journals platform under the journal code "alexja" and the DOI prefix 10.21608/alexja. The JournalsWorld directory record for post 631697 identifies it by print ISSN 0044-7250 and online ISSN 2535-1931, with the publisher given as Alexandria University, Faculty of Agriculture; the online ISSN is independently confirmed by the journal's own platform export records, which list the publisher as Alexandria University, Faculty of Agriculture and the ISSN as 2535-1931. Alexandria University's own description of the title dates its inception to 1953, making it one of Egypt's long-running university agricultural journals. A note on the title is needed at the outset: Alexandria University's institutional page calls the journal the Alexandria Journal of Agricultural Research, and older indexing lists carry that name against the same print ISSN 0044-7250 and the same faculty publisher, while the current platform and recent article citations use Alexandria Journal of Agricultural Sciences, abbreviated Alex. J. Agric. Sci. This profile treats them as the same continuing journal under a title wording that has varied over its long life, and uses the current platform title throughout, because the ISSN pair, the publisher and the platform are continuous.

History and institutional setting

The journal belongs to the Faculty of Agriculture at Alexandria University in Alexandria, Egypt, with correspondence historically directed to the journal's editor at the Faculty of Agriculture, Shatby, Alexandria University. The university's description gives the date of issuance (inception) as 1953 and describes the journal as a scientific journal issued by the faculty for research on agricultural science and related topics, with the stated objective of publishing the research of faculty members inside and outside the faculty. The same institutional description records features of its earlier print-era operation that explain the journal's character today: an editorial board described as consisting of 22 members under the supervision of the university president and the board; review by at least two arbitrators (referees) for each research paper; publication of summaries of master's and doctoral work alongside full research articles, which tied the journal closely to the faculty's postgraduate training; an issue pattern of one issue every four months — April, August and December — carrying about 25 research papers per issue; and, in that era, an arbitration (review) fee of 100 Egyptian pounds for Egyptian researchers and 100 US dollars for non-Egyptians. Those operational details are historical — the journal now runs on a modern online platform with DOIs — but they document a continuous, faculty-governed, refereed journal rather than a recent creation, and they match the volume arithmetic visible today: the journal reached volume 70 in 2025 and volume 71 in 2026, a numbering consistent with annual volumes across a publication history stretching back to the 1950s, allowing for the irregularities normal in a journal of that age.

The move onto the Egyptian Knowledge Bank (EKB) platform placed the journal inside Egypt's national scholarly-publishing infrastructure. The EKB journals portal hosts a large stable of Egyptian university and society journals with standardised article pages, PDF delivery, citation exports in formats such as EndNote, and article-level DOIs under the 10.21608 prefix assigned to platform journals. For a faculty journal founded in the print era, that platform provides the persistent identifiers, exportable metadata and online discoverability that the earlier print operation, documented as recently as the university's 2015 description, did not have. Articles on the platform carry received, revised and accepted dates, structured abstracts and keywords, and subject classification under headings such as "Agricultural Economic and Social Sciences", giving readers the handling transparency expected of a contemporary journal.

Aims and scope as shown by its contents

The journal publishes across the full breadth of agricultural science as practised in Egypt, in English and in Arabic — the platform record includes articles with Arabic titles and Arabic-language texts alongside English ones, reflecting its role as a national as well as an international outlet. Its subject span, taken from the articles it has actually published in recent volumes, covers at least seven areas. First, agronomy and crop science: sunflower growth under tillage and no-tillage practice, irrigation intervals and nitrogen rates; flax genotype evaluation; wheat-focused studies including substitution of wheat flour by local cereal and pulse flours as an approach to Egypt's wheat gap. Second, agricultural economics and social sciences: a study of the determinants and role of agricultural investments in Egyptian economic development over 2006–2021, and an economic study of the factors affecting tomato exports in Egypt using a partial-equilibrium model comparing the periods before and after the 2016 currency liberalisation. Third, rural sociology and extension: a 2025 study of the knowledge gap in climate-smart agricultural practices among wheat farmers in Al-Sharqia Governorate, based on a sample of 276 farmers, and work on farmers' knowledge and implementation of good agricultural practices for reducing climate-change effects in Fayoum. Fourth, plant protection and entomology: a new Egyptian record of the moth Choreutis sexfasciella published in volume 65 (2020), and a 2025 study of biocontrol agents — marine algae and bacterial isolates — against the root-knot nematode Meloidogyne incognita in tomato. Fifth, forestry and environmental topics, such as the assessment of infested and healthy eucalyptus trees in the Serapium plantation in Ismailia Governorate (volume 70, 2025). Sixth, food and post-harvest related work that appears within its agricultural remit. Seventh, animal production and related faculty research, continuing the breadth the university describes as "agricultural science and related topics".

Two features of that contents profile deserve emphasis. The journal is strongly problem-focused on Egyptian agriculture: the wheat gap, tomato exports, Nile-Delta and reclaimed-land conditions, local pest records, governorate-level farm surveys and national investment data recur throughout. At the same time it is methodologically conventional in the best sense — field experiments over two seasons with factorial treatments, questionnaire studies with named sampling frames and statistical packages, and economic modelling with stated data periods — which tells a prospective author exactly what a successful submission looks like. Work of purely local descriptive character sits alongside analytical work, because the journal's mission has always included serving the faculty's own researchers and postgraduates as well as outside authors.

Article pattern, language and citation practice

Recent articles are cited as Alex. J. Agric. Sci. with volume, issue and page numbers — for example volume 64 (2019), volume 65 (2020), volume 68, issue 3 (2023), pages 218–229, volume 70, issue 1 (2025), pages 61–69, and volume 71, issue 1 (2026), pages 223–232 — and each platform article carries a DOI of the form 10.21608/alexja.year.article-number, such as 10.21608/alexja.2023.229306.1041 and 10.21608/alexja.2025.359933.1127. The platform presents articles in English by default with Arabic content where the article is Arabic, and article PDFs preserve the journal's printed citation line. For citing authors, the correct practice is to cite the platform title, Alexandria Journal of Agricultural Sciences, with the article DOI; researchers searching the older literature should also search the earlier title wording, Alexandria Journal of Agricultural Research, under print ISSN 0044-7250, because bibliographic databases split long runs across title variants and a single-title search will miss part of the archive. FAO's AGRIS database holds a deep back-run of the journal's articles under the older title, which is useful for tracing the journal's twentieth-century contents.

Peer review and editorial governance

The governance facts that can be verified are these. The journal is issued by the Faculty of Agriculture, Alexandria University, and is supervised, in the university's words, by the president and the journal's editorial board. Refereeing by at least two arbitrators was the stated standard in the university's description, and the current platform's article records — showing separate received, revised and accepted dates, sometimes only days or weeks apart for straightforward papers and longer where revision was needed — are consistent with a functioning refereed workflow rather than unreviewed posting. The platform also exposes each article's document type, with original articles predominating. What this profile does not do is invent a current named editor-in-chief, a current board list or a current fee schedule: none was verifiable from a stable official source during preparation, and the historical figures (a 22-member board; review fees of 100 Egyptian pounds or 100 dollars) are reported above strictly as the historical position described by the university, not as current charges. Authors should read the journal's own pages on the EKB platform for the current board, the current author instructions and any current charges before submitting, because those operational details are the platform's to state.

Indexing, metrics and verification status

The journal's discoverability rests on three verifiable pillars: its presence on the Egyptian Knowledge Bank platform with article-level DOIs and citation export; its long-standing inclusion in FAO AGRIS, the international agricultural information system, which holds records of its articles going back decades; and its ISSN registration under 0044-7250 (print) and 2535-1931 (online). Older directory listings of agricultural journals also carry the title, under its earlier wording, with the faculty as publisher and Egypt as the country of publication. No Journal Impact Factor, CiteScore, SCImago quartile or Scopus listing is claimed in this profile, because none could be verified from Clarivate, Scopus or SCImago sources consulted during its preparation, and the JournalsWorld record likewise shows no verified impact factor, h-index or SJR for the title. That absence should be read correctly: this is a national, faculty-published journal whose value to its community is archival and professional — it is where Egyptian agricultural faculties have published field, survey and economic research for generations — rather than a metric-led international title. An author who needs a Scopus- or Web of Science-listed venue for a specific formal requirement should verify the journal's status in that specific index at the time of submission, and should treat any unofficial site assigning the journal a precise impact-factor figure with caution.

How to submit and who the journal suits

Submission is through the journal's pages on the Egyptian Knowledge Bank journals platform (journal code alexja), which is the authoritative route for current instructions, templates and any fees; the faculty's postal identity for the journal is the Faculty of Agriculture, Alexandria University, Shatby, Alexandria. A competitive submission, judged by the journal's published pattern, has at least one of three strengths: Egyptian or comparable agro-ecological data that the journal's readership cannot get elsewhere (multi-season field trials, governorate-level surveys with proper sampling, national economic series); a clear applied question in crop, soil, water, plant-protection, animal or food research answered with conventional, fully reported methods; or postgraduate research written up to full-article standard, continuing the journal's historic role in publishing the faculty's master's and doctoral work in summary and full form. Manuscripts should state varieties, locations, seasons, soil and climate context, replication and statistical treatment for experimental work, and sampling frame, instrument and analysis for survey work, because the journal's own articles do so and its referees will expect it. Authors writing in Arabic should confirm the current language and abstract requirements on the platform; authors writing in English should expect an Egyptian and regional readership first and write context — why the crop, pest, market or governorate matters — accordingly.

Researchers who should look elsewhere are those needing rapid international citation-metric credit, those with work carrying no agricultural or food-system content, and those whose studies cannot be situated in any agricultural production, protection, economic or rural-social context. For its intended community — agricultural scientists in Egypt and the wider region, faculty researchers, extension specialists and postgraduate students — the journal offers something rarer than novelty: continuity. A title that has carried a faculty's research since 1953, that still publishes several issues a year with DOIs on a national platform, and whose archive runs from mid-century field work to 2026 climate-smart-agriculture surveys, is part of the permanent record of Egyptian agricultural science, and a paper placed there joins that record.

Summary

The Alexandria Journal of Agricultural Sciences (print ISSN 0044-7250; online ISSN 2535-1931; DOI prefix 10.21608/alexja) is Alexandria University Faculty of Agriculture's refereed journal, founded in 1953 under the closely related title Alexandria Journal of Agricultural Research and published today on the Egyptian Knowledge Bank platform at volume 71 in 2026. It publishes original research across agronomy, agricultural economics and social sciences, rural extension, plant protection, forestry and animal and food topics, in English and Arabic, with particular strength in Egyptian field, survey and economic studies. Its governance is faculty-based with refereeing by at least two arbitrators as the long-stated standard; its verified discoverability is the EKB platform, AGRIS and its ISSN registration; and its current board, instructions and any charges should be confirmed on its platform pages, which are the final authority for operational details.

The journal in Egypt's research ecosystem

Understanding this journal means understanding the place of faculty journals in Egyptian agricultural research. Egypt's agricultural faculties — at Alexandria, Cairo, Ain Shams, Mansoura, Zagazig, Assiut, Tanta and elsewhere — have each sustained journals of this kind for decades, and together they form the primary printed and now digital record of Egyptian field experimentation: variety trials on Delta and reclaimed soils, irrigation and drainage studies under Nile water regimes, pest and disease records for Egyptian agro-ecosystems, livestock and poultry work under local feed and climate conditions, and the rural sociology and extension research that connects the faculties to farming communities. National policy questions recur in these pages in a way they rarely do in international journals, because the audience is the ministry official, the extension director and the governorate agronomist as much as the fellow academic. The Alexandria journal's own contents illustrate the point precisely: a national study of agricultural investment determinants across 2006–2021, a partial-equilibrium analysis of tomato exports across a currency liberalisation, a strategy paper on closing the wheat gap with local flour blends, and farmer-knowledge surveys in named governorates are contributions whose full value is realised inside Egyptian agricultural decision-making. The migration of such journals onto the Egyptian Knowledge Bank platform matters for the same reason: it converts a faculty print archive, previously reachable mainly through AGRIS records and library holdings, into DOI-registered, exportable, searchable literature that can be cited with confidence by researchers inside and outside Egypt. A 2026 volume-71 article is therefore easier to find, cite and verify than a 1981 article in the same journal, even though both belong to one continuous title — and retrospective digitisation of the older run, where it exists on the platform, progressively closes that gap.

Practical guidance for citing and searching the archive

Because the title wording has varied, literature searching for this journal needs a deliberate strategy. Search both title forms — Alexandria Journal of Agricultural Sciences for the current platform run and Alexandria Journal of Agricultural Research for the older record — together with both ISSNs, 0044-7250 for print-era material and 2535-1931 for the online record, and the abbreviated form Alex. J. Agric. Sci. that appears in reference lists. Expect database records to disagree at the margins: aggregator lists prepared from the older title may file the journal under that wording with the faculty as publisher, while the platform itself uses the newer wording, and neither is an error so much as a snapshot taken at a different date. When citing a platform article, prefer the DOI, which is immune to title variation, and give volume, issue and pages as they appear in the article PDF's citation line. When citing a print-era article found through AGRIS, cite the title as it appeared on the article itself. Reviewers assessing the journal's longevity should likewise count the whole run: a title reaching volume 71 in 2026 with an inception documented by its own university in 1953 has a publication history that no single database snapshot, taken under either wording, fully captures on its own.

Finally, a word on expectations for authors from outside Egypt. The journal has always described its objective as publishing researchers from inside and outside the faculty, and its platform presence now makes it reachable to regional authors in a way the print journal was not. Non-Egyptian authors working on comparable dryland, irrigation, Delta-like or Mediterranean agricultural conditions will find its readership knowledgeable and its standards conventional; they should nonetheless write for that readership, situating their conditions against Egyptian comparators where the comparison is genuine, and should expect the same two-referee scrutiny and revision discipline as any faculty author.