Allelopathy Journal

About Allelopathy Journal

Allelopathy Journal — Journal Profile

The Allelopathy Journal is the specialist international journal of allelopathy — the science of the chemical interactions through which one plant, microbe or other organism influences the growth, survival or reproduction of another. It is published from Hisar, Haryana, in India by the International Allelopathy Foundation, the foundation whose name appears on the journal's current article PDFs, and it presents itself on its own website as the official publication of Allelopathy Books. Its print ISSN is 0971-4693, the identifier carried on this JournalsWorld record and printed on the journal's own papers; OpenAlex groups that number together with ISSN 0974-1240 and ISSN 0973-5046 under a single source record for the title, which is why more than one number circulates for the journal in bibliographic databases. Few journals anywhere are devoted to a single ecological mechanism, and this one has carried its field's name as its title for three decades: its papers run from the mid-1990s to the present, its volumes had reached volume 66 in 2025, and its author community is genuinely global, with the largest national contributions coming from China and India.

Identity and history

Allelopathy as a named science is young. The word was coined by Hans Molisch in 1937 for the biochemical interactions between plants and microorganisms, but the field only acquired its own institutions in the late twentieth century: international societies, a run of world congresses, and, in India, a publishing base at Haryana Agricultural University in Hisar built up by Professor S. S. Narwal and his collaborators. The Allelopathy Journal grew out of that base. Bibliographic coverage in Scopus, as summarised in a bibliometric study published in the journal itself in 2023, begins in 1996, and OpenAlex carries a small number of items dated 1994, so the journal's run now spans roughly thirty years. Its growth can be read in its own numbering: the volumes of 2023 were numbered 58 to 60, those of 2025 had reached volume 66, and the journal's website was displaying volume 69 material at checking time, which implies several volumes, each of two issues, appearing every year in the journal's recent practice.

The journal's printed instructions to authors, reproduced from its own pages, show an editorial structure built for an international field: editorial offices and regional editors in the USA, Australia, Spain, India and China, with manuscripts from India directed to Professor Narwal at Hisar and manuscripts from China directed to the Chinese regional editor. The foundation's mailing address given in those instructions is the International Allelopathy Foundation, 8/15, Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar-125 004, India. That decentralised structure matches the journal's authorship. The 2023 bibliometric analysis of the journal's Scopus record counted 1,209 papers published between 1996 and 2022, written by 4,870 authors; China was the most productive country with 425 papers, followed by India with 243, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences was the single most productive institution with 67 papers. Allelopathy research is concentrated in agricultural universities and plant-science institutes across Asia, and the journal's contents reflect that geography while also drawing contributors from Europe, the Americas, Africa and Australia.

The journal also serves as its field's memory. Alongside research papers it publishes long historical and biographical series — multi-part accounts of allelopathy research in the former USSR, biographies of prominent allelopathy scientists, and a "Pioneers of Allelopathy" series profiling figures such as Udo Blum of North Carolina State University, who received the field's Molisch Award in 1999. A specialist journal that documents its own pioneers is doing community work as well as research publishing, and that dual role is part of this title's identity.

Scope and subjects

The journal publishes research on allelopathic interactions in cultivated and natural plant communities and on the chemistry and activity of the compounds — allelochemicals — that mediate them. In practice its contents cover: the identification, isolation and mode of action of allelochemicals such as phenolic acids and essential-oil constituents; phytotoxicity bioassays and the effects of plant residues, root exudates and leachates on germination and seedling growth; allelopathy in weed management, including the search for natural-product herbicides and the use of allelopathic cover crops, mulches and green manures; autotoxicity and soil sickness in continuous cropping; allelopathic interactions involving algae, cyanobacteria and soil microorganisms; the role of allelopathy in biological invasions, where chemicals released by an invading plant can suppress native competitors; and applied work in agronomy, horticulture and forestry that tests these mechanisms in the field. OpenAlex's topic assignment for the source, at checking time, put 895 of its works under "Allelopathy and phytotoxic interactions", with further large groups under weed control and herbicide applications, plant–microbe interactions and immunity, insect pest control strategies, insect–plant interactions, and essential oils and antimicrobial activity — a fair map of the journal's actual range, which stretches from pure chemical ecology to very applied crop protection.

Recent issues show that range in concrete form. The journal's website at checking time displayed papers on cyanobacterial biofertiliser combined with sorghum and maize mulches for weed control in wheat; on cassava effluents as a candidate bioherbicide in fallow fields; on sunflower and Indian mustard used together for phytoremediation of heavy-metal-contaminated soils in Iraq; on the in-vitro anthelmintic activity of plant extracts against a livestock parasite; and on plant-derived compounds formulated into nanoparticle drug carriers. The last two examples mark the journal's outer boundary: work on plant bioactive compounds with pharmaceutical relevance appears alongside the core plant-interaction science, under the journal's stated aim of promoting research in the plant sciences and the health sciences.

Editorial information and publishing practice

The journal's own instructions, printed in its issues, ask authors to prepare manuscripts to a stated format, point them to model manuscripts on the journal website, and route submissions by email to the appropriate regional editor — the United States, Australia and Spain editors for their regions, Professor S. S. Narwal for manuscripts from India, and the Chinese regional editor for manuscripts from China. Because those printed instructions have been carried in the journal for many years, authors should confirm the current submission route on the journal's website before sending a manuscript; the live site is the operational source, and it carries the journal's current issues, article PDFs and contact routes. The journal's articles carry DOIs under the prefix 10.26651/allelo.j, and recent papers are published as full-text PDFs through the journal site, with the foundation's name, the ISSN line and the article's bibliographic details printed on the first page.

On charges, this profile records an honest gap: the material fetched for this profile did not disclose an article processing charge, a submission fee schedule or a current subscription price list that could be quoted with confidence, so the journal's fee position is recorded here as not publicly disclosed in the sources checked. Prospective authors should ask the editorial office directly before submitting if charges matter to them. The same caution applies to any claimed review timeline: no verified figure was found, and none is stated here.

Metrics and what they mean

Two independent counts of this journal's record are available, and this profile reports both with their sources rather than blending them. OpenAlex (source S169548688, resolved through its ISSN endpoint at checking time) counted 1,144 works with 4,148 citations, an h-index of 28, an i10-index of 114 and a two-year mean citedness of about 0.27; its year-by-year counts show a journal publishing at a substantial rate in recent years — 62 works counted for 2022, 75 for 2023, 76 for 2024 and 91 for 2025. The bibliometric study published in the journal in 2023, working from Scopus data for 1996–2022, counted 1,209 papers and 9,826 citations, an average of 8.13 citations per paper, and reported a high degree of co-authorship (a collaboration index of 4.03). The two totals differ because the databases cover different document types and years; both agree that this is a long-running, heavily collaborative, mid-sized specialist journal whose typical paper is cited a handful of times and whose most-cited work concerns the practical exploitation of allelopathy in weed and crop management.

The 2023 bibliometric study also reported the journal's Scopus-based indicators for 2021 as a CiteScore of 1.8, an SJR of 0.222 and a SNIP of 0.417, with a rank of 264 out of 482 journals in Scopus's Plant Science category, and described the journal as continuously indexed in Scopus. Those figures are quoted here exactly as that study reported them, for 2021; they should not be read as current-year values. The journal's older printed front matter lists indexing in the ISI services of its time — Current Contents (Agriculture), Science Citation Index and Research Alert — together with Ulrich's directory and abstracting in the CAB abstracting journals. Indexing claims age quickly, and any author who needs a specific database's current coverage should check that database directly; what can be said on the evidence fetched is that the journal has a documented history of Scopus coverage from 1996 and of citation-index coverage reaching back to its early years.

How to read this journal as an author

For a researcher working on plant chemical ecology, this journal offers something general plant-science journals cannot: a readership composed almost entirely of specialists in the same mechanism. A bioassay study, a residue-management field trial or a chemical characterisation of a new allelochemical will be read, and cited, by the community that works on exactly those questions, and the journal's own keyword history shows the field's centre of gravity moving over time — from crop-focused terms such as rice, sorghum and sunflower in its first decade, through microbial and chemical terms in its second, toward essential oils, invasive plants and chemical composition in recent years. Authors should also weigh the journal's realistic citation profile: the indicators above describe a solid specialist outlet, not a high-impact general title, and a manuscript whose contribution is a well-executed study within the field is a better fit than one chasing breadth. Before submitting, verify the current editorial contact and any charges on the journal's website, follow the model manuscript format the journal provides, and make the allelopathic mechanism — organism, compound, receiver, dose and response — explicit in the title and abstract, since that is how this journal's readers search.

Similar journals in this directory

Readers comparing outlets for weed-science and plant-interaction work may also consult the Indian Journal of Weed Science (ISSN 0253-8040 and 0974-8164), the official journal of the Indian Society of Weed Science; Planta Daninha (ISSN 0100-8358 and 1806-9681), the Brazilian weed-science society's journal; Weed & Turfgrass Science (ISSN 2287-7924 and 2288-3312) from Korea; and Pesquisa Florestal Brasileira (ISSN 1983-2605), Embrapa's forestry journal, for allelopathy work set in plantation and forest systems. Each of those titles has its own full profile in this directory.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Allelopathy Journal's ISSN? Its print ISSN is 0971-4693. OpenAlex also groups ISSN 0974-1240 and ISSN 0973-5046 with the same source record, so citations and catalogue entries may show any of the three numbers for this title.

Who publishes the Allelopathy Journal? The International Allelopathy Foundation of Hisar, Haryana, India; the journal's website describes it as the official publication of Allelopathy Books.

Is the Allelopathy Journal indexed in Scopus? A bibliometric study published in the journal in 2023 analysed its Scopus record for 1996–2022 and described it as continuously indexed in Scopus, reporting a 2021 CiteScore of 1.8. Current coverage should be confirmed in Scopus itself.

Does the Allelopathy Journal charge authors? A fee schedule could not be verified from the sources fetched for this profile; the journal's charges, if any, are not publicly disclosed in that material. Ask the editorial office before submitting.

What subjects does it publish? Allelopathy and phytotoxic interactions in crops, weeds, forests and natural communities; allelochemical chemistry and bioassays; allelopathy in weed management and biological invasion; and plant bioactive compounds at the boundary with the health sciences.

How do I submit? The journal's printed instructions route manuscripts by email to regional editors in the USA, Australia, Spain, India and China, with model manuscripts provided on the journal website. Confirm the current route on the website before submitting.

The field the journal serves

To understand what belongs in this journal, it helps to understand the shape of allelopathy research itself. The phenomenon — one plant suppressing or stimulating another through chemicals released from roots, leaves, residues or litter — sits at the crossing point of ecology, organic chemistry and practical agriculture, and the journal's contents follow that three-way pull. One strand is analytical: identifying which compounds a donor plant releases, at what concentrations, and how long they persist in soil before microbes transform or destroy them. A second strand is physiological: tracing what those compounds do to a receiver plant's germination, root growth, photosynthesis, nutrient uptake or hormone balance. A third strand is agricultural: turning the first two into practice, through allelopathic rice and sorghum varieties bred or chosen for weed suppression, cover-crop and mulch systems that smother weeds chemically as well as physically, and candidate botanical herbicides intended to reduce dependence on synthetic chemistry. The journal publishes all three strands, and its strongest papers usually connect at least two of them — a field result explained by a compound, or a laboratory bioassay tested at field scale.

The journal's geographic centre of gravity is also part of its identity. Allelopathy research flourishes where labour-intensive weed control is expensive, where herbicide resistance is spreading, and where smallholder cropping systems make chemical ecology immediately useful — conditions found across South and East Asia in particular. That is why the bibliometric record shows China and India far ahead of other countries in this journal's pages, why its regional editorships are placed where they are, and why so many of its papers concern rice, wheat, sorghum, maize and tropical weeds. At the same time the journal is not a regional title in its readership: biological invasion, one of its major themes, is a global research front, and its invasion papers — on tree of heaven, Japanese knotweed, eucalyptus and other aggressive species whose success is partly chemical — are written for an international audience of ecologists as much as for agronomists.

Reading and using the backfile

Thirty years of continuous publication give the journal a backfile that functions as a reference library for its field. A researcher beginning work on a new donor species can usually find, somewhere in these volumes, earlier bioassay results on the same or a related species, the standard test species and concentrations earlier authors used, and the review and historical articles that place the work in context — including the journal's own periodic retrospectives on allelopathy research past, present and future. The 2023 bibliometric analysis is itself part of that apparatus: it records which keywords dominated each era of the journal, which authors and institutions published most, and how collaboration widened over time, and it gives newcomers a compact map of the community they are joining. Because the journal's papers are distributed as PDFs through its website with DOIs under its own prefix, the backfile is citable and linkable in the ordinary way, and library and database records under its several ISSNs converge on the same title.

One caution belongs in any honest profile of this journal: its several bibliographic identities can confuse a quick search. The print ISSN 0971-4693 is the number printed on its papers and carried by this record; OpenAlex attaches two further numbers, 0974-1240 and 0973-5046, to the same source; and its price and subscription line in older PDFs pairs the print ISSN with a year, which has occasionally been misread as part of the identifier. Anyone verifying the journal — for a submission decision, a tenure file or a library catalogue — should anchor on the title together with the Hisar foundation and the print ISSN, and treat database records that split or merge its ISSNs as the same single journal.