A DECADE REVIEW OF FASE

Graphical abstract

Frontiers of Agricultural Science and Engineering (FASE), launched in 2014, is an authoritative source of information for professionals with interests encompassing agricultural science and engineering, supervised by Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), administered by CAE, China Agricultural University (CAU) and Higher Education Press (HEP), and published by HEP on a quarterly basis in English. The journal is published both in print and online.

FASE is an open access international journal with no charges for submission or publication. Up to now, it has experienced a decade of development.

1 AIMS & SCOPE

As an international communication platform, FASE aims foster scientific information flow, stimulate transdisciplinary inquiries that have strong multi-disciplinary connections, and cultivate research and idea exchanges that address agricultural sustainability challenges regionally and globally.

To distinguish it from other journals in the field, FASE especially welcomes contributions that feature the integration of science, technology, policy and social impact related to research advances in agriculture and engineering. Preference will be given to manuscripts on scientific and technological innovations with policy dimensions that support sustainable intensification of agricultural development worldwide. In particular, FASE seeks holistic, comparative studies that examine differences and commonalities and explore science-, technology- and evidence-based sustainable agricultural development solutions that are adaptable in different regions and/or nations, especially across the developing and developed economies.

2 TOPIC

The topic of FASE is “Agriculture Comprehensive Development” from 2014 to 2019. Food security is an important basis for national security, and green and sustainable development has become the main theme of modern agricultural development at home and abroad. Therefore, the topic of FASE is accordingly adjusted to “Agriculture Green Development” since 2020, and a series of special issues around this topic has been organized and published, which greatly enhanced the development and international influence of FASE.

3 EDITORIAL TEAM

3.1 Editorial Board

FASE has totally 117 editorial members including 1 Editor-in-Chief (Fusuo Zhang, Academician of CAE, Professor of CAU) and 6 Associate Editors-in-Chief^[1]. Among them, 64 members are from abroad, accounting for 55%.

3.2 Youth Members

From 2021 to 2022, FASE conducted online audition and recommendation for youth members. At present, there are 22 youth members^[2,3] making contributions to the journal from various aspects, such as periodical publicity, peer review, contribution, and appointment. Among them, Prof. Tida Ge and Prof. Shuai Zhang were selected as the 2022 outstanding youth members^[4] for their special contributions to the journal.

3.3 Editors

FASE has 4 full-time and 8 part-time editors who are responsible for the management, review, editing, art design, publishing and publicity of the journal. It also has at least 8 guest editors every year who are responsible for the invitation to cutting-edge and hot articles, reviewing and promoting manuscripts.

4 PUBLISHING ETHICS

FASE has been a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)^[5] since November 2015, its publishing behavior strictly implements the codes of conduct and best practice guidelines of COPE. FASE also share the knowledge and creativity with the world, all the published articles are open access and under the CC BY license^[6].

5 INDEXING

FASE has been indexed by DOAJ^[7], Scopus^[8], ESCI (Emerging Sources Citation Index)^[9], Sherpa Romeo^[10], JournalGuide^[11], research4life^[12], MIAR^[13], i-Journals^[14], etc. All these databases provide broad display platforms and enhance the international influence for FASE. In particular, Scopus and ESCI also provide valid statistical analysis data which provide value information for the development of FASE.

6 REVIEW & PUBLISHING TIME

All manuscripts in FASE are processed quickly, the average time are about 5 and 28 days from submission to first decision and final decision, respectively (Fig.1). All accepted articles will be published alternately in Just Accepted, Online First and Latest Issue to ensure the speed and quality of publication.

Fig.1 The screenshot of average time from submission to decision in Scholar One submission system of FASE.

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7 SPECIAL ISSUES

There have totally 23 special issues or collections been published in FASE from 2014 to 2022^[15]. These collections either solve practical problems in agriculture (e.g., Food Security^[16]) or keep up with the frontiers (e.g., Agriculture Green Development^[17]) and hot spots (e.g., Genome Editing in Agriculture: Technology, Applications and Regulations^[18]) of agricultural development. Among them, “Genome Editing”, as a ground breaking research front, has been consistently ranked among the top 10 engineering fronts in the agricultural field released by CAE from 2017 to 2021^[19]. These collections also provide a good platform for academic exchange for the majority of scholars and make great contributions to enhancing the international influence of FASE.

8 JOURNAL INFLUENCE

FASE was indexed by Scopus and ESCI in 2017. Statistical analysis of Scopus and Clarivate databases shows that the influence of FASE continues to rise, especially since 2019 (Fig.2). The CiteScore value is 2.7 in 2021, it is ranked 63 out of 211 journals in the field of agricultural and biological sciences (30%, Q2). The CiteScore value is 3.9 in 2022, no rankings have been released now. The estimated IF value is 3.8 in 2022, It is estimated to be ranked 19th among 90 SCI journals and 1st among 34 ESCI journals in the category of agronomy, and 15% in overall ranking (19/124, Q1).

Fig.2 The influence trend chart of FASE from 2016 to 2022. The IF is the value estimated through the Clarivate database. IF value = The total number of citations of this journal in the two years before the year of publication ÷ The total number of articles published by this journal in the previous two years. The CiteScore is the value showed in the Scopus database.

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9 FUTURE OUTLOOK

Since its launch, FASE has been dedicated to optimizing and upgrading the “Frontiers Journals platform” as a pilot journal. Up to now, the platform has been constantly updated from the aspects of content presentation, search, data statistics and analysis, news release, and so on. So far, it has collected more than 25,000 articles from 36 journals from 4 major disciplines, with more than 20 million downloads^[20].

In the future, FASE will enhance the international influence by expanding international cooperation, strengthening publicity and article recommendation on various platforms, and organizing academic or periodical exchange conferences, etc., so as to promote FASE to be indexed by SCI, EI, CSCD or other more well-known databases as soon as possible. In any case, the main purpose of FASE is to continuously update the journal platform and improve articles’ quality, and strive to provide a better academic exchange platform for scholars. More quality articles are sincerely welcomed to be submitted to FASE submission system^[21].

References

[1] FASE. Editorial Board. https://journal.hep.com.cn/fase/EN/column/column212.shtml

[2] FASE. The first session FASE youth members is announced. May 31, 2021 (in Chinese). https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Q7xNy_yndXDVA5NX0ca0kA

[3] FASE. The second round of FASE youth members is announced. March 30, 2022 (in Chinese). https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/TWpR5V5p7Lpiu3QsIPgxzw

[4] FASE. 2022 Outstanding youth members’ award in FASE. March 30, 2022 (in Chinese). https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/tOIETbmXK6Urj0pVxd6iNA

[5] COPE. Frontiers of Agricultural Science and Engineering. https://publicationethics.org/members/frontiers-agricultural-science-and-engineering

[6] Creative Commons. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

[7] DOAJ. Frontiers of Agricultural Science and Engineering. https://doaj.org/toc/2095-977X

[8] Scopus. Frontiers of Agricultural Science and Engineering. https://www.scopus.com/sourceid/21100838766

[9] Clarivate. Frontiers of Agricultural Science and Engineering. https://jcr.clarivate.com/jcr-jp/journal-profile?journal=FRONT%20AGRIC%20SCI%20ENG&year=All%20years

[10] Sherpa Romeo. Frontiers of Agricultural Science and Engineering. https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/id/publication/31799

[11] JournalGuide. Frontiers of Agricultural Science and Engineering. https://www.journalguide.com/journals/frontiers-of-agricultural-science-and-engineering

[12] research4life. Journals. https://portal.research4life.org/content/journals

[13] MIAR. Frontiers of Agricultural Science and Engineering. https://miar.ub.edu/issn/2095-7505

[14] Uledge. i-Journals. http://www.udledge.com/i-journal.html

[15] FASE. Collections. https://journal.hep.com.cn/fase/EN/collections

[16] FASE. Food Security. https://journal.hep.com.cn/fase/EN/volumn/volumn_1523.shtml

[17] FASE. Agriculture Green Development. https://journal.hep.com.cn/fase/EN/volumn/volumn_3621.shtml

[18] FASE. Genome Editing in Agriculture: Technology, Applications and Regulations. https://journal.hep.com.cn/fase/EN/volumn/volumn_3666.shtml

[19] Xu J X, Li Y Z, Yao Y K, Zhao J, Tang J Y, Feng Z X. Genome editing: a ground breaking research has been ranked top 10 engineering fronts from 2017 to 2021. Frontiers of Agricultural Science and Engineering, 2022, 9(2): 309–311

[20] Frontiers Journals. Home. https://journal.hep.com.cn

[21] FASE. Submission system. https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/fase

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2023. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)