The RES is delighted to announce that Agricultural and Forest Entomology (AFE) is launching several new article types, creating a space for different types of research and some innovative new formats in the journal.
As well as research articles, reviews, viewpoints and short communications, the journal is now also inviting methods and applications articles, which present novel research methods, novel applications of methods from other disciplines or new data analysis programmes or packages. The recent AFE special issue “Advances in insect biomonitoring for agriculture and forestry” (Vol 27. Iss. 1), includes articles that demonstrate and propose advances that can contribute towards meeting many of the challenges facing biomonitoring, and the Editors-in-Chief anticipate that publishing more methods and applications articles will continue the trend of highlighting advances in methodologies used across the field.
Excitingly, the Editors-in-Chief of AFE also now invite ‘policy insights’ articles. These short articles should present a novel perspective on recent or upcoming agricultural and/or forest policy that stands to impact insects positively or negatively. The focus should be on the impacts of that policy on insect populations and ideally how those impacts can be mitigated or encouraged. It is hoped that through these policy insights, there will be real-world applications and effects driven by the research published in the journal.
This has also involved a refresh to the review-style articles, now renamed ‘synthesis’ articles to broaden the scope for systematic reviews and meta-analyses, and focus on advancing the frontier of the science through synthesis, as opposed to simply summarising a topic. The existing ‘viewpoint’ articles, essentially short perspective articles, also have a revised description to encourage new directions, ideas and perspectives for the field.
These are important first steps in a wider expansion of the content that AFE publishes, with more new formats currently in development that will represent an exciting new chapter for the journal.
“These new article types unlock a world of opportunities to publish exciting new research and ideas, and I can’t wait to see the kind of research AFE will publish in the months and years ahead. Strengthening the link between AFE and policy, whilst separately encouraging innovation in research methods, feels like an incredibly natural evolution, and one that promises to influence not only what we study, but also how and why we do it.” Jordan Cuff, Editor-in-Chief, Agricultural and Forest Entomology
Read in detail about all the article types the journal accepts via the button below and consider submitting some exciting and innovative new articles.
