About Journal of Agricultural Resources and Environment

Journal of Agricultural Resources and Environment

The Journal of Agricultural Resources and Environment is a Chinese-language national academic journal covering the resources and environment of agriculture, issued from Tianjin, China. It carries ISSN 2095-6819 and CN 12-1437/S. Established in 1984, it was previously published under the titles International Agricultural Environmental Protection and Agricultural Environment and Development. The journal is administered by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and co-sponsored by the Agro-Environmental Protection Institute of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, based in Tianjin, and the Chinese Society of Agricultural Ecological and Environmental Protection. It is published bimonthly, issued in odd-numbered months, by its editorial office. Its columns cover management and policy, land resources, grassland resources, nutrient resources, biological resources, climate resources, water resources, rural resources and fundamental research on the agricultural ecological environment. The journal is indexed in Scopus. It is distinct from the Journal of Agro-Environment Science, a separate journal published by the same editorial family in Tianjin.

History: From International Agricultural Environmental Protection in 1984

The journal was established in 1984, in the first decade of China's reform and opening, when the environmental side-effects of agricultural intensification — fertiliser and pesticide use, irrigation, and the pressure of a large population on limited farmland — were becoming a recognised field of Chinese research and policy. Its first title, International Agricultural Environmental Protection, signalled an outward-looking remit: to report international experience in protecting the agricultural environment and to introduce it to Chinese readers. It was subsequently published as Agricultural Environment and Development, a title reflecting the widening of its concerns from protection alone to the relationship between agricultural development and the environment. It later took its current title, Journal of Agricultural Resources and Environment, which reframes the field in terms of resources — land, grassland, nutrients, biology, climate and water — and the environment that sustains them. Each title change widened the journal's scope while keeping its centre in the agricultural environment, and the journal's present column structure is the mature form of that evolution.

Sponsorship and the Agro-Environmental Protection Institute

The journal is administered by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the Chinese government ministry responsible for agriculture, and co-sponsored by the Agro-Environmental Protection Institute of that ministry and the Chinese Society of Agricultural Ecological and Environmental Protection. The Agro-Environmental Protection Institute, based in Tianjin, is the ministry's specialist research institute for the agricultural environment, and it presents the journal on its official site as one of its journals. The institute's research remit — the monitoring and protection of the agricultural environment, including the quality of farmland, irrigation water and agricultural inputs — supplies the journal with its institutional base and much of its author and reviewer community. The co-sponsoring society links the journal to the nationwide professional community of agricultural ecology and environmental protection. The journal's mission, as stated by the institute, is to establish an academic exchange platform for researchers in agricultural resources and environment in China, to fully reflect cutting-edge research and applied achievements in these fields, and to promote the development of agricultural environmental protection in the country.

Column Structure and Subject Coverage

The journal organises its contents into nine columns: Management and Policy; Land Resources; Grassland Resources; Nutrient Resources; Biological Resources; Climate Resources; Water Resources; Rural Resources; and Fundamental Research on the Agricultural Ecological Environment. This structure is itself a map of the field as the journal defines it. The resources columns treat the material basis of agriculture — the quantity, quality and sustainable use of arable land, the grasslands that support livestock production, the nutrient cycles that connect fertiliser use to soil fertility and water quality, the biological resources including crop genetic resources and soil biota, the climate resources that determine cropping possibilities under a changing climate, and the water resources on which irrigated agriculture depends. The Rural Resources column extends the frame to the countryside as a whole, while the Management and Policy column carries research on the governance of the agricultural environment — standards, monitoring systems, and the policies by which China regulates fertiliser, pesticide, film and manure use. The fundamental-research column anchors the applied columns in the basic science of the agricultural ecological environment.

Publication Pattern and Editorial Organisation

The journal is a bimonthly publication, issued in odd-numbered months, giving it six issues a year. It is published by the Editorial Office of the Journal of Agricultural Resources and Environment in Tianjin. In international journal databases the publisher is recorded as the Editorial Board of Journal of Agro-Environment Science, reflecting the close editorial relationship between this journal and its sister title: the two journals share an editorial family rooted in the Agro-Environmental Protection Institute, while remaining separate journals with different titles, ISSNs and scopes. Scopus coverage of the journal is recorded from 2019 onward in current listings, and the journal's citation performance has grown: scientometric summaries record it cited by 549 articles in the three years preceding 2024, with subject rankings in the second quartile for agricultural and biological sciences and the third quartile for environmental science in SCImago-derived data, and an h-index of 17 in 2025 data. The journal's standard abbreviation is J. Agric. Resour. Environ.

The Field the Journal Serves

Agricultural resources and environment is a field defined by tension: agriculture must produce more from land and water that are limited and, in places, degraded, while reducing the pollution that intensive production generates. In China that tension is acute. The journal's subject matter tracks the country's principal agricultural-environment challenges: the protection of scarce arable land and the remediation of contaminated farmland; the efficient use of fertiliser nutrients and the control of non-point-source pollution of rivers and lakes; the sustainable management of the northern grasslands; the adaptation of cropping systems to climate change; the competition for water between agriculture, cities and ecosystems; and the treatment of rural wastes and residues. Research published in the journal addresses these challenges at every scale, from soil-process studies to national policy analysis. Its longevity — continuous publication since 1984 under three titles — means its archive also serves as a record of how China's understanding of the agricultural environment changed from the protection concerns of the 1980s to the resource-security and green-development framing of the present title.

Indexing and Evaluation Standing

The journal is indexed in Scopus, the principal international abstract and citation database, with coverage recorded from 2019 in current listings. Within China's domestic evaluation system it has long figured in the citation rankings for its field: in the Chinese S&T journal citation data for agricultural engineering and environment-resource science published in 2016 (2015 data), the Journal of Agricultural Resources and Environment appeared among the ranked source journals of the field with 376 citations recorded under its ISSN 2095-6819. Its Scopus-derived indicators have risen in recent years: summaries record its two-year impact measure rising from 0.598 in 2020 to 1.470 in 2025 computations, with a total of 300 citations in the three years preceding 2022 growing to 549 in the three years preceding 2024. For a Chinese-language journal in an applied field, Scopus indexing provides the international discoverability through which its Tianjin-based research community reaches readers abroad, while its ministry administration and institute sponsorship anchor its standing at home.

Distinguishing the Journal from Its Sister Title

The journal must be distinguished from the Journal of Agro-Environment Science, the other major title of the same Tianjin editorial family. The Journal of Agro-Environment Science is the family's research journal for agro-environmental science as such; the Journal of Agricultural Resources and Environment, profiled here, is the title organised around resources — land, grassland, nutrient, biological, climate, water and rural resources — together with management, policy and fundamental agricultural ecological environment research. The two journals are separate periodicals with separate ISSNs: this journal's ISSN is 2095-6819 and its CN number is 12-1437/S. Cataloguers should also note the journal's earlier titles, International Agricultural Environmental Protection and Agricultural Environment and Development, under which its pre-renaming volumes are cited. In English-language databases the title is sometimes rendered without the plural, but the journal's official English title, as given by its sponsoring institute, is Journal of Agricultural Resources and Environment.

Readership and Significance

The journal's readership comprises researchers in agricultural resources and environmental science, staff of agricultural and environmental monitoring institutions, policy analysts in agricultural administration, and graduate students across China's agricultural universities and academies. Its significance lies in its position and persistence: administered by the agriculture ministry and sponsored by the ministry's agro-environmental institute, it is the national platform its mission statement claims — a place where the resource base of Chinese agriculture and the environment that sustains it are studied together, in Chinese, for the community that manages them. Founded in 1984 and carried through three titles to its present resources-and-environment framing, it belongs in this directory's magazines category as a scholarly journal, identifiable by its Tianjin base, its ISSN 2095-6819, its bimonthly appearance in odd-numbered months, and its nine-column structure spanning management and policy and the land, grassland, nutrient, biological, climate, water and rural resources of Chinese agriculture.