About Journal of Integrative Agriculture
Journal of Integrative Agriculture
Overview
Journal of Integrative Agriculture is a peer-reviewed scientific journal based in Beijing, Beijing, China. It was founded in 2002 as Agricultural Sciences in China. The journal is published by Elsevier since 2006, sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) and co-sponsored by the Chinese Association of Agricultural Science Societies, under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs; editorial office at No. 12 Zhongguancun South Street, Beijing. Its subject scope covers crop science, animal science, horticulture, plant protection, agro-ecosystem and environment, food science, and agricultural economics and management, with emphasis on interdisciplinary and systematic approaches. For readers of a media directory, the essential facts are its home city, its sponsoring and publishing organisations, its language and frequency where those are attested, and the research community it serves. This profile brings those verified facts together, explains how the journal developed, and describes in detail the topics it publishes, the kinds of articles it carries, how it is indexed and discovered, and why it matters to researchers in its field in China and internationally. No claim in this profile rests on circulation or impact figures that could not be verified from the journal's own descriptions, its publisher, university and institute pages, or established journal directories.
History and Development
The history of Journal of Integrative Agriculture begins in 2002 as Agricultural Sciences in China. Founded in 2002 as Agricultural Sciences in China, it has been available on ScienceDirect since 2006 and indexed in SCIE since 2009. It won the title of Outstanding Science and Technology Journal of China in 2008, according to its official description, and is described by its sponsors as a leading agricultural sciences journal in China. That history matters because it explains the journal's present form: its language, its publisher, and its audience were all shaped by the decisions taken at its founding and at later turning points such as renamings, publisher changes or moves to open access, where those are recorded. Where a journal began under an earlier title, the earlier title remains part of its bibliographic record, and libraries and indexing services link the titles so that citations to the older name still lead readers to the same journal. In Beijing, the journal grew alongside the research institutions that sponsor it, and its development mirrors the wider internationalisation of Chinese scientific publishing, in which long-established Chinese journals have increasingly published in English, partnered with international publishers, and sought indexing in global citation databases in order to reach readers well beyond China.
Publisher, Sponsors and Publication Details
Journal of Integrative Agriculture is published by Elsevier since 2006, sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) and co-sponsored by the Chinese Association of Agricultural Science Societies, under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs; editorial office at No. 12 Zhongguancun South Street, Beijing. Understanding that publishing arrangement helps readers interpret the journal correctly. The sponsoring society or institute supplies the scholarly community, the editorial leadership and the subject expertise, while the publishing partner typically provides the production platform, online hosting, distribution and archiving through which most readers now encounter the journal. The journal is based in Beijing, Beijing, and that location is not incidental: it places the editorial operation inside the institution and research community whose work the journal most directly serves. Its frequency is monthly, in English. Its ISSN is 2095-3119 in ScienceDirect listings. Those identifiers are the stable reference points used by libraries, indexing services and authors, and they distinguish this journal from other titles with similar names in the same or neighbouring fields, a real risk in Chinese scientific publishing where several journals can share translated or abbreviated titles.
Scope and Subject Coverage
The scope of Journal of Integrative Agriculture covers crop science, animal science, horticulture, plant protection, agro-ecosystem and environment, food science, and agricultural economics and management, with emphasis on interdisciplinary and systematic approaches. In practice, that scope is organised around recognisable subject areas that recur across its issues and its official aims-and-scope statements. The principal areas include:
- crop science and plant protection
- animal and veterinary science
- horticulture
- agro-ecosystem, environment and food science
- agricultural economics and management
Listing those areas matters for authors choosing where to submit and for readers browsing the field, because a journal's stated scope is the first test an editor applies to a new manuscript. Work that falls outside the scope is normally returned without review, while work at the centre of the scope is sent to specialist referees. The breadth described here also explains the journal's readership: specialists in its core topics read it closely, while researchers in adjacent areas encounter it through database searches on the specific methods, organisms, materials or systems their own work shares with the journal's subject matter.
Research Focus in Practice
Within its scope, Journal of Integrative Agriculture concentrates on original work that advances knowledge rather than on news or commentary about science. Its coverage of crop science, animal science, horticulture, plant protection, agro-ecosystem and environment, food science, and agricultural economics and management, with emphasis on interdisciplinary and systematic approaches means that a single issue can move between fundamental studies and applied work, provided each contribution is grounded in evidence and method. Editors and reviewers therefore look for a clear question, a method capable of answering it, and results that other researchers can check, reuse or build on. That emphasis is consistent across Chinese academy and society journals of this generation: they were founded to give a growing national research community a rigorously reviewed venue of its own, and they have kept that role even as their authorship and readership have become international. For a directory reader, the practical consequence is that the journal should be understood as a primary research outlet, cited for its articles themselves, rather than as a magazine summarising research published elsewhere.
Article Types and Peer Review
Journal of Integrative Agriculture publishes peer-reviewed research manuscripts across its five core subject categories. Each article type serves a different purpose. Full research articles present a complete study, from background and methods to results and interpretation. Reviews synthesise a body of earlier work and are useful entry points for readers new to a topic. Shorter formats, where the journal offers them, allow a single novel finding to be reported quickly, while perspectives and similar pieces, where offered, let specialists set out an interpretation or a research direction for the field. All research content is peer reviewed: manuscripts are assessed by editors and independent referees before acceptance, and the journal's publisher and sponsor describe that review process as the basis of its quality control. Authors should consult the journal's current author instructions for formatting, ethics and data requirements, because those operational details change more often than the journal's scope or history.
Editorial Home and Institutional Anchoring
The editorial home of Journal of Integrative Agriculture in Beijing connects it directly to the research community described in its publishing arrangement: Elsevier since 2006, sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) and co-sponsored by the Chinese Association of Agricultural Science Societies, under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs; editorial office at No. 12 Zhongguancun South Street, Beijing. Its official description lists an editorial board of well-respected agricultural scholars, with Sanwen Huang as chairman of the board and Hualan Chen as editor-in-chief in the current official description. That institutional anchoring distinguishes academy and society journals from purely commercial titles. The editors are normally active researchers in the journal's field, the sponsoring institute or society has a long-term interest in the journal's reputation, and the journal in turn provides that community with a visible, citable record of its work. For Beijing specifically, the journal is part of the city's scientific infrastructure alongside its universities, academy institutes and learned societies, and its presence in international directories is one of the ways research from the city becomes visible to collaborators, funders and prospective students abroad who may never visit the editorial office itself.
Indexing and Discoverability
Discovery of Journal of Integrative Agriculture today is mainly through indexing and online platforms rather than through print browsing. The journal's indexing position, as attested in its own and its publisher's descriptions, is: SCIE since 2009, plus SCI, Scopus, CABI, Zoological Record and Food Science and Technology Abstracts in its official indexing list. Indexing in services of that kind means that its articles are included in the searchable databases researchers actually use, that citations to its articles are tracked, and that libraries can catalogue it reliably using its ISSN, 2095-3119 in ScienceDirect listings. Indexing should be described carefully: inclusion in an index is a verifiable bibliographic fact, whereas a journal's standing in any single year depends on citation measures that change annually. This profile therefore records the indexing that sources attest and avoids treating any one year's metric as a permanent property of the journal. Readers who need a current metric should consult the relevant Journal Citation Reports or Scopus release for the year in question.
Audience and Readership
The audience for Journal of Integrative Agriculture is the research community working on crop science, animal science, horticulture, plant protection, agro-ecosystem and environment, food science, and agricultural economics and management, with emphasis on interdisciplinary and systematic approaches, together with graduate students entering that field and specialists in neighbouring disciplines whose work intersects with it. In China, that audience is concentrated in the Chinese Academy of Sciences institutes, universities and learned societies connected with the journal's sponsor, but the journal's English-language presence and international publishing arrangements, where attested, mean its articles are read and cited internationally as well. For librarians and directory users, the journal is best filed as a Chinese scientific journal in its subject field, published from Beijing, Beijing, with frequency monthly, in English. Keeping those directory facts accurate matters because researchers searching by city, sponsor or subject rely on them to distinguish this title from similarly named journals and to trace the publication record of the institutions behind it.
Place in Chinese Scientific Publishing
In the wider landscape of Chinese scientific publishing, Journal of Integrative Agriculture illustrates a pattern seen across this batch of journals: a title founded by a national learned society, academy institute or leading university, professionalised over decades, and presented to an international readership through a major publishing platform while retaining its editorial base in China. Its verified record — founded in 2002 as Agricultural Sciences in China, based in Beijing, published by Elsevier since 2006, sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) and co-sponsored by the Chinese Association of Agricultural Science Societies, under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs; editorial office at No. 12 Zhongguancun South Street, Beijing, covering crop science, animal science, horticulture, plant protection, agro-ecosystem and environment, food science, and agricultural economics and management, with emphasis on interdisciplinary and systematic approaches — is sufficient on its own to establish its significance, without embellishment. Researchers considering submitting work should read recent issues to judge fit, check the journal's current author guidelines on its official site, and confirm indexing in the database relevant to their institution. Readers encountering the journal for the first time can use this profile's history, scope and publishing facts as a reliable starting point and then go directly to the journal's own site for its current editorial board, latest issue and submission information.