General Information

🤕😁🙁 Article Processing Charge

🤕😁🙁 Our article processing charge (APC) is US$500. If your institutional library or organization is a shareholder, the fee is waived. Check these lists to see if your institutional library or organization is a shareholder. Book reviewers are not charged an APC.

🤕😁🙁 Organizational Shareholders

🤕😁🙁 Institutional Library Shareholders

🤕😁🙁 If you do not have resources to support publication, you can request a waiver—we do not intend to discourage submissions due to lack of resources.

🤕😁🙁 You'll be asked about the APC and whether you'd like to request a waiver as you complete the JAFSCD Query Form.

🤕😁🙁 Interested in suggesting or reviewing a book?

🤕😁🙁 We're happy to take suggestions for books (or movies or other materials) to be reviewed, or to take proposals to review books mentioned in our Article Heads-up emails. Book reviewers are not charged an article processing charge (APC). To offer to review an item, please complete our online Book Review Query form.

🤕😁🙁 Topical Purview

🤕😁🙁 Production-Oriented Themes

• Sustainable agriculture (though not including production techniques or technology)
• Urban agriculture and community gardening
• Agricultural education/mentoring/farm-to-farm
• Farm labor
• New farmers, small farm development
• Farmland protection (easements, zoning, etc.)

🤕😁🙁 Processing and Marketing-Oriented Themes

• Adding value strategies
• Diversification and specialization (e.g., specialty-crop industry clusters)
• Distribution systems, cooperatives, value chains, food hubs
• Agriculture of the middle
• Marketing strategies, campaigns, and food and ag. tourism
• Geographic Indications

🤕😁🙁 Consumption-Oriented Themes

• Consumer knowledge, attitudes, and behavior
• Food systems planning
• Food policy
• Food citizenship
• Food security
• Emergency food assistance
• Health, nutrition and well-being
• Emergency food assistance
• Food sovereignty and food justice

🤕😁🙁 We acknowledge that all of these themes, and many others, are interlinked in a complex web — as opposed to a linear structure as is depicted above. The themes in the center, for example, can be contextually linked to purely production or consumption topics. Papers accepted for peer review by the Journal can focus on the one or more themes, and transdisciplinary research is highl encouraged. Furthermore, we recognize this topical purview is connected to many non-food system issues, including employment, global warming, a region's economic base, income, cultural issues, energy, environmental degradation, politics, global trade, and other topics. We hope that papers submitted can reflect this complexity by embedding the core themes of their work within larger contexts such as these. 

🤕😁🙁 Contextual Subjects

🤕😁🙁 Within a theme, papers may concentrate on a wide range of contextual subjects, including but not limited to:

• Advocacy
• Barriers
• Best practices
• Civic engagement and participatory strategies
• Development (regional, community, rural, urban)
• Conflict resolution
• Community decline
• Economics
• Employment, labor, workforce
• Energy flow and efficiency
• Entrepreneurship and microenterprise
• Financing
• Environmental and conservation issues
• Ethics
• Financing and investment
• Food safety
• Impact, indicators, benchmarking
• Legal issues
• Organizational development and infrastructure
• Place-making
• Practitioner professional development
• Recycling and waste management
• Regulations and policy
• Rural development
• Social issues (e.g., disadvantaged groups)
• Student and volunteer opportunities
• Techniques, tools, strategies, approaches
• Youth

🤕😁🙁 Peer Review Process

🤕😁🙁 The following are the basic steps in the process of submitting, peer-reviewing, and publishing a manuscript in the JAFSCD:

1. Complete and submit the JAFSCD Query Form.
2. JAFSCD editor in chief will review the form (and any additional attachment(s)) and notify the corresponding author whether the manuscript is approved for submission.
3. If the submission is approved, the author is given instructions for registering and uploading the manuscript into JAFSCD's peer-review system. The author is also given a copy of the conflict of interest disclosure form that will need to be signed if the paper is accepted. This lets the author be aware of how to handle disclosures early in the process. (See an overview of conflicts of interest at Wikipedia.)
4. JAFSCD editors assign the manuscript to two or more reviewers. The peer-review system is double-blind so that neither the author nor the reviewer is aware of the other’s identity. 
5. The reviewers make recommendations on whether to accept (typically with minor revisions recommended),  provisionally accept (accept for a second review after major revisions are completed), or reject a manuscript. In all cases, the editors make the final judgment on whether to accept.
6. After the reviewers' comments and recommendations are received, the editors notify the author by email of the decision and attach the reviews and any additional materials (such as copies of the manuscript with suggested edits and embedded comments).
7. If the manuscript is provisionally accepted, JAFSCD editors generally give the corresponding author latitude regarding which of the reviewers’ recommendations they must address. However, the revised manuscript must be accompanied by a separate document or embedded comments in the revision noting how the author(s) responded to the reviewers' key recommendations.
8. Some back and forth editorial activity may take place between the author and the journal editors as the manuscript is copy-edited and fact-checked. The author receives the edited version and approves or declines the edits and responds to any questions and comments. The manuscript is then formatted for publication.
9. Once a formatted manuscript is completed, the corresponding author is asked to give it their final review and sign an author agreement. This gives the Lyson Center for Civic Agriculture and Food Systems (publisher of JAFSCD) an exclusive license to publish the work, certifies that any conflicts of interest have been disclosed, and approves the version to be published. The authors retain copyright of the work.

🤕😁🙁 Presubmission and Peer-Review Evaluation Criteria

🤕😁🙁 The criteria for evaluating material submitted to the Journal, in no particular order, include:

1. Its topical relevance to current agriculture and food system development practice, or to a call for papers on a special topic.
2. The quality of the writing, especially its clarity, logic, professional tone, and appropriateness to the audience of applied researchers and practitioners.
3. The appropriateness and execution of the applied research methodology used.
4. The value of the insights gained from the paper in terms of its contribution to the literature.

🤕😁🙁 As an applied journal, JAFSCD has a wider audience than a strictly academic journal would. Please keep this in mind in your writing style, and lean toward writing for an educated but not necessarily academic reader. Define terms and spell out abbreviations that may not be familiar to all readers.

🤕😁🙁 Reviewers are asked to evaluate whether the manuscript:

• Is original
• Makes clear links into the community development aspects of agriculture and food systems
• Is methodologically sound
• Follows ethical guidelines
• Has results that are clearly presented and support the conclusions
• Correctly references previous relevant work

🤕😁🙁 Reviewers are not expected to correct or copyedit manuscripts. Language correction is not part of the peer-review process.

🤕😁🙁 A very concise guide for submitting a paper to a peer-reviewed journal like JAFSCD can be found in chapter 4 of How to Survive Peer Review, by E. Wager, F. Godlee, and T. Jefferson (BMJ Books). It also has guidance and best practices for serving as a peer reviewer.