| HOME | HELP | FEEDBACK | SUBSCRIPTIONS | ARCHIVE | SEARCH | TABLE OF CONTENTS |
|
|
|
|||||||
|
|||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This year we have been working to increase the impact factor of Crop Science. The outcome of the journal review, which was led by Dr. Jeffrey Volenec, was to recommend publishing more review and interpretation articles, as they tend to be more highly cited compared to original research papers. In future Crop Science issues, we will publish review and interpretation articles on topics that represent most of the divisions. These topics will include, but will not be restricted to, marker-assisted selection as applied to improvement of several important agronomic crops, a wide range of turfgrass science topics, drought tolerance research, and numerous crop physiology subjects. These manuscripts are being prepared by researchers who are regarded as first among their peers.
Crop Science will begin to benefit, in terms of higher impact factor, in 2008. This is because the impact factor is computed as the ratio of number of citations in 2008 to all the articles that Crop Science published in 2006 and 2007. However, this metric will also experience a significant boost as a result of publishing registration articles in the Journal of Plant Registrations. The net effect will be to make Crop Science increasingly competitive with other journals, which will serve to attract more manuscripts from highly respected scientists. The impact factor, like it or not, must be increased for our journal to thrive.
To this end, one of the first areas targeted pertains to biofuels. The current issue of Crop Science contains three review and interpretation articles and two original research articles, with each of them presenting a specific biofuel topic. Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) is one of several very important biofuel crops. In the first of two original research articles on switchgrass, Dr. Michael Casler investigates the effects of longitude and latitude on switchgrass performance. In the second article, Dr. Casler attempts to identify structural patterns and spatial variation for molecular markers of switchgrass populations from the northern and central U.S.
Among the three biofuel review articles, Dr. Kanwarpal Dhugga discusses maize (Zea mays L.) as a biofuel source, considering molecular tools to alter grain and stover composition for increased ethanol production. Similarly, Dr. Luciano Nass provides an overview of the ethanol and biodiesel programs in the country of Brazil, but emphasizing plant breeding as a tool to increase their productivity. Finally, Dr. Mariam Sticklen provides an overall review of the advancements made in feedstock crop genetic engineering, within the context of alcohol fuel production.
We, on the Crop Science editorial board, continue to identify strategies that will benefit the journal and all members of the Crop Science Society of America. Your participation in this process is not only requested, it is imperative!
NOTES
All rights reserved. No part of this periodical may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Permission for printing and for reprinting the material contained herein has been obtained by the publisher.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| HOME | HELP | FEEDBACK | SUBSCRIPTIONS | ARCHIVE | SEARCH | TABLE OF CONTENTS |
