About the Journal

Focus and Scope

The Spanish Journal of Agricultural Research (SJAR) is a quarterly international journal that accepts research articles, reviews and short communications of content related to agriculture. Research articles and short communications must report original work not previously published in any language and not under consideration for publication elsewhere.

The main aim of SJAR is to publish papers that report research findings on the following topics: agricultural economics; agricultural engineering; agricultural environment and ecology; animal breeding, genetics and reproduction; animal health and welfare; animal production; plant breeding, genetics and genetic resources; plant physiology; plant production (field and horticultural crops); plant protection; soil science; and water management. SJAR is not publishing articles on “food science and technology”, “postharvest”, or “socioeconomic studies”.

Original research on genetic association studies must report variance estimates explained by those genetic variants/alleles in study. Articles on local research will only be publishable if they show methodological innovation or results that can be relevant to other areas. Descriptive bibliometric studies are not accepted. These technics are only accepted if the results are well discussed and focused to agricultural topics of SJAR sections.

Research articles make an original and significant contribution to the field of study within the scope of the journal. These articles should be of interest to a broad audience, scientifically sound, well written and concise.

Short communications must report completed work, not preliminary findings.

Reviews aim to provide an overview of an issue of great interest or topicality. Reviews will be invited by the Editorial Board. However, potential authors can suggest topics to the Editor-in-Chief. Authors must be experts and have several publications on the subject.

Peer Review Process

SJAR is a peer-reviewed journal. Authors are invited to nominate a list of four potential expert reviewers in their accompanying letter. These reviewers must not have a conflict of interest with the authors or the paper content, and the Editorial Board may decline to contact any of the reviewers suggested by the authors.

Upon submission, the manuscript will be cursorily inspected in the editorial office for compliance with the author instructions. Manuscripts that do not achieve the prerequisites for publication (please refer to these guidelines) will be immediately rejected. Remaining manuscripts will be assigned to the corresponding Editor-in-Chief, which may reject or allocate them to one of the twelve Section Editors, depending on the topic. Section Editors maintain a global vision of their topic areas. They select Associate Editors, who are responsible for identifying relevant referees for single-blind peer review (the referees know the identity of the authors, but the authors do not know the identity of the referees).

Two referees are usually invited to comment on each submission. When the opinions of the referees differ significantly, the manuscript is usually sent to a third referee. When a decision has been reached, the decision is communicated to the author.

The editors' decision is final unless there is a proven error in the process of manuscript evaluation or peer review. If you believe that there has been a process error in the handling of your manuscript, please address your concerns to the Editor-in-Chief and include the manuscript submission number.

After the author has submitted the final version and this has been accepted for publication, the manuscript undergoes a copyediting process. The copyeditor performs the clean-up edit. This edit occasionally generates new queries, which are sent to the author. SJAR reserves the right to correct grammar, improve clarity, and impose the SJAR style. Authors are responsible for content, including the spelling of personal and place names. SJAR reserves the right to refuse publication of articles that, upon repeated resubmission, do not meet stylistic standards. After copyediting is complete, the issue is produced.

Reviewer Recognition with Reviewer Credits

We are very grateful to our reviewers for their valuable contribution to ensure a high quality peer review in SJAR.

We work with Reviewer Credits to give our expert reviewers recognition for their contribution to research.

Reviewer Credits is integrated with our peer review system, managed by the editorial Open Journal Systems. Once the review has been confirmed, a Reviewer PDF Certificate, that includes the reviews imported from your ORCID profile, can be downloaded: https://www.reviewercredits.com/why-join-reviewers/

Open Access Policy

Publication in this journal is free of Article Processing Charges (APC) and does not impose any costs on the authors.

Journal History

Formerly known as Investigación Agraria the SJAR merged in 2003 from two series: Producción y Protección Vegetales and Producción y Sanidad Animales founded in 1985. The predecessor of them was Anales del Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Agronómicas, first published in 1952.

Publisher

SJAR is published by CSIC and edited by the Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA) and the Editorial CSIC