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About

Aims and scope

Agricultural and Food Economics is an international peer-reviewed journal published on behalf of the Italian Society of Agricultural Economics. The editors welcome high-quality, problem-oriented submissions on agriculture and food from a wide variety of socio-economic perspectives and from all over the world. 
Completely open access, the journal publishes original research and review articles with innovative results and relevant policy and managerial implications, based on quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methodologies.
Topics of interest include sustainable food systems, food and nutrition security, agricultural and food policy, environmental impacts of agricultural and food activities, market analysis, agri-food firm management and marketing, organization of the agri-food value chains, behavioral economics, food quality and safety issues, food and health economics, trade, sustainable rural development, natural and marine resource economics, and land economics.

Benefits of publishing with SpringerOpen

High visibility

Agricultural and Food Economics's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience. 

Speed of publication

Agricultural and Food Economics offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles will be published with their final citation after acceptance, in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF; the article will then be available through Agricultural and Food Economics and SpringerOpen.

Flexibility

Online publication in Agricultural and Food Economics gives you the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other articles).

Promotion and press coverage

Articles published in Agricultural and Food Economics are included in article alerts and regular email updates. 
In addition, articles published in Agricultural and Food Economics may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in Agricultural and Food Economics

Copyright

Authors of articles published in Agricultural and Food Economics retain the copyright of their articles and are free to reproduce and disseminate their work (for further details, see the copyright and license agreement).

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal from SpringerOpen, please click here.

Open access

All articles published by the Agricultural and Food Economics are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.

As authors of articles published in the Agricultural and Food Economics you are the copyright holders of your article and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate your article, according to the SpringerOpen copyright and license agreement.

For those of you who are US government employees or are prevented from being copyright holders for similar reasons, SpringerOpen can accommodate non-standard copyright lines. Please contact us if further information is needed.

Article-processing charges

Open access publishing is not without costs. Agricultural and Food Economics therefore levies an article-processing charge of £1040.00/$1490.00/€1190.00 for each article accepted for publication. 

If the corresponding author's institution participates in our open access membership program, some or all of the publication cost may be covered (more details available on the membership page). We routinely waive charges for authors from low-income countries. For other countries, article-processing charge waivers or discounts are granted on a case-by-case basis to authors with insufficient funds. Authors can request a waiver or discount during the submission process. For further details, see our article-processing charge page.

Springer Open provides a free open access funding support service to help authors discover and apply for article processing charge funding. Visit our OA funding and policy support page to view our list of research funders and institutions that provide funding for APCs, and to learn more about our email support service.

APC coverage and discounts

Agricultural and Food Economics is a 100% Gold Open Access journal. Publishing is not without costs, and the journal levies the 2023 APC of €1090/£940/$1340 for each article accepted for publication. Authors do not typically pay the fee themselves; multiple payment options exist. 

  • SIDEA members pay €200. To receive this funding, members  should contact the journal to receive instructions.  
  • Alternatively, if your institution is a SpringerOpen member, enter your affiliation on submission to receive a discount; amounts vary by institution and cannot be combined with Society funding.
  • Authors can also request a waiver/discount, based on unavailability of research funding and/or country of origin.
  • Authors can accept the waiver charges and pay using research funding. 

APCs are charged on article acceptance. For further details, see our article-processing charge page. SpringerOpen offers a free funding and support service to help authors discover and apply for article processing charge funding. Visit our OA funding and policy support page to view our list of research funders and institutions that provide funding for APCs, and to learn more about our email support service. The way your APC is covered has no bearing on the editorial outcome of your submission. 

Indexing services

All articles published in ​Agricultural and Food Economics are included in:

  • Clarivate SSCI (NEW!)
  • DOAJ
  • EconLit
  • Google Scholar
  • OCLC
  • RePEc
  • Scopus
  • Summon by ProQuest

The full text of all articles is deposited in digital archives around the world to guarantee long-term digital preservation. You can also access all articles published by SpringerOpen on SpringerLink.

We are working closely with relevant indexing services, including Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics), to ensure that articles published in Agricultural and Food Economics will be available in their databases when appropriate.

Peer-review policy

Peer review is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published. Independent researchers in the relevant research area assess submitted manuscripts for originality, validity and significance to help. Editors determine whether the manuscript should be published in their journal. You can read more about the peer-review process here.

Agricultural and Food Economics operates a double-blind peer-review system, where the reviewers do not know the names or affiliations of the authors and the reviewer reports provided to the authors are anonymous.

The benefit of double-blind peer review is that it allows reviewers to judge the manuscript based on content alone, and they are not unconsciously biased by knowledge of who the authors are.

Submitted manuscripts will generally be reviewed by two or more experts who will be asked to evaluate whether the manuscript is scientifically sound and coherent, whether it duplicates already published work, and whether or not the manuscript is sufficiently clear for publication.The Editors will reach a decision based on these reports and, where necessary, they will consult with Associate Editors.

Editorial policies

All manuscripts submitted to Agricultural and Food Economics should adhere to SpringerOpen's editorial policies.

Once your article is accepted, it will be processed by production and published shortly afterwards. In some cases, articles may be held for a short period of time prior to publication. If you have any concerns or particular requirements please contact the Journal.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Citing articles in Agricultural and Food Economics

Articles in Agricultural and Food Economics  should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Article citations follow this format:

Authors: Title. Agric Food Econ [year], [volume number]:[article number].

e.g. Roberts LD, Hassall DG, Winegar DA, Haselden JN, Nicholls AW, Griffin JL: Increased hepatic oxidative metabolism distinguishes the action of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor delta from Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor gamma in the Ob/Ob mouse. Agric Food Econ 2009, 1:115.

refers to article 115 from Volume 1 of the journal.

Appeals and complaints

Authors who wish to appeal a rejection or make a complaint should follow the procedure outlined in the BMC Editorial Policies.