AAAS Announces 'Plant Phenomics,' Promoted in Collaboration with Nanjing Agricultural University, as the Second Journal in New Science Partner Journal Program

WASHINGTON, Aug. 16, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the nonprofit publisher of the Science family of journals, is pleased to announce that the second journal in its Science Partner Journal program will be Plant Phenomics, the official journal of Nanjing Agricultural University (NAU). Plant Phenomics will be distributed by AAAS in association with NAU. 

The aim of Plant Phenomics is to publish novel research that can advance all aspects of plant phenotyping in whole plant or cellular levels through novel mathematical and computational technologies in phenotypic data analyses, and to connect phenomics to other research domains, such as genomics, genetics, and physiology, to address key scientific challenges in related areas, including plant sciences and agriculture. 

The scope of the journal spans the latest technologies for high-throughput acquisition of all phenotypes, phenotypic analysis based on image analysis through machine learning, new mathematical algorithms for extracting phenotypic information, and phenomics-enabled plant biology linked to other domains in molecular biology, plant physiology, statistics, and crop models. The journal will also publish new applications of phenomics in crop cultivation, plant breeding, and agriculture.

Professor Seishi Ninomiya of the University of Tokyo, Professor Frédéric Baret of the French National Institute of Agricultural Research, and Joint Professor Zong-Ming (Max) Cheng of the University of Tennessee and Nanjing Agricultural University will serve as the co-editors-in-chief of Plant Phenomics. Huan Yin from Nanjing Agricultural University will serve as the journal's Managing Editor. 

The editorial office for Plant Phenomics will open for submissions in September 2018, and the journal will officially launch in January 2019, publishing original research papers, reviews, and perspectives. Plant Phenomics will publish under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), meaning that content will be freely available to all readers upon publication. Additional information about the journal, prior to the Plant Phenomics website going live and opening for submissions in September, will be available on the Science Partner Journal program homepage: www.sciencepartnerjournals.org. 

"Launching Plant Phenomics is a continuation of the effort to build NAU into a global leading university with an emphasis on agricultural and life sciences and related disciplines," said Professor Yanfeng Ding, Vice President for Research at NAU. "Plant Phenomics will be a publishing arm and an integral part of the National Center for Plant Phenomics," continued Ding. "We are excited about the opportunity to work with Science and AAAS in launching Plant Phenomics, our second academic English-language journal after Horticulture Research. I am confident that the Plant Phenomics team will successfully launch and build Plant Phenomics into a leading academic journal to advance agricultural and plant science and contribute to global food security and safety."

"This is an excellent partnership for the Science Partner Journal (SPJ) series," said Bill Moran, Publisher of the Science family of journals at AAAS. "We look forward to working with Nanjing Agricultural University and the staff of Plant Phenomics to publish and distribute important, high-quality research that advances the study of plant science and agriculture to the world."

New titles participating in the Science Partner Journal program will launch on a semi-annual basis and participation in the program is restricted to English-language publications. AAAS is actively seeking new partners across scientific disciplines. Organizations participating in the Science Partner Journal program will be editorially independent and responsible for the content published in each journal. To oversee the publication process, each organization will provide professional editors committed to best practices in peer review and author service.

For more information about the Science Partner Journal program, including insights on newly added titles or the application process for becoming a partner organization, please visit the Science Partner Journal homepage at: www.sciencepartnerjournals.org or contact Xiaoying Chu (xchu@aaas.org).

About the American Association for the Advancement of Science 

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world's largest general science membership society and publisher of the journal Science (www.sciencemag.org) as well as Science Translational Medicine, Science Signaling, Science Immunology, Science Robotics, and the online open-access journal Science Advances. AAAS was founded in 1848 and includes nearly 250 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world. The non-profit AAAS (www.aaas.org) is open to all and fulfills its mission to "advance science and serve society" through initiatives in science policy, international programs, science education, public engagement, and more. For the latest research news, log onto EurekAlert! (www.eurekalert.org), the premier science-news website, a service of AAAS. See www.aaas.org. 

About Nanjing Agricultural University 

As one of China's oldest and most prestigious universities of agricultural sciences, Nanjing Agricultural University (NAU) is a pioneer of modern agricultural education, research, and the four-year bachelor program in higher agricultural education in China,and now has expanded to a comprehensive university, offering BS, MS and Ph.D degrees in agriculture, arts and science, engineering, and business. Over the course of its century-long history, NAU has committed to the values of "integrity, simplicity, diligence and benevolence" and pursued the approach of "putting students first, upholding moral standards, promoting scholarship, and contributing to the community." NAU currently maintains partnerships with over 150 universities and research institutes in over 30 countries or territories through joint education programs, academic exchanges and collaborative research programs. See http://english.njau.edu.cn/. 

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SOURCE American Association for the Advancement of Science