The European Association of Agricultural Economists and Oxford University Press have published the first articles of Q Open. Edited by Kent’s Professor Iain Fraser, the first articles include a mix of papers focussing on the interface of agriculture, climate and development and the role of foresight analysis in helping to shape and inform the goals and objectives of international research organisations.
Aims and Scope
Q Open aims to be an inclusive forum for applied economics research broadly in the area of agricultural and environmental economics and cognate fields. The main areas of coverage are:
- agricultural economics
- environmental and climate economics
- natural resource economics
- development economics (agricultural/rural topics)
- food economics (and related nutrition- and health economics topics)
Q Open welcomes replications and ‘null-result’ research. It also welcomes pre-registered experimental research, where an empirical research project and its methodology are peer-reviewed prior to data collection. The final article is then provisionally accepted on condition that the author follows the registered methodology. Proposals for special issues are encouraged.
Peer-review
Q Open is committed to fast peer-review, and aims to provide authors with a first decision within 4-6 weeks of submission.
Q Open operates ‘sound-science’ peer review, where the focus is on scientific rigour and reflects the state-of-the-art in the field. The editorial decision on acceptance/rejection relies less on the often subjective evaluations of likely impact, novelty, or breadth of interest. The practice of existing journals in the field shows that the editorial process has limited success in evaluating along these dimensions of manuscript quality and it may be a source of publication bias, as currently discussed in the scientific community in general.
Authors are encouraged to share the decision letter and reviews from previous submissions to assist the editors and to make the review process as efficient as possible. In most cases, the editors will seek at least one further review.
Authors have the option to choose a no-revision review. This means that they are guaranteed not to receive a decision requiring them to do a major revision. Under this option, submissions that require substantial revision will be rejected.
Open access charges
All content in Q Open is published open access and all authors of accepted articles must pay an author publication charge (APC) prior to publication. Current APCs can be found on the Author Guidelines page. In due course, Q Open will in addition introduce a submission fee.
Learn how to submit your research to the journal.