Announcements

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Jianlin Shen has been appointed Editor-in-Chief of the Section “Ecosystem, Environment and Climate Change in Agriculture” in Agriculture (ISSN: 2077-0472).

Prof. Dr. Jianlin Shen is a professor of soil ecology and the agricultural environment at the Institute of Subtropical Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.

He holds a doctoral degree (Ph.D.) in plant nutrition from China Agricultural University (2010), and is currently a co-training Ph.D. student at the University of Hohenheim in Germany. His major research activities focus on the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions (e.g., CH₄ and N₂O) and non-point source pollution (e.g. nitrogen and phosphorus leaching, ammonia volatilization) from agroecosystems. He is the author of more than 100 papers indexed by Scopus and has supervised the graduate studies of more than 30 students. He has participated as a proposer or as a scientific partner in several R&D projects funded by various national and international research funding organizations, including the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Ministry of Science and Technology of China, as well as the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is also a member of the scientific advisory group on total atmospheric deposition for the World Meteorological Organization.

The following is a short Q&A with Prof. Dr. Jianlin Shen, who shared his vision for the journal with us, as well as his views of the research area and open access publishing:

1. What appealed to you about the journal that made you want to take on the role of Section Editor-in-Chief?
Firstly, I think open access journals will be increasingly welcomed in the future by readers as well as authors. Secondly, as Section Editor-in-Chief, I want to contribute to the publication of high-quality papers in the research field of ecosystems, environment and climate change in Agriculture (e.g., by organizing Special Issues, or by improving the quality of manuscripts).

2. Can you briefly introduce your current research?
My research focuses on carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus cycling in agroecosystems and the related environmental effects. We have conducted field experiments, in situ monitoring, incubation experiments as well as modeling studies to find out how agricultural management measures affect greenhouse gases and ammonia emissions, as well as non-point source pollution from croplands and animal farms. 

3. What is your vision for the journal?
I hope that Agriculture will become a high-quality and internationally famous journal in the field of agricultural study.

4. What does the future of this field of research look like?
There will be more novel studies on how management measures affect agricultural ecosystem functions (e.g., yield, quality of agricultural products, soil quality), how agricultural production affects the environment and watershed at regional and global scales, how the negative environmental effects of agricultural production can be mitigated, and how climate change will affect agricultural production.

5. What do you think of the development of open access in the publishing field?
Many new open access journals have been set up in recent years. This means that more and more published papers can be read for free and promotes academic exchange. So, open access journals will be more welcome in the future. To maintain the development of open access journals, high-quality papers are still needed. New media will be needed to introduce the high-quality papers published in open access journals.  

We warmly welcome Prof. Dr. Jianlin Shen as the Section Editor-in-Chief of the Section “Ecosystem, Environment and Climate Change in Agriculture”, and we wish him every success in her new position.