PULLMAN, Wash. — An online journal launched this past summer by the American Phytopathological Society, seeks a readership far beyond its membership, according to Tim Murray, the publication’s first editor-in-chief.
Murray is a plant pathologist at Washington State University.
“Plant Health Progress is not just a research journal,” Murray said. “There are a lot of people dealing with plant health issues around the world and there is no good forum for them to communicate with one another.”
He hopes the journal will serve the needs of all people who deal with plant health issues in agriculture, including extension workers, fieldmen, government regulators, and companies developing crop protection products.
The journal will carry articles on all aspects of plant health, including disease, insect problems, pesticide injury, and fertility. It also will provide diagnostic guides, reports of new problems, industry news, information on new products, opinion pieces and peer reviewed research articles.
He said the journal, which will not be available in print, will always be a work in progress. As materials make it through the editorial process, they will be published in the various departments of the journal.
Most sections will be peer-reviewed and all material will be archived using an evolving standard called Digital Objective Identifiers. DOI is an identification system for intellectual property in the digital world developed for publishing by the International DOI Foundation. It facilitates citation of web-published articles as scientific references.
All articles in the journal will be free for anyone to read at the journal’s web site http://www.planthealthprogress.org for several weeks after initial publication before moving into a subscription-based archive.
The new venture is being underwritten by several partner organizations, including the Crop Science Society of America, the American Society of Agronomy and the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at the University of California at Davis.
– 30 –