Scientific journal status in Japan: the case of agricultural sciences journals, primarily <i>Grassland Science</i>

Abstract

In Japan, most scholarly journals have been published by scientific societies as in other Asian countries. In those days, Japanese and English language articles were commonly found within the same issue of an academic journal published by scientific societies. Many societies of natural sciences started to publish separate periodicals of international journals with an English version and a domestic Japanese version 20 years ago due to the internationalization of the scientific community. The Japanese Society of Grassland Science has also published both an international journal called Grassland Science and a domestic journal called Japanese Journal of Grassland Science (Nihon Sochigakkai Shi) since 2005. The first impact factor for Grassland Science was announced in 2013. International foreign handling editors represent more than half of all handling editors covering the world. Thus, recently, the number of submissions from foreign countries, especially from China, has drastically increased. With the increase in submissions, it becomes difficult to edit a journal professionally because the editors are generally professors in universities and scientists in national institutes who work as part-time volunteer editors and have been changed frequently. The decrease in the number of members is also a serious problem in many societies of agriculture sciences. The construction of an Asian network for scientific information may be one direction in the near future. Additionally, it is be necessary to change to open access journals in order to stabilize the publishing management of the journals.