--- name: agronomy-for-sustainable-development description: Use when targeting Agronomy for Sustainable Development or deciding whether an agronomy / farming-systems manuscript fits this venue. Encodes the journal's fit, the explicit-and-evidenced sustainability-contribution bar, evidence and data-reporting expectations, house style, official-submission re-check, and desk-reject heuristics. --- # Agronomy for Sustainable Development (agronomy-for-sustainable-development) ## Journal positioning Agronomy for Sustainable Development (ASD), published by Springer, is an agronomy journal defined by an **explicit sustainability framing**: cropping and farming systems studied because, and insofar as, they advance the sustainability of agriculture — environmental, economic, and social. It publishes field research alongside reviews and meta-analyses, but in every case the **sustainability contribution must be explicit and evidenced**, not asserted in the abstract and dropped thereafter. A competent agronomy study whose only contribution is a yield or management result, with sustainability mentioned as decoration, is a poor fit. This skill is a **fit / venue-selection / re-framing** tool. It does not replace the journal's current author guidelines. Before submitting, re-check the live ASD author guidance. ## When to trigger - The author names ASD and wants a fit/framing check for a sustainability-oriented agronomy or farming-systems paper. - An agronomy result must be re-framed so its sustainability contribution is explicit, measured, and load-bearing rather than rhetorical. - The author is planning a review or meta-analysis of sustainable cropping/farming systems and needs the venue's synthesis bar. - The author is choosing between ASD, `field-crops-research`, and `agriculture-ecosystems-and-environment`. ## Scope & topic fit - Cropping and farming systems designed or evaluated for sustainability: diversification, conservation agriculture, agroecology, organic and integrated systems. - Resource-use efficiency and input reduction (nutrients, water, pesticides, energy) tied to sustainability outcomes and trade-offs. - Soil health, biodiversity, and ecosystem-service outcomes of agronomic management framed for sustainability. - Climate-change adaptation and mitigation in agronomic systems, including carbon and GHG considerations. - Reviews and meta-analyses that synthesize evidence on sustainable practices across studies and regions. - Socio-economic and multi-criteria assessments of farming systems where they evidence the sustainability contribution. ## Method & evidence bar - The **sustainability contribution must be explicit and evidenced**: the relevant environmental, economic, and/or social dimension is measured or analyzed, with trade-offs acknowledged, not asserted. - Field studies need adequate replication and design and, where claims generalize, multi-site/ multi-season or systems-level evidence; pseudoreplication is disqualifying. - Reviews and meta-analyses need a reproducible, transparent protocol: search strategy, inclusion criteria, effect-size handling, heterogeneity, and bias assessment. - Statistics must match the design (mixed models for multi-environment data; appropriate meta-analytic models) with uncertainty reported. - Data and, for syntheses, the extracted dataset/code should be available per Springer policy; agronomic and environmental metadata must be documented. ## Structure & house style - Standard structured article (research or review/meta-analysis); ASD favours a clearly stated novel sustainability contribution highlighted up front; re-check current article types and highlight/graphical-abstract conventions on the live guide. - The introduction must state the sustainability problem and the specific, evidenced contribution — what dimension is improved and how it is measured. - Figures/tables should carry the sustainability argument (trade-off plots, effect-size forests for syntheses, multi-criteria comparisons) with variability shown. - A data-availability statement and complete methodological/agronomic metadata are expected; for syntheses, the full protocol and dataset belong in supplementary material. ## Official-submission checklist - Before giving submission-ready advice, read `../../resources/source-basis.md` and `../../resources/official-source-map.md`; start from the official source anchors, then cite the current Agronomy for Sustainable Development page you checked. - Search the live site for "Agronomy for Sustainable Development submission guidelines" and follow the current Springer version. - Re-check article types (research vs. review/meta-analysis), structure, highlights/graphical abstract, and word/figure expectations. - Confirm the data-availability/repository policy and, for syntheses, protocol-reporting expectations. - Re-check competing-interests, funding, author-contribution, and AI-use disclosure, and open-access terms. - If the live official instructions conflict with this skill, the official instructions win. ## Pre-submission self-check - [ ] The sustainability contribution is explicit, measured, and load-bearing — not decoration. - [ ] The relevant environmental/economic/social dimension is evidenced, with trade-offs acknowledged. - [ ] Field claims have adequate replication/design and systems- or multi-environment-level support. - [ ] Reviews/meta-analyses follow a transparent, reproducible protocol with bias assessment. - [ ] Statistics match the design (mixed/meta-analytic models) with uncertainty reported. - [ ] Data-availability statement, metadata, and (for syntheses) the extracted dataset are prepared. ## Common desk-reject triggers - A competent agronomy result with sustainability asserted but never measured. - A single site-year or pseudoreplicated trial generalized to a sustainability claim. - A "review" or meta-analysis with no transparent protocol, inclusion criteria, or bias assessment. - Trade-offs ignored — a one-dimensional gain presented as overall sustainability. - Scope mismatch: a pure yield/management or pure soil-mechanism paper with no sustainability framing. ## Re-routing decision - Yield/agronomy and resource-use efficiency without a sustainability contribution → `field-crops-research`. - Agroecosystem environmental outcomes (GHG, nutrient losses, biodiversity) at field-landscape scale → `agriculture-ecosystems-and-environment`. - Soil-process mechanism (SOM, microbial function, nutrient cycling) is the core → `soil-biology-and-biochemistry`. - Broad food-systems significance → `nature-food`. - Large-scale climate/global-change ecosystem process dominant → `global-change-biology`. ## Output format ```text [Fit] High / Medium / Low (one-line reason) [Target] Agronomy for Sustainable Development [Article type] Research / Review / Meta-analysis [Topic tags] <2–3 closest sustainable-agronomy topics> [Sustainability contribution] [Method/evidence] [Top risk] [Official items to re-check]
[Re-route suggestion] ```