Realization of the next step in enhancing the quality, reputation and attractiveness of the Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension: receiving an impact factor from the Social Sciences Citation Index

Since its foundation, the Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension (JAEE) has always had a focus on publishing scientific articles that bring the field of agricultural education and extension studies forward. Over the years, the journal has moved beyond a mere focus on education and extension alone, to become a key forum to publish work on agricultural innovation, competence building, and entrepreneurship more broadly. Submissions come from all over the world, though some regions remain underrepresented. This has for example been noted for Latin America, which led to a special issue- (Klerkx et al., 2016).

As has been noted in previous editorials (Mulder, 2016, 2018), enhancing the quality and reputation of JAEE has been a key concern of the editorial team. This has been expressed for example through the policy that authors are required to embed their work well in current debates within JAEE and similar journals, and also show the broader theoretical relevance. The editorial team screens manuscripts on this, and also reviewers are requested to comment on this point. The aim of this policy is to publish articles that have scientific rigor and depth, and hence are recognized as quality work and cited by scholars in the field.

Citations of work published in JAEE are important, because it shows that the journal has relevance and importance and has an impact. Such demonstrated impact is important for both scholars, administrators of scientific organizations, research funders and policy makers, and is measured through so-called impact factors which several databases publish (e.g. Elsevier Scopus, Google Scholar, and Thomson Reuters/ISI). Despite the appearance of a variety of new sorts of impact factors in recent years, still one of the most authoritative impact factors is the one published by Thomson Reuters through its Social Sciences Citation Index. The JAEE editorial team have worked hard in past years, together with the publisher Taylor and Francis, to get an impact factor in the Social Sciences Citation Index (Mulder, 2016, 2018). This work had already resulted in JAEE being included in the Emerging Sources Index.

Given the hard work by many, it is my pleasure to announce that as of this year JAEE will have a full impact factor through the Social Sciences Citation Index, and the 2018 Impact Factor is 1.388. The journal is included in two categories of Social Sciences Citation Index. In Education and Educational Research it is ranked 129^th of 243 journals (third quartile). In Environmental Studies it is ranked 95^th of 116 journals (fourth quartile). The current Co-Editors-in-Chief, Kristin Davis and Laurens Klerkx thank the JAEE editorial team for all their efforts. Special thanks go to the retiring Editor-in-Chief professor Martin Mulder, editorial assistant Angela Pachau, as well as the journal managers of JAEE, Zoe Sternberg and Gemma Parsons from Taylor and Francis. Obtaining an impact factor is evidence of the relevance of the journal, and will also enable JAEE to further attract good article submissions, as having a publishing outlet with an impact factor for many scholars is a key determinant for journal choice. The current Co-Editors-in-Chief and the broader editorial team are committed to increasing the impact factor in the coming years. When the number of submissions will go up, this may imply that JAEE in the future will have stricter selection on criteria such as novelty of the study and broader theoretical implications.

As regards the articles in this issue, we have five studies from different parts of the globe: the Caribbean, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. The first article in this issue by Narine et al. analyses the intention of farmers to use text messaging for receiving extension services in Trinidad, employing a survey amongst 200 farmers. They employ the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology as an analytical framework, and find that most farmers of the sample knew how to send and receive text messages, and many owned Internet-enabled smartphones. In addition, most farmers were willing to communicate with extension officers through text messages. This shows that showed there is potential for extension to use text messaging to communicate with farmers.

The second article in this issue by Pedaprolu et al. looks at the relevance and knowledge levels of selected teaching competencies as perceived by educational administrators, faculty and students, in order to assess the training needs of faculty of agricultural universities. The study is based on the answers of 292 respondents, and indicate differences in perceptions among groups towards teaching competencies. Prioritized training needs were identified which provide the content and direction for the development of faculty in-service educational programmes. The study finds that major areas for skill improvement among the faculty members in the agricultural universities in India are knowledge and application of teaching strategies and skills, followed by motivation of student learning through different teaching methods, positive attitude towards students, importance of life-long learning and updating of subject matter knowledge. The results of the study demonstrate the utility of the Needs Assessment Model for effectively planning the training needs and the scalability of the framework spatially and also across the subject domains.

The third article in this issue comes from Iran, and is authored by Abbasi et al. and similar to the two studies earlier presented concerns a quantitative study. Surveying members and non-members of student cooperatives (n = 256) and agricultural faculty members (n = 59), they analyse the perceptions of teachers and students regarding competency-based education (CBE) principles. They find that students and teachers have different views with regard to the extent to which CBE principles are practiced: students with different learning patterns had different perceptions regarding the extent to which CBE is practiced. However, teachers with different teaching patterns had the same perception of the application of CBE principles. Based on their studies, the authors suggest that student cooperatives can be utilized by faculty members as one of the main strategies for developing CBE in agricultural colleges.

Moving to the African continent, Uganda to be precise, the fourth article in this issue by Magala et al. looked at actor social networks in knowledge sharing platforms in multi-stakeholder processes in coffee value chains. They used a qualititative approach based on interviews, combined with a social network analysis. They found that The most influential actors in the innovation platforms were farmer leaders, coffee processors and nursery operators. Other actors like the exporters and financial providers were periphery actors. This meant that actors who could have played critical roles in the performance of the coffee innovation platforms had no influence. The options of knowledge sharing channels that were limited to the mobile phone, face to face meetings and individual interactions did not permit deeper knowledge sharing opportunities among diverse actors. They conclude that since the concept of innovation platforms is appreciated as a useful approach for knowledge exchange, designers and promoters of agricultural innovation platforms should work out an integrated knowledge mechanism for engagement of all commodity value chain actors, in which innovation intermediaries could play important roles.

Also concerned with roles of intermediaries, the fifth article in this issue by Manalo et al. look at how youth on the Philippines take roles as information intermediaries. In their qualitative study based on 30 interviews with farmers’ children, they looked at their roles as infomediaries for Rice Crop Manager, an ICT enabled nutrient management application. Their study was informed by Community Youth Development Theory which argues that young people are assets that can be mobilized, and in fact they find that children played instrumental roles as translators and mediators between their parents and Rice Crop Manager, as they are tech-savvy being digital natives. More broadly this study sheds light on how young people are able to contribute to improving the source of livelihood in their community.

Also on behalf of my fellow Co-Editor-in-Chief Kristin Davis and retiring Editor-in-Chief Martin Mulder, I wish you a good time reading the articles in this issue, and we obviously we hope they will be widely cited in future work!