Agriculture & environment journal workflow (en-agrienv-journal-workflow)

Purpose

This is the routing skill for the agriculture-and-environment bundle. It does not replace a single-journal profile; it first classifies the manuscript by sub-field, contribution type, and evidence shape, then routes into the matching per-journal skill for fit and re-framing. It is a sibling to en-natsci-journal-workflow (natural science) and en-engtech-journal-workflow (engineering).

Ask four things first

1. Sub-field: crop/agronomy, plant biology, soil science, food science, ecosystem/environmental science, pollution/health, climate/atmosphere, hydrology/water, ocean/limnology, or solid-earth geoscience?
2. Contribution type: a mechanism, a field/management result, a synthesis/review, a model or projection, a new dataset/data product, or a methods/measurement advance?
3. Evidence shape: controlled field trial, glasshouse/lab assay, observational or monitoring survey, remote sensing, long-term record, process/earth-system model, or a documented public dataset?
4. Audience breadth: broad significance (a Nature Portfolio title), a whole sub-field (a society flagship), or a specialist community?

Pre-routing evidence gates

Before naming a journal, classify the manuscript through these gates. A weak gate does not always mean "do not submit"; it usually means route down to a specialist venue, reframe the claim, or fix the evidence before testing a higher-prestige venue.

Evidence-shape escalation

• Single site-year field trial: usually specialist agronomy/crop venue; do not pitch as general food-security evidence without multi-site or mechanistic support.
• Multi-site or multi-season field trial: can support field flagship routing if management implications and uncertainty are explicit.
• Lab/glasshouse mechanism: plant or soil mechanism venues; needs field or ecological validation before claiming landscape or management impact.
• Remote sensing / monitoring survey: route by validation and generalizability; benchmark against independent observations and document processing code.
• Process or earth-system model: route by the model contribution, sensitivity analysis, and reproducibility package, not only by the application region.
• Dataset/data product: earth-system-science-data only when the dataset itself is the product, has persistent identifiers, rich metadata, and a public archive.

Quick routing

Sibling-journal disambiguation

Decision rules

• Name the advance, not the site. "We measured X at our site" is not a contribution unless it yields a generalizable mechanism, management result, projection, or dataset.
• Field evidence discipline. Field/observational claims need adequate replication, controls, and uncertainty; a single site-year or unreplicated trial is a common reject at the agronomy and ecology venues.
• Data deposition is a gate, not a nicety. Earth-science and environmental venues increasingly mandate FAIR data/code deposition; data journals (ESSD) require the public dataset itself. Sort this before submission.
• Review vs. primary. Annual Review titles and the synthesis-leaning venues are largely invited/scoped — do not route an unsolicited primary-data paper there without checking scope.
• Scale and framing. Plot/lab, field, landscape, regional, and global results route to different venues; match the claim's scale to the journal's audience.
• Health, policy, and management claims need the right endpoint. Do not route a contaminant-detection paper as environmental health unless exposure/outcome inference is actually measured; do not route a sustainability paper as policy unless a decision, intervention, or system boundary is specified.
• Always enter the single-journal skill's official-submission checklist before submitting; never rely on a stale template.

Handoff protocol

After routing, hand off only the minimum needed context to the single-journal skill:

• the strongest claim the evidence can honestly support;
• the rejected broader claim, if any, and why it was narrowed;
• the evidence shape and weakest gate from the table above;
• the one official requirement most likely to block submission;
• the alternative venue to keep warm if the first-choice fit fails.

Output format

[Top journal skill] <skill-name>
[Alt 1] <skill-name> (reason)
[Alt 2] <skill-name> (reason)
[Do not submit to] <journal> (one-line mismatch reason)
[Evidence gates] contribution / evidence-strength / scale / deposition / compliance: pass|watch|block
[Biggest current gap] significance / field-evidence / replication / data-deposition / scale-framing / official requirements
[Claim to narrow] <claim, or none>
[Next step] invoke <skill-name> for single-venue fit and re-framing