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ARS Home » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #108475
Title: CRITERIA FOR PUBLICATION OF CROP MODELS

Author
item Sinclair, Thomas
item SELIGMAN, NOAM - VOLCANI CENTER, ISRAEL

Submitted to: Field Crops Research
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 6/20/2000
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary: Crop models have become a powerful tool in crop science. As with all tools, however, not all models have been used in an innovative, productive way that would be beneficial to a scientific audience. As an increasing number of manuscripts describing exercises using crop models have been submitted to scientific journals, there is a need to discriminate between those manuscripts worthy of publication in the scientific literature and those that are not. The discussion in this paper, which was coauthored by a USDA-ARS scientist located at Gainesville, FL, discusses the attributes that might be expected of a modeling paper deemed acceptable for journal publication. Further, several attributes, which are common to engineering analysis, are discussed that are likely not to be desirable in the publication of a crop model.

Technical Abstract: Manuscripts describing crop models are being continuously submitted and published by crop science journals. While some of these papers offer important conceptual insights and advances in the understanding of crop science, many fail to offer the scientific innovation expected in a paper published in a scientific journal. A difficult challenge for journal referees and editors is to make decisions on submitted manuscripts concerning their acceptability for journal publication. The discussion presented in this paper is intended to initiate a consideration of those traits expected of a manuscript describing a crop model. We suggest three criteria that should be included in a crop modeling manuscript to make it suitable for scientific publication: a clear statement of a scientific objective with a defined domain of relevance, a mechanistic framework, and an evaluation of the scientific innovation offered in the new model. We also discuss three modeling concepts, which are widely used in engineering, but seem to be not well-suited to crop modeling. These concepts include model calibration, model validation, and attempts to indicate model universality.