Steve Duke, reviews editor and former editor-in-chief Pest Management Science
Scientific journals cover a specified range of topics, with some being extremely narrow and others quite broad. The number of scientists publishing on particular topics changes with funding and scientific trends; journals with a narrow scope are more affected by scientific trends than others. SCI’s journal Pest Management Science has flourished by navigating changing research and technology since its founding.
One of the next big trends in agricultural pest management is greatly increased use of biopesticides. The global market for biological control products is expected to increase at an 8% compounded annual growth rate from now until 2030.
This growth is being driven by evolution and spread of resistance to synthetic chemical pesticides, toxicological and environmental concerns about synthetic chemical pesticides, new scientific tools for discovery and development of biopesticides, and the generally more favorable regulatory approval process for these greener products.
The average synthetic chemical pesticide costs about $300m for discovery and development, whereas biopesticides typically cost about $10m to get to market.
Furthermore, the time from discovery to launch is about 12 years for synthetic pesticides, but only three to five years for biopesticides. Partly because of costs, there are only a handful of companies still involved in synthetic pesticide discovery, development, and marketing, whereas there are many small companies devoted to biopesticides.
Our journal already publishes many papers on biopesticides, and we can expect the proportion of these papers to increase.
As with most other scientific areas, AI is having a major influence on pest management. In particular, it is revolutionising pesticide discovery and precision management of pests – with and without pesticides. For example, AI is being used to integrate computer vision, machine learning, and automated control systems for precision management of weeds. These varied systems identify weeds in crops to selectively use herbicides, lasers, or robotic cultivators to eliminate weeds with high precision and without damage to the crops.
Similarly, AI is also being used with drones and robots to detect, track and intercept insect pests with lasers. This type of precision agriculture is likely to greatly reduce both the dependence of farmers on synthetic chemical pesticides and the environmental impact of pest management.
Although there are other journals focused on biopesticides and on precision agriculture, we plan to attract as many excellent papers on these topics as possible and recruit leaders in these fields to our editorial board.
It’s worth remembering that the journal began publication in 1970 as Pesticide Science, during the heyday of pesticide discovery. This was a time when there were many companies and scientists involved in pesticide discovery and other aspects of pesticide development, impact, and utilisation.
The amount and value of pesticides being used, particularly in crop production, was increasing yearly, and new pesticides with new molecular targets were being introduced frequently. Pesticide Science published articles written by a range of company, university, and government scientists on a wide range of topics related entirely to pesticides. In the waning decades of the twentieth century, consolidation of the pesticide industry was profound, reducing industry pesticide research, as well as some public sector research on pesticides.
Evolved resistance to fungicides, insecticides and herbicides began to increase dramatically during this time, resulting in increasing research on mechanisms of resistance and resistance management. During the mid-1990s molecular biology began to have profound impacts on crop pest management with the introduction of crops made resistant to insects via transgenes for production of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) toxins and for producing crops resistant to herbicides, particularly glyphosate. Fewer new synthetic pesticides were being introduced, and there was increasing interest in alternative pest management technologies.
In response to these changes, the Editorial Board of Pesticide Science changed the name of the journal to Pest Management Science in 2000 in order to encompass a greater range of pest management research.
We threw the net out to include papers that dealt with any aspect of pest management, including biocontrol, environmental impacts, and the sociology, regulatory aspects, and economics of pest management. This widened scope helped to drive the number of published pages from 1232 in 1999 to 3412 ten years later and during this time, the rejection rate did not significantly change.
In the past decade, the burgeoning amount of excellent pest management-related research has resulted in a continued growth rate of the journal (8667 pages in 2025) and the journal has the highest impact factor of any journal dealing with the entire scope of pest management.
Pest management will continue to evolve at a rapid rate, and we will continue to adapt the scope of Pest Management Science to capture the most impactful scientific research and technologies in these rapidly moving fields.
Find out more about Pest Management Science’s aims and scope and how to submit your research
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