Journal History

Founded in 2016, Founding Editor, Muhammad Alif K. Sahide

• Editor in Chief: Muhammad Alif K. Sahide
• Associate Editor in Chief: Micah R. Fisher

Forest and Society focuses on people, land, and forests, and has a geographical focus on Southeast Asia but we do not limit research possibilities that compare between and across regions.

First published in April of 2017. Indexed by Scopus since 2017. Indexed by Web of Science™ Core Collection - Emerging Sources Citation Index, since Volume 2, 2018. In 2019, Forest and Society was successfully accredited by the Ministry of National Education's Director General of High Education as Sinta 1. Since Volume IV we issued USD 300 for APC payment

In Volume III, Issue 2, 2019, the editorial composition was:

        Editors in Chief:

• Muhammad Alif K. Sahide        
• Micah R. Fisher

        Associate Editors in Chief:

• Sukanlaya Choenkwan
• Bart Verheijen

June 11, 2020, we got a notification that Forest and Society has been included in Scimago JR, and has score 0,35 or categorizes as Quartile 2 (Q2).  The metrics increased in 2021 that our Scimago JR has score 0.62 or categorizes as Quartile 1 (Q1)

The first annual editorial meeting held on 11 September 2020. 

In Volume V, Issue 2, 2022, the editorial composition was:

        Editors in Chief:

• Muhammad Alif K. Sahide        
• Micah R. Fisher

        Associate Editors in Chief:

• Sukanlaya Choenkwan
• Bart Verheijen
• Lei Xie
• Nurhady Sirimorok

The following are a list of some of our core values and initiatives:

1. Continued commitment to capacity building and reaching new audiences that we can learn from.

Our journal was never intended to compete with the larger journals, but rather to establish an avenue for providing access to the rich empirical work taking place throughout Southeast Asia, especially regarding topics and geographies that might have had limited opportunities to share their work. We have therefore conducted writing workshops with our networks in Tanah Papua, Sulawesi, Vietnam, and others, and will continue to plan workshops to build new partnerships going forward. We are constantly thinking about ways to increase capacity and access to research being done in Southeast Asia and hope you all will share your ideas for doing so. We are also developing materials about how to facilitate these writing workshops and to use them as an opportunity to develop sustained networks through establishing new partnerships. Please stay tuned for materials and publications we are working on towards these ends.

Furthermore, we have also established different types of publication formats to accommodate different types of viewpoints, such as reflections from policymakers, practitioners, and others to develop new perspectives of thinking about research, policy, and co-production of knowledge. These formats include the policy forum, notes from the field, data publication, and others.

2. An annual thematic workshop engaging on emerging issues in Southeast Asia

We are planning to hold our first emerging issues conference in Thailand on the theme community based tourism. Khon Kaen University has agreed to convene the workshop and we hope this establishes an annual precedence for a Forest and Society conference on a specific topic. The annual event is also intended to be an opportunity for capacity building for engaging students and institutions, while also spreading the word about our journal, and making progress on a topic related to an emerging issue. If you are interested in hosting, or suggesting a topic in the future, we would be happy to consider your ideas and help facilitate making it happen.

3. Special section - the category in issues or thematic publication

Our special section have been some of our most exciting and impactful work to date. Our recent issues on agrarian transformation in Thailand and Indonesian social forestry have both received a good amount of readership and engagement. We also have an issue slated for publication in November on community conservation in the Wallacea region, as well as a call for papers on the futures of Tanah Papua that we anticipate for publication next year. We also have calls out for special issues on Malaysian mangroves, community forestry in Vietnam, and others that require additional submissions to make them complete.