Aquaculture, also known as aquafarming, is the farming of fish, crustaceans, molluscs, aquatic plants, algae, and other organisms. Aquaculture involves cultivating freshwater and saltwater populations under controlled conditions, and can be contrasted with commercial fishing, which is the harvesting of wild fish. Worldwide consumption of fish is approximately 120 million metric tonnes. Of this overall production, aquacultured fish account for about 25% or 30 million metric tonnes. Aquaculture's contribution to fish production worldwide has doubled every decade since the 1980s and this trend promises to continue indefinitely. This is partially a consequence of the pressure being placed on wild catch fisheries and the increasing world population. Wild catch fisheries are currently reaching their maximum output. Already 25% of the wildfish stocks are considered to be overfished or depleted, while an additional 52% are considered to be fully exploited. This leaves little room for expansion of the wild catch to meet rising demand.

Our Acquaculture Open Access Journals invite reserach articles, Review Articles, Letter to editors and other articles to be published. Open Access raises practical and policy questions for scholars, publishers, funders, and policymakers alike, including what the return on investment is when paying an article processing fee to publish in an Open Access articles, or whether investments into institutional repositories should be made and whether self-archiving should be made mandatory, as contemplated by some funders.