British Ecological Society launches new journal: Ecological Solutions and Evidence

Ecological Solutions and Evidence

is an open access journal publishing articles with direct relevance for the management of biological resources and ecological systems.

The journal will be led by Marc Cadotte, Professor at the Departments of Biological Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto, Canada. Cadotte will work closely with Lead Editor Holly Jones, Associate Professor of Conservation Biology and Restoration Ecology at Northern Illinois University, along with an expert board of Associate Editors consisting of both applied researchers working in academia and practitioners in a range of roles including consultants, NGOs and government agencies.

Recognising that a range of information sources other than journal articles are commonly used to inform on-the-ground management design and implementation,

Ecological Solutions and Evidence

is at the centre of a new online repository which will be launched by the BES in 2020, Applied Ecology Resources, designed to facilitate information exchange for anyone involved in the management or monitoring of natural systems.

“Applied information has value beyond individual projects and maximizing the value of information means that it should be shared to practitioner communities. Furthermore, effective project design requires that multiple sources of information be assessed to ensure effective use of limited applied management dollars. And this is where

Ecological Solutions and Evidence

and Applied Ecology Resources come in -heralding a new era of practitioner-academic communication and cross-pollination” said Cadotte.

To facilitate dialogue between practitioners and academics,

Ecological Solutions and Evidence

will publish short-form “From Practice” articles with a flexible format to communicate information important to applied management and data articles to give additional value to data collected from applied projects, in addition to more traditional research articles and reviews.

Jones comments “What’s most exciting to me about

Ecological Solutions and Evidence

is the opportunity for a closer dialogue between natural resource managers and applied scientists.  These two groups often live in different worlds that rarely overlap, resulting in knowledge gaps that hinder ecosystem management and applied science.

Ecological Solutions and Evidence

is the first journal to provide open access to research solely focused on applied science, which will overcome the significant financial and logistical hurdles to access many managers face.  Combined with the new data information repository, Applied Ecological Resources, such unfettered access to research and data has the potential to be transformative, by pushing the science, policy, and practice of applied environment management forward.”

Asked how Applied Ecology Resources and

Ecological Solutions and Evidence

could change the way that the ecological community of practitioner and academics work together, Professor E.J. Milner-Gulland, Tasso Leventis Professor of Biodiversity at the University of Oxford and Director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Conservation Science, said “By providing a platform on which we can all share our information, and hopefully also a community of practice that will help us all to stay up to date with new approaches, results and policy in applied ecology. I expect it to become the go-to resource for people wanting to know about what’s going on in research and practice for applied ecology.”

The newly elected President of the BES, Professor Jane Memmott from the University of Bristol, says “Increasing the communication between academics and practitioners will be to the benefit of both parties as they have highly complementary skills.  And by working together, it’s very likely that they will be able to solve bigger problems more effectively too

Ecological Solutions and Evidence

is open for submissions.”

Available exclusively online,

Ecological Solutions and Evidence

will be published in partnership with John Wiley & Sons, alongside five established journals from the BES, namely:

Journal of Ecology, Journal of Applied Ecology, Methods in Ecology and Evolution, Functional Ecology, and Journal of Animal Ecology

, and

People and Nature

.

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