<i>Journal of Ecology</i> news

Journal of Ecology was established by the British Ecological Society in 1913. It is the oldest international, peer-reviewed ecological journal, currently publishing its 93rd volume. Journal of Ecology has published many of the classic papers in plant ecology. It has always had a tradition, still clearly in evidence, of attracting papers from the world's most prominent, influential and inspirational ecologists. As Journal of Ecology continues to develop to meet the needs of authors and readers, it is timely to provide an update on our activities. Journal of Ecology accepts papers on all ecological subjects that are plant-related and that present strong, original ecological messages that transcend the limits of case studies. The Journal is well known for its coverage of population and community ecology but we also publish papers on other topics including biogeochemistry, ecosystems ecology, plant–animal interactions, microbial ecology, climate change, molecular genetics, physiological ecology and the ecology of mycorrhizas. In addition to standard research papers, we publish Essay Reviews, Forum articles, and autecological accounts of plant species in the series Biological Flora of the British Isles. We are always happy to discuss ideas for manuscripts with prospective authors and, in particular, welcome suggestions for Essay Reviews and Forum contributions. We hope that Essay Reviews will become an increasingly regular feature during 2005. We are pleased that there are two Essay Reviews printed in this issue (Hierro et al. and Press & Phoenix) and the fact that they are accompanied by standard papers on related issues comfirms that the topics covered (invasiveness and parasitism) are indeed current. The Essay Review scheduled for issue 2 (mutualism, de Mazancourt et al.) is already ‘Online Early’ (see below) and that for issue 3 (competition and self-thinning, Reynolds & Ford) will be available electronically to subscribers well in advance of the issue date. Length is not a criterion for acceptance or rejection of standard research papers submitted to Journal of Ecology, as long as it is justified by content. Although we insist that papers must be presented concisely, and the average length of a published paper in the Journal is 11 printed pages, we are happy to consider more substantial papers, provided that they make a significant contribution to ecological understanding. We believe that it is important that detailed and carefully designed large experiments can be published in high quality journals and do not, therefore, reject papers solely on the grounds of length. We are also very keen to receive brief research papers that make important new advances in all fields of plant and plant-related ecology. The majority of the output of Journal of Ecology is both widely cited and cited over a long period. The Impact Factor© forJournal of Ecology has been increasing and is now 2.833. This represents an increase of 0.5 over 2002 and a rise of six places in the ISI ranking of ecology journals. Papers in Journal of Ecology have lasting impact: the half-life for citations is well over 10 years. The complete back run of the Journal is available electronically. We are reducing our average time from initial receipt of manuscripts to publication (currently only 8.5 months for the print version) even further by becoming part of the Blackwell Synergy OnlineEarly service, allowing articles to be published online in advance of their appearance in a print issue. Articles appearing online in this way have already been fully peer reviewed, edited and corrected. They are therefore complete and are considered fully published and available for citation from the date they first appear online. This publication date is given in the online table of contents. OnlineEarly articles lack page numbers and volume/issue details and are cited with reference to their Digital Object Identifier (DOI) number (see http://www.doi.org/faq.html). OnlineEarly articles are available as full text HTML or in PDF format. To view all the articles currently available, please visit the Journal of Ecology homepage on http://www.blackwell-synergy.com and simply click on the ‘OnlineEarly’ area at the top of the list of issues available to view. Upon publication in a journal issue, the article will be removed from the OnlineEarly area and will appear instead in the relevant online issue, complete with page numbers and volume/issue details. No other changes will be made. The article also remains identifiable by its unique DOI number. The implementation of OnlineEarly for the Journal reflects our commitment to get manuscripts available to view to the academic community as quickly as possible, reducing time to publication considerably, without sacrificing quality or completeness. We are also pleased to feature on Blackwell's new Ecology portal (http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/ecology). Readers are reminded that they can sign up for Blackwell Publishing's e-mail alert service (http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/ealerts) to receive tables of contents as soon as they are available (with links to the abstracts, which can be viewed free of charge). The entire back run of the journal (i.e. from 1913) is available electronically via JStor (http://www.jstor.org). Members of the British Ecological Society can subscribe to our ‘e-journals’ collection which offers instant electronic access, together with search facilities, to the entire back catalogue of all four of its journals for only £20 plus VAT per year. The high standard of the research we publish is ensured by our team of three Editors (Mike Hutchings, David Gibson and Malcolm Press), our Managing Editor (Lindsay Haddon), and a team of highly respected international Associate Editors, all of whom are eminent in a variety of research fields. It is the aim of the editorial team to build on the reputation that our predecessors have developed for the Journal, whilst making changes where necessary to ensure that our content remains topical and interesting to those currently working in plant and plant-related fields. Jeremy Burdon joined our panel of Associate Editors in early 2004 to help with papers on plant pathology and we have recently appointed Rien Aerts (ecophysiology), Scott Collins (community ecology and grasslands), Marcel van der Heijden (plant–microbe interactions), Peter Jolliffe (statistical ecology and competition), Christer Nilsson (aquatic ecology), Colin Osborne (climate change and ecophysiology) and Gerhard Zotz (tropical ecology and ecophysiology). Five Associate Editors, Bill Lauenroth, Ian Sanders, Ken Thompson, Mark Williamson and Joe Wright came to the end of their terms on the Editorial Board during 2004. All had served for six or more years and we thank them for all their work on behalf of the Journal. We are, of course, also indebted to the 20 or so continuing members listed on the Journal's inside cover. Although Tony Davy retired as Executive Editor at the end of July, we look forward to his continued involvement with the Journal, as he has taken over from Arthur Willis as editor of Biological Flora of the British Isles. Arthur will be a very hard act to follow: as well as being an editor of the Journal from 1970 to 1975, he has been an editor of Biological Flora since 1969. For much of the past 36 years, he has been its principal editor and has developed the accounts from an occasional series to a regular feature in most issues. We have now published nearly 240 accounts and Arthur's eye for detail, ensuring that the information is as complete and accurate as possible, makes them an invaluable resource. We are particularly pleased that in recent months he managed to steer several major accounts (most notably of the genus Pinguicula, Heslop-Harrison 2004) to publication before he retired as Editor. His continued input as an Associate Editor will be much appreciated. The 2004 John L. Harper Young Investigator's Prize for a paper published in Journal of Ecology by an author at the start of his or her research career, is shared between Gerlinde de Deyn (for ‘Plant community development is affected by nutrients and soil biota’, published in issue 5) and Stefan Dullinger (for ‘Modelling climate change-driven treeline shifts: relative effects of temperature increase, dispersal and invasibility’, published in issue 2). De Deyn et al. (2004) examined the effects, through time, of nutrient supply and the presence/absence of soil biota, on the composition and functioning of simple plant communities representing different grassland successional stages. This informative study bridges the narrowing gap between plant- and animal-based studies of ecological communities, showing that the soil biota can have a significant effect on the ability of dominant species to respond to soil nutrients. The paper shows how artificial communities can be used to analyse the interactions between different trophic levels. Gerlinde De Deyn graduated from Ghent University (Belgium) in 1998 and first experienced research life working on the biological control of plant parasitic nematodes in glasshouse crops. Her study of soil fauna and plant community interactions in relation to secondary succession and diversity, directed by Peter de Ruiter (University of Utrecht, Netherlands) and Wim van der Putten (Centre for Terrestrial Ecology, Heteren), was part of a large Biodiversity project involving close collaboration with colleagues at Wageningen University and the Free University, Amsterdam. Since completing her PhD dissertation in 2004, a postdoctoral grant has allowed her to continue investigating plant–soil biota interactions. In February 2005 she will move from Heteren to Guelph University to start a one-year NWO fellowship, working with John Klironomos on plant defences, plant pathogens and mycorrhizal fungi. The results reported in Dullinger et al. (2004) reveal, probably for the first time, the importance of dispersal dynamics and community invasiveness in predicting tree-line shifts in response to global climate change. The thorough approach combined field data with a sophisticated modelling exercise to predict the consequences of future temperature increase on tree cover in the Austrian Alps, with different combinations of the major variables producing predictions that tree cover will increase 2.5- to 6-fold over the next 1000 years. It is clear that the effects of climate change on treelines cannot be inferred solely from the probable effects of increased temperature. The paper attracted interest from the international media, including a feature in the research bulletin of the European Commission (http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/headlines/news/article_04-04-23_en.html). After studying a variety of subjects, including the history of art and philosophy, Stefan Dullinger focused on vegetation ecology in Georg Grabherr's laboratory at the Institute of Ecology and Conservation Biology in Vienna. He received his MSc (1998) and PhD (2003) from the University of Vienna for work on plant community structure and aspects of endemism in the Austrian Alps. Together with his friend and colleague Thomas Dirnböck, he has, in recent years, been studying the effects of climate and land-use change on alpine vegetation and attempting to gain a more detailed understanding of the population processes that govern plant responses to climate change. In 2005, he will start a new three year project, funded by the Austrian Science Foundation, focusing on landscape scale dynamics and gene flow among calcareous alpine snowbed plants. Stefan and some of his colleagues founded a small private research company in spring 2004 to provide the institutional background for their future research activities. Of the 20 or so other young authors considered this year, the editors felt that the papers by Isabelle Gamache and Benjamin Fogel deserved special mention. Like Dullinger et al. (2004), Gamache & Payette (2004) examined the effects of climate change on tree lines. Extensive dendroecological and tree-growth measurements are used to test explicit hypotheses and their analysis of the impact of recent increases in annual heat sums suggests that krummholz forms of black spruce will transform into erect forms. The importance of the study was recognized in a ‘News and Views’ article in Nature (Moore 2004). Fogel et al. (2004) describe a study in which experimental manipulation of habitat in salt marshes is used to disentangle the biotic and abiotic effects of Triglochin maritima on the performance of other species in the community. This species changes abiotic conditions by raising the level of substrate and ameliorating waterlogging stress, enabling more of the associated species to establish within the elevated sections of marsh. This work was undertaken as an undergraduate project and we hope that it will encourage Ben to pursue his career in ecology. Journal of Ecology invites you to submit your best research to http://britishecologicalsociety.manuscriptcentral.com We provide an efficient, author-friendly electronic submission and review process. In the past 12 months we have achieved an average time from submission to first decision of less than 2 months. This has been achieved alongside a 26% increase in submissions between 2001 and 2003, and a further 28% increase in submissions in 2004. We are adding 100 pages to the Journal in 2005 and will continue to increase its size as necessary in future years to ensure that we maintain an acceptance level that reflects the high quality of the manuscripts we receive. Prospective authors are treated with respect and offered help and advice to improve the standard of their submissions. Authors are asked to follow carefully the latest Author Guidelines (please note that the printed version at the end of this issue is regularly updated – see Author Guidelines at http://www.blackwell-publishing.com/jec). A new version of the submission system, which we hope will be even simpler and more intuitive for all users, is currently under test and should become available during 2005. We will, however, continue to make alternative arrangements for referees who find it difficult to work in this way. All we ask is that you should, if at all possible, upload your report via the system or, failing that, e-mail a copy of your report to the Managing Editor, in addition to any hard copy you return by post. Our thanks go to all the colleagues who readily agree to referee papers for Journal of Ecology, despite other commitments: their prompt and efficient services are very much appreciated (see pp. 227–228). We are particularly grateful to Anurag Agrawal, Stephen Bonser, Rob Brooker, Jan van Groenendael, Kyle Harms, Tomas Herben, Angela Moles, Lourens Poorter, Merel Soons, Brita Svensson, Scott Wilson and Peter Zuidema, each of whom has reviewed at least five manuscripts for us over the past year. It is easy to over-use individual referees, particularly in popular subject areas. In order to avoid this as far as possible, we expect that authors of papers submitted to the Journal will agree to review. In addition to the papers cited above, an Essay Review (Higgins et al. 2003), the BES Presidential Address (Grace 2004), a Forum contribution (Ashworth et al. 2004) and several other key recent articles (Booth & Grime 2003; Tuomisto et al. 2003; Heil 2004; Vormisto et al. 2004;) and are available for download free of charge via our homepage at http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/jec.

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