Overview
The Philosophy of the Journal
Be Author Friendly
Ecology and Evolution is intended to be a bit different. Our overriding philosophy is to be "author-friendly". We intend to provide a forum for authors to present their evidence-based views, as long as they are not factually incorrect (or, you know, wacky). In practice, this means that we allow authors to disagree with reviewers but we expect them to acknowledge and address disagreements in the manuscript. We think this will lead to dialogues within the research community. Impact comes in many forms. We are not chasing an Impact Factor; we are looking to have research read and commented upon.
Look for Reasons to Publish
To implement the journal philosophy, we look for reasons to publish a manuscript rather than looking for reasons to reject. We do not have a target for rejections and there is no page limit for a manuscript, or for an issue of the journal. There is no curve. But just like class marks, there will always be some that do not pass. However, we don’t have to work to make sure there are papers rejected.
Rather than reject a paper, we hope to find ways to overcome concerns. Our experience is that there are rarely fatal flaws. More often, reviewers disagree with the orientation of a paper, or feel there are better methods, or feel the data are over-interpreted. We also see comments such as "this is not novel" or "there are more modern approaches". None of these are reasons for rejection at Ecology and Evolution. Judging "quality" is not easy and always subjective. If the science isn't flawed, there is always value.
Many journals have gone to a "reject without review" decision to reduce their workload given they can only publish a small fraction of the papers they receive. Because we are online, we have no such limits. We would be delighted to publish 100% of what is submitted. There are no page limits with online open access. Therefore we aim to review nearly everything submitted.
We are aware, however, that the reviewer community is under stress. We therefore encourage editors to make firm decisions. If a paper is rejected, it is flawed. If it can be revised, we encourage editors to interpret reviewer concerns and, with rare exceptions, we do not expect papers to be sent back to referees after the authors have revised their work. With the cooperation of the author, editors should be able to make a decision on a revised paper without further review.
Our Scope is Broad
Journals typically reject papers that do not fall within the scope of the journal. Ecology and Evolution is intentionally very broad. We accept descriptive studies. We accept work that is preliminary. We accept new opinions and ideas. Any research in ecology, evolution, or at the interface is acceptable. We do not distinguish between subfields of ecology or evolution — all are welcome.
The journal will consider submissions across taxa in areas including but not limited to micro and macro ecological and evolutionary processes, characteristics of and interactions between individuals, populations, communities and the environment, physiological responses to environmental change, population genetics and phylogenetics, relatedness and kin selection, life histories, systematics and taxonomy, conservation genetics, extinction, speciation, adaption, behaviour, biodiversity, species abundance, macroecology, population and ecosystem dynamics, and conservation policy.
Ecology and Evolution considers original research articles, reviews, hypotheses, Registered Reports, and our novel categories Nature Notes and Academic Practice in Ecology and Evolution.
Referred Papers: Making Use of Reviews from Other Journals
The reviewer community is under increasing stress. One reason for this is that many papers found by reviewers to be good, scientifically sound research are rejected from "selective" journals due to a perceived lack of "novelty" or "impact". These papers will of course be published elsewhere eventually, but only following a completely new peer review process. This duplication of peer review wastes the time and efforts of both authors and reviewers and delays the community being able to read and make use of this research.
To help reduce this problem, Ecology and Evolution will consider papers, along with any existing reviews, referred to us by the Editors of other Wiley journals that are participating in the Manuscript Transfer Program.
Ecology and Evolution editors will make prompt accept, reject, or request revisions decisions, based on the original peer reviews. The Ecology and Evolution editors may seek additional reviews, but this is rare and authors will be advised in those cases.
Impact Factor
We don't like Impact Factors. Clearly we are not alone in this, and you likely don't need us to provide a list of reasons why a journal's Impact Factor is a terrible way to judge the value of a paper published in it, nor the various detrimental effects for science resulting from the use of Impact Factors to judge research output. Ecology and Evolution does not chase an Impact Factor, we don't decide whether to publish a paper based on whether it will be "high-impact", and we believe our Impact Factor is utterly irrelevant when judging the value of our journal or any individual paper we publish.