--- name: journal-of-ecology description: Use when targeting Journal of Ecology (J Ecol) or deciding whether a full-length plant-focused or broader ecology manuscript fits this venue. Encodes the journal's fit, framing, method-and-evidence bar, house style, official-submission re-check, and desk-reject heuristics. --- # Journal of Ecology (journal-of-ecology) ## Journal positioning Journal of Ecology is published by the British Ecological Society with Wiley and is a leading venue for full-length ecological research with a strong plant focus, while welcoming broader ecology that spans population, community, and ecosystem levels. Its defining character is depth and rigor without a brevity constraint: papers are expected to develop a question thoroughly, with adequate replication, careful design, and a substantive discussion. The journal rewards advances in plant population and community ecology, plant-soil interactions, ecosystem processes, demography, and the mechanisms underlying ecological pattern — work that is conceptually motivated and broadly relevant beyond a single site. Readership is the international ecology community, with particular strength in plant and ecosystem ecology. This skill is a **fit / venue-selection / re-framing** tool. It does not replace the journal's current official guidelines. Before submitting, re-check the live author instructions on the Journal of Ecology BES/Wiley site. ## When to trigger - The author names Journal of Ecology as the target for a full-length plant-ecology or broader ecology study with thorough design and analysis. - A plant population, community, or ecosystem study is choosing between Journal of Ecology, Ecology Letters, and Functional Ecology. - A study has solid empirical depth that exceeds a short-format venue's limits but needs a conceptually general framing to merit a high-impact full-length journal. - The author needs Journal of Ecology's scope boundaries, data-archiving conventions, and desk-reject criteria before submission. ## Scope & topic fit - Plant population ecology: demography, life history, recruitment, dispersal, and population dynamics across environments. - Plant community ecology: assembly, coexistence, diversity, succession, competition, and the mechanisms structuring vegetation. - Plant-soil interactions: plant-soil feedbacks, mycorrhizal and microbial ecology, nutrient cycling as it shapes plant performance and community structure. - Ecosystem ecology: productivity, carbon and nutrient dynamics, and ecosystem responses to global change where plants are central. - Broader ecology spanning population to ecosystem levels — including non-plant systems — when the question and inference are of general ecological significance. - Long-term, experimental, and large-scale observational studies whose design supports robust, generalizable mechanistic conclusions. ## Method & evidence bar - The study must address a conceptually motivated ecological question with relevance beyond the focal site or species; site-specific natural history alone is insufficient. - Design and replication must support the claims: adequate spatial/temporal replication, appropriate controls, and a sampling scheme matched to the inference. - Analyses must be rigorous and current — appropriate mixed/hierarchical models, demographic or community-analysis methods, effect sizes with uncertainty, and assumption checks. - Mechanistic interpretation is valued: the paper should explain why a pattern arises, not only document that it exists. - Long-term datasets, manipulative experiments, and well-designed observational gradients are strong evidence; single-snapshot surveys need a strong conceptual argument. - Data and code must be archived in an approved public repository (Dryad/Zenodo or equivalent) and be reproducible per current BES policy. ## Structure & house style - Journal of Ecology publishes full-length articles (and selected other formats); re-check current article types, word limits, and figure allowances on the live site. - Standard IMRaD structure is expected: an Introduction that motivates a general question and states hypotheses, thorough Methods, integrated Results, and a substantive Discussion. - The journal expects depth — adequate background, complete methods in the main text, and a discussion that engages the broader literature and mechanism. - Figures should communicate ecological patterns clearly; multi-panel figures are acceptable when each panel earns its place. - Supporting Information carries additional analyses, sensitivity tests, and supplementary data; the main text develops the full argument. - BES journals require a data-availability statement and increasingly a code/reproducibility statement; confirm current required elements. ## Official-submission checklist - Before giving submission-ready advice, read `../../resources/source-basis.md` and `../../resources/official-source-map.md`; start from the official source anchors for this journal family, then cite the current journal-specific page you checked. - Search the live site for "Journal of Ecology author guidelines" and follow the current BES/Wiley version. - Re-check current article types, word and figure limits, and any structured-abstract or summary requirements. - Re-check the data- and code-availability policy: approved repositories, archiving expectations, and statement format. - Re-check competing-interests, funding, ethics/permits (sampling, fieldwork), and AI-use disclosure requirements; confirm preprint policy (bioRxiv/EcoEvoRxiv generally compatible). - If the live official instructions conflict with this skill, the official instructions win. ## Pre-submission self-check - [ ] One sentence — the general ecological question and the mechanism the study illuminates beyond its focal system. - [ ] Replication and design support the claims; the study is not site-specific natural history. - [ ] Analyses are current and rigorous, with effect sizes and uncertainty rather than bare significance tests. - [ ] The Discussion engages mechanism and the broader literature, not only the local result. - [ ] Data and code are archived in an approved repository with accessions ready. - [ ] Required fieldwork permits and ethics approvals are documented. ## Common desk-reject triggers - A site-specific or species-specific descriptive survey without a general ecological question or mechanistic interpretation. - A study whose replication or design cannot support the generality of its conclusions. - A purely descriptive species inventory or vegetation classification without conceptual advance. - A short, single-result paper better suited to a concise venue, or a study whose scope is too narrow for a leading full-length journal. - A manuscript with inadequate or missing data archiving, or analyses that ignore non-independence (pseudoreplication). ## Re-routing decision - A concise, conceptually driven advance that fits a strict short format: Ecology Letters (`ecology-letters`). - A mechanistic study centered on organismal function, physiology, or traits linking function to ecology: Functional Ecology (`functional-ecology`). - A broad, high-profile eco-evolutionary advance: Nature Ecology & Evolution. - A macroecological or biogeographic pattern study at global scale: Global Ecology and Biogeography (`global-ecology-and-biogeography`). ## Output format ```text [Fit] High / Medium / Low (one-line reason) [Target] Journal of Ecology [Topic tags] <2–3 closest topics> [Method/evidence] [Top risk] [Official items to re-check]
[Re-route suggestion] ```