Over the next few weeks we will be welcoming three new Associate Editors to Methods in Ecology and Evolution. Susan Johnston (University of Edinburgh, UK) became a member of the Associate Editor Board on Monday 5 October. She will be joined on 19 October by Natalie Cooper (Natural History Museum, London, UK) and finally by Luísa Carvalheiro (University of Brasília, Brazil) on 2 November. You can find out … Continue reading New Associate Editors
You’ve spent months, or even years, working on a project. You’ve finalised your manuscript and you’re ready to submit. But which journal should you send your paper to?
In recent years, this question has only gotten harder. As more and more journals enter the market, the decision of where to send your paper is becoming increasingly confusing. With predatory journals muddying the waters and an increasing pressure to publish, deciding where to submit can be a daunting task for even seasoned academics.
Is Methods in Ecology and Evolution the right journal for your manuscript? Is your manuscript right for Methods? Hopefully this blog post will give you a set of tools to make that decision a little easier. Most of these can be applied to other journals too (although some may need to be tweaked a little). Continue reading “Choosing Where to Submit: Is Your Manuscript Right for MEE?”
Applied ecology can be defined as scientific knowledge that helps in making good management decisions. Scientists have a natural desire to collect information, managers want that information so that they know they are doing the right thing, and both generally act under the assumption that more information equals better decisions. This is generally correct, since information helps us make, well, informed decisions. Therefore, when our ecological knowledge is uncertain (which is practically always the case) we usually advocate further research.
On the other hand, however, information comes at a cost. It may cost money to collect it and take time to set up studies: both are usually in short supply. We can’t learn everything and often the information we can actually collect is still imperfect. So how do we determine if that additional piece of information we’d like to have is really valuable for our management?
In ‘When do we need more data? A primer on calculating the value of information for applied ecologists’ , Stefano Canessa and colleagues provide a tutorial to the calculation of value of information (VOI) for applied ecologists and managers who would like to know more about it, but are not familiar with decision-theoretic principles and notation.
In decision analysis, the value of information is the improvement in the outcomes of our actions that we would expect if we could reduce or eliminate uncertainty before making a decision. Previously applied in engineering, economics and healthcare planning, VOI is also intuitively appealing for environmental management, where decisions must be made in the face of ubiquitous uncertainty. Knowing the value of information can assist in designing monitoring and experimental programs, implementing adaptive management and prioritising sources of uncertainty. In other words, it can help applied ecologists and conservation managers find a focused, transparent way to address the inevitable need for “more data”.
An increasing number of studies are applying VOI to conservation management; however, in spite of its potential the technique is still underused in real-world applications, particularly beyond the small community of applied ecologists trained in decision-analytic methods.
In summary, three things determine the value of information:
Continue reading “The Value of Information: Does More Data Mean Better Decisions?”
Two heads are often better than one in decision making. Several heads might have an even higher probability of being better than one. However, people in a group often have different modes of thinking or problem solving, alternate reference frames, subjective biases and varying levels or domains of expertise. How do we harness these messy thought processes and channel them for effective decision-making for biodiversity management?
The Methods in Ecology and Evolution Symposium was an excellent conference with dynamic and interesting speakers representing a wide range of topics which have been published in the journal over the last five years. It was an unusual conference for a couple of reasons:
Equal attendance
The gender balance of the speakers encouraged me to look around the room and write down a few figures for other gender dimensions of the London section of the symposium. As well as equal gender representation of speakers, there was also a good gender balance in the attendees – 42% of the attendees were female at the time I wrote down the numbers. These two figures suggest that it was a good conference for gender equality. However, I think these headline figures hide a number of more tricky aspects of gender equality.
Questionable numbers
There were a total of 23 questions asked of the 12 speakers presenting or livestreamed in London and only 3 of these were from women (2 out of 22 if I exclude my own question to reduce any investigator effects). These data points are not independent, as some people asked several questions, but I didn’t keep a record of individuals. Twitter revealed a similar reduced female presence compared to attendance: of those people tweeting to #Methods5th only 37% were women.
Continue reading “Methods 5th Anniversary Symposium: A Gender Balanced Event?”
On Wednesday 22 April 2015, Methods in Ecology and Evolution will be celebrating its 5th Anniversary. Methods is the British Ecological Society’s youngest journal and over the past five years it has established itself as the leading publication for methodological advances for both the ecological and evolutionary academic communities.
For those of you who can’t make it to either the first half or the Symposium in London (Looking Forward to the Next Five Years) or the second half in Calgary (Next Generation Ecology and Evolution: Genomics Tools for the Study of Ecology, Evolution, and Biomonitoring) we will be livestreaming every presentation.
Our 5th Anniversary Symposium will be streamed though Livestream.com. This platform is optomised for all browsers as well as Android and iOS devices. So all that you need is a computer, tablet or smart phone and the ability to connect to the internet.
Continue reading “Methods in Ecology and Evolution 5th Anniversary Symposium: The Livestream”
As many of you will already know, Dr Vamosi is the newest (and first female) Senior Editor for Methods in Ecology and Evolution. She joined Rob Freckleton and Bob O’Hara in June of 2014 and has been working on manuscripts ever since. Jana is also organising the Canadian half of our 5th Anniversary Symposium in April (the Early Bird deadline for which is approaching – Friday 20 March). We are also running a Poster Session at this event; if you would be interested in submitting a poster, please contact Jana here.
The research in Jana’s lab focuses on the macroevolution, macroecology, community ecology, and conservation biology of plants. Many of their projects require gathering empirical data on the mechanistic underpinnings of plant diversity in specific locales. However, they often incorporate global phylogenetic perspectives as well. You can learn more about the lab’s work here.
Jana’s most recent publications include ‘Species and Phylogenetic Heterogeneity in Visitation Affects Reproductive Success in an Island System’ (along with Lorraine Adderley) which was published in International Journal of Plant Sciences in February and ‘Evolutionary ecology of specialization: insights from phylogenetic analysis’ (along with W Scott Armbruster and Susanne S Renner) first published in October 2014.
As part of our International Women’s Day activities, we wanted to have a short profile on Jana. Luckily, she had recently written one for the 6th International Barcode of Life Conference which will be taking place at the University of Guelph from 18 August to 21 August 2015. Jana will be giving a Plenary session (along with Charles Godfrey and Naomi Pierce) on Ecological Interactions.
The following was originally posted on the International Barcode of Life Conference Continue reading “Senior Editor Profile: JANA VAMOSI”
2014 was a wonderful year for Methods in Ecology and Evolution. We had a record number of submissions and we published some fantastic articles (if we do say so ourselves). None of this would have been possible though without the work of the people who generously provide reviews for the journal. Whether you reviewed one paper or twenty, we really appreciate your time and effort. … Continue reading Thank you to our 2014 Reviewers
In this video Thomas Etherington shows how to use the NLMpy Python package to create neutral landscape models. The video demonstrates how the paper’s Supporting Information documentation, Python scripts, and GIS data can be used to create a the example neutral landscape models that are shown in the paper. Recognising that some ecologists may not be very familiar with Python, the authors have also created … Continue reading NLMpy: a python software package for the creation of neutral landscape models
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