Rethinking Ecology, a new journal fostering new thinking in ecological research

Abstract

Rethinking Ecology is a new open access, peer-reviewed journal that aims at fostering both forward-thinking and the publication of novel ideas in all aspects of ecology, evolution and environmental science. Rethinking Ecology is an opportunity to publish novel ideas and hypotheses prior to fully testing them. Our aim is to encourage scientists to share and discuss their novel ideas with their peers without fear of losing the credit they deserve. The publishing of these ideas at an early stage has the potential to draw attention from the scientific community, help create research networks with other interested parties, support grant proposals, and help refine the idea before testing it experimentally. The aim of Rethinking Ecology is therefore to be an incubator for novel ideas, and a catalyst for new thinking. This role is particularly important in conservation science where urgent innovation is required to stem biodiversity loss.

During its first year of existence, Rethinking Ecology has published papers contributing to advancing ecological research by recommending new definitions, proposing new avenues of research, exploring new tools for conservation, fostering discussions on previously published research, and proposing better ways to fund scientific research.

This presentation will outline and discuss the core values of the journal which have been hot topics in 2017, in particular the tackling of biases associated with single blinded reviews (1), the gender bias (2), the issues with peer-review funding panels, or the co-authorship black box (3).

1. Tomkins, A., Zhang, M., & Heavlin, W. D. (2017). Reviewer bias in single-versus double-blind peer review. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(48), 12708-12713. 2. Bradshaw, C. J., & Courchamp, F. (2017). Gender-biased perceptions of important ecology articles. bioRxiv, 219824. 3. Boyer, S., Ikeda, T., Lefort, M.-C., Malumbres-Olarte, J., & Schmidt, J. M. (2017). Percentage-based Author Contribution Index: a universal measure of author contribution to scientific articles. Research Integrity and Peer Review, 2(1), 18.