Kevin Gaston will be editor-in-chief of the new journal

Exeter academic to lead new journal

A University of Exeter academic will lead a new international journal published by the British Ecological Society (BES).

Professor Kevin Gaston will be editor-in-chief of People and Nature, an open-access journal dedicated to publishing high-quality, peer-reviewed work from research areas exploring relationships between humans and nature.

He will work closely with lead editors Rosie Hails, Kai Chan, Cecilly Maller and Rob Fish, and an expert board of associate editors drawn from a wide array of fields that intersect with ecology, including economics, law, geography and sociology.

“I’m delighted to be leading this project, which comes at a particularly exciting time as research in ecology becomes more interdisciplinary,” Professor Gaston said.

“The vision of the journal is to provide a much-needed space in which researchers can debate and share knowledge at the meeting point of ecology with other disciplines.”

Recognising the importance of human aspects in all areas of ecology, People and Nature fosters innovation and experimentation. Authors may use quantitative, qualitative and mixed methodologies.

Professor Rosie Hails, of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, and current Vice President of the BES, said: “The British Ecological Society already publishes five well-respected journals in the field of ecology. With the launch of this new journal, authors will have the opportunity to disseminate their work more widely amongst our multidisciplinary community and beyond.”

Professor Kai Chan, from the Institute for Resources Environment and Sustainability, and the Institute for Oceans and Fisheries at the University of British Columbia, described the journal as “a fantastic home for high-quality research addressing urgent issues facing our planet".

Dr Cecily Maller, Senior Research Fellow at RMIT University’s Centre for Urban Research, added: “Now more than ever we need to look beyond disciplinary boundaries to more transformative, transdisciplinary ways of thinking to understand human-nature relationships.”

Dr Robert Fish, Reader in Human Ecology at the University of Kent’s School of Anthropology and Conservation, said: “Ecological questions are wrapped up inside a wider set of political, social and cultural concerns and conundrums. This journal will be an important venue for debate and innovation in the complex arena of people-nature interactions.”

People and Nature will open for submissions in June.

Available exclusively online, People and Nature will be published in partnership with John Wiley & Sons, alongside five established journals from the BES, namely: Journal of Ecology, Journal of Applied Ecology, Methods in Ecology and Evolution, Functional Ecology, and Journal of Animal Ecology. 

Follow @PaN_BES for updates.

More information about the journal, including a short interview with the lead editors, can be found here: https://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/publications/journals/people-and-nature/

Date: 11 May 2018