Editorial
Launched by the Oxford University Press on behalf of the Botanical Society of China and the Institute of Botany of Chinese Academy of Sciences, the new Journal of Plant Ecology (JPE) publishes original research articles, reviews and forum pieces covering the entire field of plant ecology. We feel there is a great need for this journal in a time when many other journals are only able to publish a small amount of suitable manuscripts, often those for which they expect the highest impact in terms of citations. To achieve this, these journals focus on concepts and novelty. However, science, in particular the science of ecology, does not simply advance by accumulating concepts and novelty. In the long run, it is the sound results obtained in well-designed studies with sufficient replication and careful measurement and analysis which increase the base of knowledge on which interpretation, understanding and eventually the advancement of science depend. A key criterion by which sound scientific results can be judged is repeatability (a contrast to novelty!). One of the greatest threats to scientific advancement is non-publication and exclusion of results from subsequent synthesis. By publishing sound scientific results, JPE aims to contribute to the advancement of plant ecology beyond concepts and novelty.Our journal welcomes contributions from all parts of the world and concerning all aspects of plant ecology, as long as the results have been obtained by best scientific practice. The work should be guided by questions of broad interest, the data must be unbiased and sufficient to answer the questions and the analysis and presentation should allow the reader to judge the results independently of the interpretation provided by the authors.
The seven original research articles in this first issue cover the topics of vegetation analysis, effects of global change, biodiversity and ecosystem functioning and green technology. The works were carried out in North America, China and Europe. In the first article, Legendre provides a new method to estimate beta diversity by variance partitioning of community data. Xie et al. thoroughly review remote sensing techniques for vegetation mapping as well as the corresponding classification methods used to determine vegetation cover and type from the satellite images. Using a meta-analysis of >300 experiments, Wang et al. demonstrate striking differences between crops and weeds and among different plant functional groups in response to competition under elevated CO2. Horizontal root foraging and species complementarity are the topic of a further experimental study carried out by von Felten and Schmid in Switzerland. Xi et al. observed tree mortality among North American species before and after a hurricane in North Carolina. Results from a biodiversity experiment by Flynn et al. suggest that biomass production of plant communities can be stabilized by (co-)variation in production of component species, which increases with species richness. The paper by Gu demonstrates how water plants can efficiently remove phosphorus from experimental wetland systems used to simulate the situation in Florida's Everglades.
Being an international journal of the Botanical Society of China, JPE also provides a window for the rest of the world on the knowledge base of Chinese plant ecology. For this purpose, the journal publishes brief communications synthesizing research results previously only available to those who read Chinese. This is for example done by inviting contributions from authors who have recently published key work in Chinese journals. These contributions will be under the same peer review process. In the current issue, we include one such contribution. Zhang and He show that clonal integration in Glechoma depends on the contrast in nutrient availability between ramets.
Our new journal can offer an efficient online submission system with short submission to publication times and probably the largest scientific community worldwide as a readership. Visit the website of the journal and upload your best manuscripts here: http://jpe.oxfordjournals.org/
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