British Ecological Society launches new journal: People and Nature

The British Ecological Society (BES), in partnership with its publisher John Wiley & Sons, is delighted to announce the launch of a new international journal.

People and Nature is an open access journal dedicated to publishing high-quality, peer-reviewed work from research areas exploring relationships between humans and nature.

The journal will be led by Kevin J Gaston, Professor of Biodiversity and Conservation at the University of Exeter. Gaston will work closely with lead editors Rosie Hails, Kai Chan, Cecily Maller and Robert Fish, and an expert board of associate editors drawn from a wide array of fields that intersect with ecology, including economics, law, geography, sociology and the wider arts and humanites.

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

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 & Hydrology, and current Vice President of the BES added: “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 concluded: “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.

For general queries, please contact: Emilie Aimé, Managing Editor, BES
Email: emilie@britishecologicalsociety.org, Tel: +44 207 685 2517

For media queries, please contact: Sabrina Weiss, Press Officer, BES
Email: sabrina@britishecologicalsociety.org, Tel: +44 207 685 2523