New Initiative – Highlighting of Papers with Graduate or Undergraduate Students as Lead Authors

Oecologia has initiated a new section in its journal dedicated to highlighting exceptional, original research publications that are part of graduate or undergraduate student theses and carry the name of the student as the lead author.

Papers in this category will be published under the heading "Highlighted Student Research", and will be included in the initial topical section of the journal issue in which it is published. Furthermore, each highlighted paper will be featured in the Springer Table of Contents Alerts that is sent to more than 10,000 e-subscribers each month.

This initiative is intended to honor the highest quality student research, and papers must be recommended for this honor by Handling Editors for Oecologia, following the normal peer review process.

Students who wish their papers to be considered for the honor should explain in the cover letter the main reasons why the paper represents an outstanding contribution to the field, and indicate such wish by marking the appropriate box for the Oecologia Highlighted Student Research paper during the online submission process.

Oecologia publishes innovative ecological research of general interest to a broad international audience. We publish several types of manuscripts in many areas of ecology:

Categories:

Concepts, Reviews and Syntheses

Views and Comments

Special Topics

Methods

Physiological ecology - Original research

Behavioral ecology - Original research

Population ecology - Original research

Plant-microbe-animal interactions - Original research

Community ecology - Original research

Ecosystem ecology - Original research

Global change ecology - Original research

Conservation ecology - Original research

In general, studies that are purely descriptive, mathematical, documentary, and/or natural history will not be considered.

In the Concepts, Reviews and Syntheses section, we seek papers on emerging issues in ecology, especially those that cross multiple boundaries in ecology, provide synthesis of important bodies of work or delve into new combinations of theory and observations with the potential to create new paradigms or challenge existing paradigms. These papers are usually invited, but we welcome unsolicited contributions.

In the Views and Comments section, we seek short papers with the intent to provide contrary and/or broader perspectives on papers recently published in Oecologia. Alternatively, pairs of short papers which present opposing views on a topic of high interest in the ecological research community will be published in this section, with the intent to stimulate open debate. In both cases, the papers must be relatively short (up to 3 printed pages in the case of comments on previously-published work or up to 5 printed pages in the case of opposing view pairs of papers), and to contain not only an opinion or criticism on methods or statistics, but also relevant conceptual arguments and/or new data analyses that support the opposing view or comment. Manuscripts or letters intended for the Views and Comments section will be reviewed by one of the Editors-in-Chief and a Handling Editor in the field appropriate to the submission.

Special Topics are a collection of integrated papers on a critical topic of broad interest. Proposals for Special Topics should be submitted to one of the Editors-in-Chief.

Methods are papers that outline new approaches that address standing questions in the discipline.

Original Research provide the core of our journal and represent original investigations that offer new insights into ecological systems.