In the autumn of 2017 the journals of the British Ecological Society conducted its first open call for Associate Editors. Any researcher with relevant experience could apply to join the editorial board of a BES journal.

The purpose of the open call was to allow us to move towards a more transparent system of appointing new AEs that would allow us to discover ‘hidden talent’ rather than rely on the traditional approach of appointing people that we already knew or knew of (personally or professionally). And of course, with an open call, we receive applications from people that actually want to be an AE rather than recruiting people that might need persuading.

We received a total of 351 applications across the five journals, with Journal of Ecology receiving 92 applications from 30 different countries. We were astounded by this response and had a very difficult time selecting who to appoint from the candidates.

Having previously discussed taking on a dozen or so new AEs, the brilliant response and the depth of talent meant that we ended up taking 21 new AEs. Having the four Journal of Ecology Senior Editors agree on anything is rare, and we found it impossible to agree on just a dozen new AEs from the outstanding list of applicants!

Journal of Ecology now has a total of 90 AEs on our editorial board, across 26 different countries including new or increased representation from counties such as China, India, and Kenya where ecology as a discipline is becoming more important than ever before. Furthermore, our gender balance is improved to 49:41 M:F.

Below is a listing of all the new AEs we have taken on as a result of the open call. We are excited to welcome our new AEs and look forward to working with them on the journal.

David Gibson, Executive Editor 

Eric Allan, University of Bern, Switzerland
Deepak Barua, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Pune, India
Giovanna Battipaglia, University of Campania, Italy
Heather Campbell, University of Pretoria, South Africa
Chengjin Chu, Sun Yat-Sen University, China
James Dalling, University of Illinois, USA
Frederik De Laender, Université de Namur ASBL, Belgium
Orou Gaoue, The University of Tennessee, USA
Cristina Garcia, CIBIO/InBio, Portugal
Tommaso Jucker, CSIRO, Australia
Paul Kardol, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
Eric Lamb, University of Saskatchewan, Canada
Yoann Le Bagousse-Pinguet, King Juan Carlos University, Spain
Berangere Leys, Chrono-environnement lab, CNRS, France
Crystal McMichael, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
Ayub Oduor, Technical University of Kenya, Kenya
Imma Oliveras, University of Oxford, UK
Paloma Ruiz-Benito, University of Alcalá, Spain
Brajesh Singh, Western Sydney University, Australia
Carla Staver, Yale University, USA
Iain Stott, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark

You can view our full editorial board on the journal website.