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Editorial News

Annals of Forest Science deploys a test for Optional Open Peer Review system

Open Peer Review, i.e., displaying the content of the reviews and the review process once a paper has been published, is becoming a new norm in Open Science Publishing. Annals of Forest Science is launching the test of a new procedure of Optional Open Peer Review, and we are seeking for authors and reviewers willing to accept to contribute to this test. The model that we test is gathering the following features:

  • double blind review before publication, by default.
  • publication of the peer review, optional if authors and reviewers agree, and if the manuscript is published;
  • Optional peer review page detailsthe peer reviews may remain anonymous or signed (depending on the decision of the reviewers).

The outcome would be that in case of acceptance, all reviews (including the comments of the handling editors) would be merged into a Portable Peer Review Report made available with a DOI and attached to the published paper. Reviews would only be published for accepted (published) manuscripts. See more here.

If you are willing to contribute as an author, please mention it during submission in your cover letter. If you are a reviewer and willing to see your review published, please mention it while accepting to prepare a review.

The Annals of Forest Science community is grateful in advance to all authors and reviewers who are willing to contribute to this test.

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« First Reports »: A New Article Type for Annals of Forest Science.

Given the rapid spread of emerging diseases and pests in forests, frequently related to climate change or to incidental introductions of the organisms responsible for this diseases, Annals of Forest Science decided to launch a new type of short papers. A first report describes the first observation of a new disease, a new pathogen or pest occurring in a new region or identified for the first time.  Please keep the First Report manuscript as short as possible. The sections of the manuscript are relatively free. There is no abstract, but a key message providing a brief account of the main results is necessary (less than 100 words). 

Suggested sections for the manuscript are:

Key message, Context, Material & Methods, Results.

Such a paper model is close to what is practiced in numerous journals devoted to pathology and entomology.We hope this initiative will be of interest to our colleagues acting in these fields.

The editors of Annals of Forest Science.

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« Debates » : A new Section on the Annals of Forest Science Website

This new section is devoted to commentaries and debates inspired by results published in the journal. It concentrates on scientific debates and should be seen as a space for discussion about the research results displayed in the journal. Science indeed builds on contradictory debates and complementary viewpoints that may help reach a consensus, or raises new questions that require further research.

The new debate we wish to highlight is raised by claims that the pine wood nematode present in saw-dust could infect wounded pine seedlings independently of the presence of the usual bark beetle vector. However, French colleagues from “Département Santé des Forêts-DSF”, the department in charge of forest health monitoring at national level of France, insist that this risk has been assessed earlier, and that it remains minor with respect to all other risks.

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"Rapid Publication" vs. "Scientific Quality" of papers published in Annals of Forest Science: How do we handle this apparent contradiction?

Speed of publication has become a major expectation for authors and therefore a challenge for many journals. Indeed, authors expect timely processing of the manuscripts they submit, to ensure a rapid dissemination of their results. The speed of publication became in the recent years a major criterion for selecting a journal, and some publishers promote (very) fast publication as an argument to select their journal (at the same level than the Impact Factor).

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Annals of Forest Science has moved to full Open Access

In order to best serve our authors and readers and to meet research funder requirements, Annals of Forest Science has moved to full Open Access (OA) publication from 2022 on. 

Selected articles published prior to 2022 remain paywalled, and rights and permissions remain under original copyright: © INRAE and Springer-Verlag France SAS, part of Springer Nature.

PRESS RELEASE: Choosing the best seeds to help sessile oaks adapt to future climates

Forest planting is one of the levers to mitigate climate change. The origin of seeds is crucial to optimise the success of tree planting and their adaptation to future climates. INRAE and the ONF (French Forestry Office) conducted a vast study over 30 years using a collection of around 100 tree species. The results were published in the journal in 2 interesting papers. 

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Explore the INRAE journals published by Springer Nature on the new portal

Please click here for an overview of the journals and new features.

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Call for Papers: Open Collections

Click here to view the full list of journal collections and submit your manuscript to one of our latest special collections.

Forecasting and managing multi-risks in the Mediterranean, temperate and boreal forests

Impacts of disturbances on carbon cycling in forest ecosystems


Socio-ecological conflicts in forest management: risks of (not) adapting?


Trees, forests and water: recent advances on resistance and resilience to water deficits


Advances in the understanding of the pine wilt disease and in its management strategy


Forest Adaptation and Restoration under Global Change


Assisted Migration and Forest Seed Transfer

 

Impacts of natural disturbances on forest ecosystems under climate change: large-scale analysis and modelling

Annals of Forest Science welcomes proposals for topical collections in forest and wood sciences. Click here if you have an idea for a new collection.

Highlighted Papers

The editorial board selected two papers published during 2021 as highlighted papers. Both address important issues for the resilience and adaptation of forest ecosystems to climate change.

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Annals of Forest Science: Debates

Debates are part of the construction process of scientific knowledge and may lead, when properly conducted, to change old paradigms and in some cases to help new ones to emerge. This section is devoted to such debates.

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Open Science

Annals of Forest Science publishing policy develops around INRAE’s  principles of Open Science including: (i) Open Access to papers; (ii) whenever possible Open Access to the data used in the paper; (iii) consideration of preprints for publication. Annals of Forest Science currently has a double blind peer review model (authors and reviewers remain anonymous). During the next years, the journal commits to develop further initiatives in this direction with the full support of BMC.

Submit your preprints

Annals of Forest Science believes that preprints made available to the scientific community in public archives with a DOI, are an important step in the dissemination and discussion of research results. We are pleased to consider preprints for publication with the same interest than previously unpublished material.

Annals of Forest Science is a PCI Forestry and &Wood Sciences friendly journal, this status has been granted by the “Peer Community in” project.

Preprints recommended by a recognized PCI are welcome for submission to the journal, and the editorial board uses the recommendation for a rapid assessment of the preprint before final decision.

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Editors-in-Chief

Erwin Dreyer, PhD, INRAE, France
Jean-Michel Leban, PhD, INRAE, France
Andreas Bolte, PhD, Thünen Institute of Forest Ecosystems, Germany
Marco Ferretti, PhD, WSL, Switzerland
John M. Lhotka, PhD, University of Kentucky, USA
Shuguang (Leo) Liu, PhD, Central South University of Forestry and Technology, China

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A quote from the Editor-in-Chief

Forests under pressure call for immediate action

We all know: climate and weather are key drivers of the condition of our forests. Yet, the year 2022 is teaching us another hard lesson on the subject. According to the Combined Drought Indicator(1) large parts of the EU territory is experiencing warning or alerting conditions, and - while news headlines were dominated by reports of heatwave events across the boreal Hemisphere - heat anomalies were reported from all across the globe. 

In Europe the current heatwave and drought follows a series of recent remarkable years (2015, 2018 and 2019) that had already a significant negative impact on the condition of our forests. It is likely that further, cumulative negative effects will occur. The head of the European Space Agency (ESA) has already warned that consequences of heatwaves and drought “could dwarf Europe's energy crisis, and called for urgent action to tackle climate change”(2)
 
While scientists learned already how to react quickly to evaluate the impact of drought impact(3), policy- and decision makers apparently did not. In some important European economies the climate issue is completely absent from the political debate – at the point that Giorgio Parisi, 2021 Nobel laureate in Physics, should publicly ask for it(4)

As a recent editorial appeared in Nature reads: “We have said it many times before but time is running out, there needs to be action and committed focus on addressing climate change as the new normal keeps shifting and we cannot adapt to keep pace”(5).

  1. European Drought Observatory, https://edo.jrc.ec.europa.eu/edov2/php/index.php?id=1000#, Accessed on 10 August, 2022.
  2. Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/climate-risks-dwarf-europes-energy-crisis-space-chief-warns-2022-08-11/, Accessed on 11 August 2022.
  3. https://www.wsl.ch/en/about-wsl/programmes-and-initiatives/wsl-drought-initiative-2018.html. Accessed on 11 August 2022.
  4. https://www.repubblica.it/green-and-blue/2022/08/03/news/giorgio_parisi_appello_climatologi_politica-360184277/ . Accessed on 11 August 2022.
  5. Heating up. Nat. Clim. Chang. 12, 693 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01462-x. Accessed on 11 August 2022.


Marco Ferretti, Swiss Federal Research Institute for Forests, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, Switzerland
 

Introducing our new Associate Editors

We are delighted to welcome our new Associate Editors. Read here about their expertise and the strength they bring to the board.

Shengli Tao, PhD

Peking University, China

Matteo Vizzarri, PhD

University of Milan, Italy

Aims and Scope

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Annals of Forest Science publishes multidisciplinary research devoted to forests and wood in a changing world. The scope covers all relevant disciplines (biology, ecology, economy and social sciences, forestry) at all relevant scales (from organism to landscape). The science published in Annals of Forest Science contributes to the adaptation and resilience of forests to ongoing climate change, helps identify the mitigating role of forests for such changes, and supports the development of a sustainable, circular and inclusive bioeconomy, and in general addresses the challenges forests are facing in the mid to long term.

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Contribute to Annals of Forest Science community

Would you like to join Annals of Forest Science community and contribute to the journal as reviewer or associate editor? You are welcome to send us a brief message stating how you would like to contribute. 
If you are interested in joining the editorial board, please send us a brief CV and a motivation letter.

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