DOI: 10.5061/dryad.xgxd254rk
title: Data from: Sixty years of applied ecology with impact

description: Journal of Applied Ecology celebrates its 60th birthday in 2024. In this
 Editorial, we explore how the journal’s role has changed since its launch
 and investigate whether the articles we publish are achieving real-world
 impact. We designed and ran an author survey for all authors who have
 published with us between 2017-2021. Authors were asked if their
 publication achieved real-world impact, and if so, how they achieved it.
 Forty four percent of respondents achieved real-world impact with their
 paper, primarily citing engagement with key stakeholders as the reason for
 this impact. We also assessed our impact in online policy documentation,
 comparing this to our citations in the published scientific literature. We
 are the most highly cited British Ecological Society journal for policy
 mentions with over 2800 citations in total. We also found a weak
 correlation between policy citations and citations in academic literature,
 which highlights that fact that paper with relatively few academic
 citations can have large real-world impact. Synthesis and application.
 Whilst these results are encouraging, there are significant challenges
 involved in achieving and measuring impact scale. To help address some of
 these, we launch here a suite of new author services to help our authors
 to achieve real-world impact with their work. This includes offering plain
 language summaries and the opportunity to present findings to British
 Ecological Society’s stakeholder community.
description: # Data from: Sixty years of ecology with impact
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.xgxd254rk](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.xgxd254rk) Description of the data and file structure | Journal cites and alt | **Journal of Applied Ecology papers from the window 2017-2021 with times cited and number of policy mentions** | | :-------------------- | :------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | All journals policy | All British Ecological Society journals policy mentions in the window 2017-2021 and the number of papers published in that window. NAs here are where there is not yet the information available. | | Country Policy | Journal of Applied Ecology policy mentions in the window 2017-2021 broken down by countries | | Questionnaire results | Anonymised and unidentifiable results from the author questionnaire. NAs here are where the answer was not selected. | **Journal cited and alt tab:** * DOI - article DOI * Title - article title * PubYear - the year the article was published * Document Type - the article type * Times_cited - the number of citations the article has received - from Dimensions * LogCitations - the common log of the citations - from Dimensions - #NUM errors because you can't Log zero * Policy_Mentions - the number of policy mentions the article has received - from Altmetric #N/A here represent zero mentions * X_Mentions - the number of X mentions the article has received - from Altmetric #N/A here represent zero mentions * Facebook_Mentions - the number of Facebook mentions the article has received - from Altmetric #N/A here represent zero mentions **All journals policy tab** * Journal - the BES journal name * Policy_Mentions - the number of policy mentions the article has received - from Altmetric * Papers - the number of papers published * Policy_p_paper - the number of policy mentions per paper published (policy mentions/papers) **Country policy tab** * Country - the country where the policy document was published * Policy.docs - the number of policy documents citing Journal of Applied Ecology **Questionnaire tab** Author - the anonymised author All of the following columns are questions from the questionnaire, they are as follows. For more info, check the full questionnaire in the supplementary material of the paper. NAs here are where the answer was not selected. 2a. When writing your article, did you consider the possible impact of your research? (Yes, No, Other) 2b. Did you disseminate your research in order to create pathways to real-world impact? (Yes, No, Somewhat) If "yes": * Developing press releases, news articles or blogs * Talks to stakeholders * Meetings with stakeholders * Inclusion in policy reports or practical guidelines * Other 3a. Does your article have real-world impact? (Yes, There was no known impact, I'm not sure) If "I'm not sure": * Did not try to gather evidence on impact * Too busy to present findings to stakeholders etc * Managers or stakeholders had minimal interest * Did not consider potential impact of the research as it was aimed more at academics rather than practitioners, policy makers or society * Did not have the resources or funding for dissemination beyond publication