Call for Papers
Special Issue of the Working Group Ecosystem Services
As a collaborative of event of the IALE-D Working group Ecosystem Services and the Ecosystem Services Partnership ESP, a joint Workshop on Indication, Integration and Application of Ecosystem Services in Decision Making was held in Kiel in May 2013. Following this event there have been some very constructive discussions about the planned special issue on Concepts and Methods for Ecosystem Service Assessments. The result on hand is a general acceptance of the plans from the editorial board of the IALE-D online journal Landscape Online and a huge support by workshop participants. Therefore, the submission procedure has been initiated, and we look forward to receiving your contributions.
The general objectives of the Special Issue with the increasing popularity of the ecosystem service approach in many universities, research institutions and administrations, various works have to be done in parallel at several places. To date, lack of collaboration and standards has resulted in extremely low compatibility among different approaches. Therefore, an information base on ecosystem service quantification concepts and methodologies will be extremely helpful for all scientists and practitioners. We are now establishing a respective collection of information in a "living“ special issue. It can be called “living” because the contributions can be published continuously and fast, without deadlines and waiting times. Furthermore it is possible to modify papers by new editions or new papers if the methodology has been improved. And finally this issue does not duplicate the works of other journals because the focus is strictly put on methodology.
The layout and structure of the papers:
Here you can find information on the layout of the articles and a proposal for their structures. The editors as well as the reviewers and the readers would appreciate if you try to stick to these templates. There is no restriction of page numbers, but to make the papers more readable, the principle length of the articles should not exceed 25 pages. There are many possibilities to put additional information into different sorts of appendices.
The submission procedure:
Please apply the instructions for authors from the journal’s online submission. Here choose the option > Special Topic: "Concepts and Methods for Ecosystem Service Assessments". Based on this information, the review procedure will be supported and organized by the guest editors. To start the issue with a critical mass of papers the first edition is tried to be published in December 2013.
The review procedure:
Submitted articles which have been assigned to this special issue will initially be sent to the team of workshop organizers of the May-meeting in Kiel. These persons will select 2 reviewers in cooperation with the journal’s editorial board. The reviews will be resent to the authors when both referees have provided their evaluation, and - if it is positive - the authors will be asked for revisions. If the reviewers propose major revisions they will be asked for comments also concerning the revised manuscripts. To assist the reviewing procedure, authors can add a list with 5 potential objective and competent reviewers to their cover letter.
Of course, this special issue will also be open for colleagues who did not participate in the Kiel workshop in May 2013. Therefore we encourgage you to also inform your colleagues and friends about this activity of IALE-D and the ESP working groups on "Ecosystem Service Indicators“, "Ecosystem Service Cascade“ and "Application of Ecosystem Services in Planning and Management“. If you are planning to write a paper, please provide a short description ofyour paper in order to prepare the organization of the special edition. We are looking forward to your replies and paper submissions.
By Felix Müller (IALE-D, ESP) and the editorial group.
