Ecotones, herbivory, acceptance rate and electronic access

Abstract

Each year, we choose a paper for the Editors’ Award, normally from among those nominated by the Coordinating Editors (no money is handed out). This year, the voting was tied, so we settled for two joint winners: Walker et al. (2003) and Bakker & Olff (2003). We had another problem this time: one of the papers nominated had a Chief Editor as a subsidiary author and another had the daughter of a Chief Editor as the first author. According to our rules a paper with a Chief Editor as first author can never win, and once we have a shortlist a Chief Editor cannot vote on a paper that his/her name appears on. We considered fiercer rules than this, but we thought it unfair for a young scientist to miss out on an award because s/he was associated with a Chief Editor. Anyway, as it turned out the two Chief Editors with any possible conflict of interest did not vote at all. In spite of this, the name of one Chief Editor appears on one of the joint awardees, and the daughter of a Chief Editor on another. Sorry. We tried not to.