Ecology has helped drive solutions to big problems, such as acid rain, species extinction, and overfishing, but do we solve enough? To address this question, we reviewed the 40 top ecology journals (by impact factor), which are likely to have the greatest readership and influence in the field. What we found may surprise you. On average, we found that only 14% of the articles per journal issue were solution focused. Is this because solution-driven science is not considered a key component of well-read ecology journals (i.e., that it might appear instead in grey literature), or that it receives relatively limited attention from ecologists, or is it simply that the solution “happens” after the ecology has been done and is not recorded. Regardless of the driver, we advocate the need to shine a brighter light on the problems that ecological knowledge can help solve by promoting what we achieve and boosting our efforts towards investigating solutions.
If this commentary tweaked your interest - check our our latest paper in One Earth.
