The year 2011 was a successful one for BMC Ecology
and 2012 is off to an excellent start with the news that the journal
has been accepted for tracking by Thomson Reuters and will receive its
first Impact Factor in 2015. We are delighted with this result as it
reflects the growth and increased visibility of the journal in its field
and the hard work and support given by our Editorial Board and in-house team.

To support and drive the further growth of BMC Ecology,
we are now working with external Section Editors on the journal and are
pleased to welcome Nick Royle, Josef Settele, Jean Clobert, Michel
Baguette, and Mike Bonsall to the journal in these roles. We look
forward to working with them on developing their sections in the future
and benefiting from their experience and expertise.

In addition to these successes BMC Ecology celebrated the 2011 UN Year of Forests with the publication of a thematic series entitled ‘Forests: Looking to the Future’ in conjunction with another of BioMed Central’s open access journals, Carbon Balance and Management. The series published a number of articles, including a review by Raf Aerts and one of BMC Ecology’s Associate Editors Olivier Honnay on forest restoration, which has been highly accessed, and an article
by Tiina Sarkinen and colleagues on the effective mapping of dry forest
biomes. The series has generated a lot of interest and we are pleased
with the promotion that has given the journal, in particular the
coverage on Twitter at the Forests 2011 conference in Belgium which was
happening at the same time.

We are looking forward to what the rest of 2012 brings.