Sixty years of applied ecology with impact

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..., , , # 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 ...,