Journal of Ecology – through the skills and enthusiasm of our top-notch editorial team and over 50 internationally renowned Associate Editors we are able to quickly and easily validate manuscripts so we accept only the best and most important papers in our field for publication. Our Editors and Associate Editors have expertise across the board in all areas of current plant ecology. Submissions are initially checked for format by our Assistant Editor, then for content by an Editor within 48 hours of submission before a decision is made whether or not to send the paper to an Associate Editor to handle the peer-review process. But, even at this stage, the paper has to be considered novel and ground breaking by the Associate Editor or it will be rejected without further review. Reviewers also have to indicate to us that a paper meets these criteria. After publication we check download statistics on abstracts and full papers, article citations, and have most recently added a number of altmetrics into the mix. These metrics guide us in determining the direction that our field is moving in allowing Journal of Ecology to stay at the cutting edge, and in fact set the trends.