Ecological Complexity

Ecological Complexity is a peer-reviewed journal from Elsevier, founded in 2004, that treats ecological systems as complex adaptive systems and publishes the modelling and theory built around that view. It belongs to ecology and borrows its methods from mathematics, physics and computation. Its 2025 Journal Impact Factor is 1.9, ranking 127 of 205 in ECOLOGY and placing it in Q3.《生态复杂性》是 Elsevier 于 2004 年创办的同行评审期刊，把生态系统视为复杂适应系统，刊发围绕这一视角展开的建模与理论研究。刊物归入生态学，方法上借助数学、物理与计算科学。2025 年期刊影响因子为 1.9，在 ECOLOGY 类 205 种期刊中列第 127 位，属 Q3。

Scope

• The remit covers biocomplexity in the environment and theoretical ecology, and the editors describe the journal as wide and interdisciplinary, one that works through integrated and quantitative approaches rather than single-site description.收录范围覆盖环境中的生物复杂性与理论生态学，编辑部把刊物定为宽口径的交叉刊物，做法上强调综合与定量，不收单纯的单点描述。
• Ecosystems and the biosphere are handled as complex adaptive systems, with papers asking how local interaction rules generate the large-scale behaviour that field surveys record across whole landscapes.生态系统与生物圈被当作复杂适应系统处理，论文追问局部相互作用规则如何生成野外调查在整个景观尺度上记录到的大范围行为。
• Self-organization of spatially extended ecosystems forms a standing theme, covering vegetation bands, mussel beds, dune fields and other ordered structures that appear and persist without an external template or a designer.空间延展生态系统的自组织是常设主题，植被条带、贻贝床与沙丘场一类结构没有外部模板也无需设计者，照样自行出现并长期维持。
• Emergent properties and structures of complex ecosystems are examined directly, including threshold behaviour, alternative stable states and collective traits that no single component of the system possesses on its own.复杂生态系统的涌现性质与结构受到直接考察，阈值行为、多稳态以及任何单个组分都不具备的集体特征都属此类。
• Pattern formation in space and time is a further core area. Studies run from Turing-type mechanisms and reaction-diffusion models to travelling waves, synchrony and the spatial signatures that disturbance leaves behind.时空格局的形成是另一块核心内容。相关研究从图灵型机制与反应扩散模型，延伸到行波、同步现象以及扰动留下的空间印记。
• Papers on biophysical constraints and evolutionary attractors ask how physiology, energetics and selection together bound the species assemblages that are able to persist at any given site.讨论生物物理约束与进化吸引子的论文，追问生理、能量收支与选择压力如何共同限定任何一个地点能够维持的物种组合。
• Scaling is treated at length, with scale invariance, scale covariance and across-scale dynamics set beside allometry and hierarchy theory, since ecological models rarely transfer cleanly between grain sizes.尺度问题占了相当篇幅，尺度不变性、尺度协方差与跨尺度动力学同异速生长和等级理论并列，生态模型很少能在不同粒度之间干净地移植。
• Ecological topology and networks appear in most volumes, from food webs and mutualistic webs to spatial graphs of habitat patches and the way disturbance travels through them.生态拓扑与网络几乎每卷都有，从食物网、互利网到生境斑块构成的空间图，也包括扰动沿这些结构传播的方式。
• Complex systems approaches to human-environment interaction are encouraged, and the journal asks for work that joins social and natural processes at appropriately broad spatial and temporal scales.研究人与环境相互作用的复杂系统方法受到鼓励，刊物要求这类工作把社会过程与自然过程放在足够宽的时空尺度上合并处理。
• Nonlinear phenomena carry an applied edge here. Bifurcations, chaos and regime shifts are studied so that adaptation policy and mitigation planning can rest on them instead of on linear extrapolation.非线性现象在本刊带有应用色彩。分岔、混沌与状态转变之所以受重视，是为了让适应策略与减缓规划有所依托，不必依赖线性外推。
• New tools and methodologies for studying ecological complexity are explicitly solicited, among them machine learning, information-theoretic measures and inverse modelling, along with simulation environments built for large synthetic experiments.研究生态复杂性的新工具与新方法属于明确征稿方向，机器学习、信息论量度与反演建模都在其列，也包括为大规模合成实验搭建的仿真环境。
• Individual-based and trait-based models hold a firm place, because they connect the decisions and fates of organisms to the population and community patterns that observers actually measure.基于个体与基于性状的模型占有稳固位置，它们把生物个体的行为与命运，同观察者实际测得的种群和群落格局连接起来。
• Ecological and evolutionary processes are coupled rather than kept apart. Rapid evolution, phenotypic plasticity and feedbacks between ecological change and selection are handled inside one dynamical system.生态过程与进化过程被放在一起处理。快速进化、表型可塑性与生态变化和选择之间的反馈，在同一个动力系统内部得到刻画。
• Biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and resilience under global change close the circle, asking what keeps a system able to absorb perturbation and where the limits of that capacity sit.生物多样性、生态系统功能与全球变化下的韧性构成收束，问题落在系统靠什么吸收扰动，以及这种能力的边界在何处。

History

• Elsevier brought the journal out in 2004, and volume one alone carried four issues that year, running from March to December at roughly quarterly intervals, so the first volume closed on time.Elsevier 于 2004 年推出本刊，仅第 1 卷就在当年出满四期，从 3 月延续到 12 月，基本按季度间隔发行，第一卷在同一年里出齐。
• Bai-Lian Li, a mathematical ecologist at the University of California, Riverside, was the founding editor and gave the early programme its concentration on biocomplexity and quantitative theory.（Bai-Lian Li）是创刊主编，这位在加州大学河滨分校工作的数学生态学家为早期选题定下重心，落在生物复杂性与定量理论上。
• The founding team pitched it as a dedicated outlet for model-based and theoretical papers, a body of work that in 2004 was still scattered across general ecology and physics titles.创刊团队把它当作模型类与理论类论文的专门出口，这类工作在 2004 年仍散见于综合性生态学期刊与物理学期刊。
• Through 2011 the journal kept a single volume a year, from the first volume to the eighth, and each of those eight volumes was built from four quarterly issues.到 2011 年为止，刊物每年只出一卷，从第一卷走到第八卷，每一卷都由四个季度期号组成。
• The rhythm changed in 2012, when four volumes appeared within a single year for the first time and the numbering ran from volume 9 to volume 12 in twelve months.2012 年节奏改变，一年之内首次出现四卷，卷号在十二个月里从第 9 卷一路编到第 12 卷。
• In the years that followed, Sergei Petrovskii of the University of Leicester took the editor-in-chief chair, while Bai-Lian Li stayed on the masthead under the founding editor title.此后（Sergei Petrovskii）自莱斯特大学接任主编，（Bai-Lian Li）则以创刊主编的头衔留在编委名单上。
• Volume numbers have climbed steadily ever since. Four volumes appeared in 2025, carrying numbers sixty-one through sixty-four, and the two volumes planned for 2026 take the series to sixty-six.卷号此后稳步攀升。2025 年出了四卷，编号从第 61 卷到第 64 卷，排入 2026 年的两卷把序列推到第 66 卷。
• Recent volumes carry article numbers rather than continuous page ranges, and the issue numbers that once mattered have largely dropped out of the metadata deposited with Crossref.近年各卷用文章编号取代连续页码，曾经要紧的期号在存缴给 Crossref 的元数据里大多不再出现。
• Subscription remains the default route to the text, with an open access option available against an article processing charge, and roughly a third of recent papers take it.订阅仍是获取全文的默认途径，作者可支付文章处理费选择开放获取，近年约三分之一的论文走了这条路。
• Impact factors at this title have swung widely over the past four reports. The figure for 2022 was 2.969, 2023 brought 3.1 and 2024 reached 3.4, a peak that the latest report cut back to 1.9.影响因子在这几年间起落明显。2022 年为 2.969，2023 年为 3.1，2024 年升到 3.4，最新一份报告把这个高点压回 1.9。
• Citations accumulate slowly here and the metrics show it, with a cited half-life of 11.3 years, longer than most ecology titles can claim and a sign that the archive keeps being read.引用在这里积累得慢，指标如实反映，被引半衰期达 11.3 年，比多数生态学期刊都长，也说明旧文一直有人读。
• Total citations reached 2225 in the 2025 report, while the annual article count stayed near a dozen, so each paper draws a fair share of the attention that arrives.2025 年度报告的总被引为 2225 次，年发文量维持在一打上下，单篇论文分到的关注因此不算少。
• Special issues on set themes have belonged to the format from the start, and the editors still invite proposals for collections that gather modelling work around one problem.主题特刊从一开始就是固定形制，编辑部至今仍接受专辑提案，用一组建模工作集中处理同一个问题。
• The title has remained in Science Citation Index Expanded throughout, and JCR files it under ECOLOGY rather than under an applied or interdisciplinary category, a placement that has held for years.刊物始终留在 Science Citation Index Expanded 之内，JCR 把它归入 ECOLOGY，未放进应用类或交叉类目，这一归属多年未变。

Editors

• Sergei Petrovskii, professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Leicester, is editor-in-chief, and his own research deals with spatial population dynamics and invasion fronts.主编为（Sergei Petrovskii），在莱斯特大学数学系任教授，本人的研究集中在空间种群动力学与入侵前沿。
• Bai-Lian Li of the University of California, Riverside is still carried as founding editor, a title the journal keeps for the person who set its original course.（Bai-Lian Li）仍在加州大学河滨分校，名单上保留创刊主编一职，这个头衔留给为刊物定下最初方向的人。
• The board page lists associate editors below the editor-in-chief, and the interests of that group run across mathematics, theoretical ecology and the study of complex systems, which is where most submissions land.编委页在主编之下另列若干副编辑，这个群体的兴趣横跨数学、理论生态学与复杂系统研究，也正对应多数稿件的落点。
• Referees are asked to judge the model as much as the biology, which makes a manuscript of field data without formal structure a hard argument to win.评审人要像审视生物学内容那样审视模型，只有野外数据而无形式化结构的稿件，很难在评审中站住。
• Manuscripts enter through Elsevier's Editorial Manager site, and ordinary research papers have no separate pre-submission enquiry stage, so authors upload the complete file with figures and a cover letter.稿件经 Elsevier 的 Editorial Manager 系统提交，普通研究论文不设单独的预投稿咨询环节，作者一次上传含图件与投稿信的完整文件。
• Outside reports settle most outcomes, and the handling editor weighs conflicting recommendations before a paper is accepted, returned for revision or declined outright, and authors are told which of the three applies.多数结果由外部评审报告定夺，处理编辑在意见相左时作出权衡，再决定录用、退修或退稿，作者会收到属于哪一种的明确答复。
• Article types are set out in the guide for authors, among them original research papers, case studies, review articles and short notes, with viewpoint pieces, letters and book reviews alongside.投稿指南列出可投体裁，包括原创研究论文、案例研究与综述、短札，另有观点文章、读者来信和书评。
• Special issues are assembled by guest editors working with the editor-in-chief, and the call for papers states the scope well before manuscripts begin to arrive, so readers know what a collection will hold.特刊由客座编辑与主编协同组织，征稿说明在稿件到来之前就写明选题范围，读者也提前知道一辑会收些什么。
• The editorial office sits with the publisher in Amsterdam, and correspondence about a manuscript travels through Elsevier's systems rather than to an academic address, which keeps the paper trail in one place.编辑部办公室随出版社设在阿姆斯特丹，稿件往来经 Elsevier 的系统转接，不寄往某位学者的个人地址，往来记录集中在一处。
• Book reviews and letters to the editor give the readership a lighter channel, and they generally appear without the full referee process that research papers are put through.书评与读者来信提供一条较轻的通道，通常不经研究论文所经历的那套完整外审。
• The first filter is scope. Submissions that treat complexity as a metaphor, with no model and no quantitative framework behind them, are returned before referees are approached.第一道筛子是选题。把复杂性当作比喻而拿不出模型、也没有定量框架的投稿，在送审之前就会被退回。
• Language editing runs through the publisher's author services, and the guide asks for plain prose with technical terms explained, since readers arrive from mathematics, physics and biology.语言润色经出版社的作者服务提供，指南要求行文平实，专业术语要交代清楚，读者来自数学、物理与生物学界。
• Board members act as advisers as well as gatekeepers, suggesting referees, flagging emerging topics and helping decide which special issue proposals are worth pursuing, and reading manuscripts in their own fields.编委既承担把关职责，也起顾问作用，推荐审稿人、提示新兴题目，参与判断哪些特刊提案值得推进，并审读本领域的稿件。