About

Aims and scope

Fire Ecology is the international scientific journal of the Association for Fire Ecology. It publishes peer-reviewed, impactful articles on all ecological and management aspects relating to wildland fire. While the topics considered for publication are broad, manuscripts submitted to Fire Ecology must have a direct link to wildland fire and should include discussion of the ecological, management, or policy implications. Wildfire and prescribed fire research are welcome. Only high-quality manuscripts with wide international appeal will be considered. We welcome submissions on topics that include a broad range of research on the ecological relationships of fire to its environment, including, but not limited to:

Fire ecology (physical and biological fire effects, fire regimes, etc.)
Fire management
Fire science and modeling
Wildland fuel
Inter- or cross-disciplinary fire-related topics
Wildland fire law and policy
Wildfire planning and risk management
Social aspects (geography, sociology, anthropology, etc.) of wildland fire
Wildland fire technology transfer products

Why publish in Fire Ecology?

We are the official publication of the Association for Fire Ecology.
Our international scientific journal publishes articles on all ecological and management aspects relating to wildland fire, and welcomes submissions that include a broad range of research on the ecological relationships of fire to its environment.
Open access publication ensures that your article can be easily discovered, accessed, used, and shared, maximizing your impact and acting as a springboard for further discovery.

Open access

All articles published by the Fire Ecology are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.

As authors of articles published in the Fire Ecology you are the copyright holders of your article and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate your article, according to the license terms.

For those of you who are US government employees or are prevented from being copyright holders for similar reasons, SpringerOpen can accommodate non-standard copyright lines. Please contact us if further information is needed.

Article processing charges

Authors who submit to Fire Ecology are required to pay an article processing charge (APC) after acceptance. The APC will be determined from the date of which the article is accepted for publication.

The current APC, subject to VAT or local taxes where applicable, for Original Research, Reviews, Forums, and Monographs is £1790.00/$2490.00/€2090.00.

Book reviews, Classic Reprints, Field Notes, and Technical Notes are subject to an APC of £905.00/$1420.00/€1150.00.

Members of the Association for Fire Ecology are entitled to a 20% discount off the APC of their accepted paper in Fire Ecology, and should send their APC token request immediately after acceptance to the AFE Administrative Director. The member discount cannot be applied retrospectively.

Students and Early Career Researchers (ECRs), especially SAFE members, are encouraged to submit to Fire Ecology. An article accepted with any student or ECR (defined as being within one year of award of their PhD degree) as the first author will receive a voucher for free access to any Springer publication in eBook form (up to a maximum value of 250 Euros/US dollars, and maximum one per year) in perpetuity. Please see our submission guidelines for details.

Open access funding

There are many institutions and research funders that provide APC funding for OA authors. You can find more information on our APC Funding & Support Services page, or contact our support service directly: OAfundingpolicy@springernature.com.

Springer Nature offers agreements that enable institutions to cover open access publishing costs. Learn more about our open access agreements to check your eligibility and to check whether this journal is included.

Springer Nature also provides APC waivers and discounts for articles published in our fully open access journals whose corresponding authors are based in the world’s lowest income countries (see our APC waivers and discounts policy). Requests for APC waivers and discounts from other authors will be considered on a case-by-case basis, and may be granted in cases of financial need (see our open access policies for journals). All applications for a discretionary APC waiver and discount must be made at the point of manuscript submission. Requests made during the review process or after acceptance will not be considered.

Indexing services

All articles published in Fire Ecology are included in:

Science Citation Index Expanded
Scopus
AGRICOLA
BIOSIS Reviews
Current Contents

The full text of all articles is deposited in digital archives around the world to guarantee long-term digital preservation. You can also access all articles published by SpringerOpen on SpringerLink.

Fire Ecology has an Impact Factor of 3.6 (2023) .

Peer-review policy

Peer-review is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published. Independent researchers in the relevant research area assess submitted manuscripts for originality, validity and significance to help editors determine whether the manuscript should be published in their journal. You can read more about the peer-review process here.

Fire Ecology operates a single-blind peer-review system, where the reviewers are aware of the names and affiliations of the authors, but the reviewer reports provided to authors are anonymous.

Submitted manuscripts will generally be reviewed by two or more experts who will be asked to evaluate whether the manuscript is scientifically sound and coherent, whether it duplicates already published work, and whether or not the manuscript is sufficiently clear for publication. The Editors will reach a decision based on these reports and, where necessary, they will consult with members of the Editorial Board.

Benefits of single-blind peer review

Single-blind peer review is the traditional model of peer review that many reviewers are comfortable with, and it facilitates a dispassionate critique of a manuscript.

Editorial policies

All manuscripts submitted to Fire Ecology should adhere to SpringerOpen's editorial policies.

Once your article is accepted, it will be processed by production and published shortly afterwards. In some cases, articles may be held for a short period of time prior to publication. If you have any concerns or particular requirements please contact the Journal.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Citing articles in Fire Ecology

Articles in Fire Ecology should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Article citations follow this format:

Authors: Title. Fire Ecol [year], [volume number]:[article number]

Appeals and complaints

Authors who wish to appeal a rejection or make a complaint should follow the procedure outlined in the BMC Editorial Policies .

Benefits of publishing with SpringerOpen

High visibility

Fire Ecology's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience.

Speed of publication

Fire Ecology offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles will be published with their final citation after acceptance, in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF; the article will then be available through Fire Ecology and SpringerOpen.

Flexibility

Online publication in Fire Ecology gives you the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other articles).

Promotion and press coverage

Articles published in Fire Ecology are included in article alerts and regular email updates.
In addition, articles published in Fire Ecology may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in Fire Ecology.

Copyright

Authors of articles published in Fire Ecology retain the copyright of their articles and are free to reproduce and disseminate their work. For further information, see our guide to licensing, copyright and author rights.

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal from SpringerOpen, please click here.