Award | Announcing the 2026 E4 Award competition
We are happy to announce an open competition for the 2026 E4 Award.
The Ecography Award for Excellence in Ecology and Evolution (E4 Award) is given to an early career research scientist who submits an exceptional Review manuscript.
The review should focus on spatial and/or temporal patterns, particularly studies of population and community ecology, macroecology, biogeography, ecological genetics, historical ecology, evolution, macroevolution, and conservation. If the award is given for a paper with multiple authors (the lead and corresponding authors must be early career) those meeting the early career research criteria at the time of publication will share the monetary prize.
The winner of the E4 Award will receive 1000€ cash and the runner-up will receive 500€. All E4 papers that are accepted will appear in a special issue in Ecography. To increase visibility and readership, we will actively promote E4 award papers on social media, and we encourage authors to write blog posts and create video abstracts. Our early-career E4 award papers are more downloaded and cited than the average research paper for Ecography. In addition, they tend to have high altmetrics scores.
As Ecography is a full gold Open Access journal we charge an Article Processing Charge (APC) for all accepted papers. If the winner and the runner-up have no means to cover the APC, they may apply for a waiver, as part of the Award prize. More and more funders, institutions, and universities have unique agreements with Wiley where part or all of the APC is covered. In addition, Wiley offers waivers and discounts to corresponding authors based in developing countries.
To apply for the E4 Award:
Please submit a brief (< 300 word) proposal as a .pdf for a concise review paper in one of the areas listed above by 31 March to ecography@oikosoffice.lu.se, with “The E4 Award” in the subject line.
Please also give names of all authors, affiliations, email address to contact author and date of PhD for all authors, after the title on the proposal. About 4 weeks later an invitation to submit will be sent to the proposals that made it to the next step. The deadline for submitting a full Review paper will be 30 September.
A manuscript-selection committee will evaluate these applications and choose a subset of proposals to invite to submit a review manuscript. These reviews do not need to cover an entire research area, and in fact can be concise summaries (< 5000 words) of particularly novel areas of research in spatial or temporal ecology, evolution, or conservation.
The manuscript-selection selection committee will review these full submissions from the finalists and send the submissions out for peer review, if they meet the basic criteria for an E4 paper.
Accepted submissions will then be reassessed by an award-decision committee that will choose the winner and runner-up of the E4. All submissions, whether or not they win a prize, have the opportunity to appear in Ecography if they meet the journals standards.
Author Criteria
The winner must have finished her/his PhD no more than 12 years prior to the deadline (MSc students and PhD students are also eligible). Ecography realizes that life intervenes occasionally, so this cut-off is meant to be a suggestion and not a hard requirement. However, applicants should provide an explanation if they are requesting an exception (e.g. absence due to family leave, dramatic shifts in research area, etc.).
Manuscript selection committee and handling editors
Rob Colwell, Suzette Flantua and Robert Holt
Award-decision committee
Christine Meynard, Dominique Gravel and Jens-Christian Svenning
Ecography—who are we?
ECOGRAPHY: A Journal of Space and Time in Ecology is an Open Access journal owned by the Nordic Society Oikos.
Our journal strives to understand ecological or biodiversity patterns through space and time. We encourage papers to advance the field of macroecology and biogeography through the development and testing of theory or modern methodology (remote sensing, molecular techniques, AI) or by proposing new tools for analysis or interpretation of ecological phenomena. There are no biases with regard to taxon, biome, or biogeographical area.
Thinking about publishing with us?
Ecography offers an annual E4 Award for early-career researchers
We value ethical standards in science (EDI, Open Access, waivers, accessible data and code, CRediT)
Check out Ecography’s journal metrics and see our Author Guidelines
Our journals, our society—join us!
The Nordic Society Oikos engages the global scientific community through five international journals…
…and supports the national ecological societies of the five Nordic countries. Anyone worldwide can join the Nordic Society Oikos.
NSO is a home for ecologists, a nexus for knowledge, and a guiding light for ecology worldwide. We are an active network of ecologists in the Nordic region and around the globe.
Why join NSO? Membership benefits include:
Connections across a global community of ecologists and five national societies
NSO newsletters with member-only updates about Nordic ecology and society activities
Ongoing opportunities for promotion on NSO’s digital platforms and social media channels
Discounted registration for NSO’s biennial conference
Eligibility to apply for NSO Grants
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