Writing for an International Audience

Authors submitting to Restoration Ecology and other international publishing venues need to give careful thought to framing their manuscripts to maximize the relevance of their message to an international audience. I discuss five questions that all authors should reflect upon in framing their papers. Namely, authors should consider which conclusions will be most relevant to an international audience, the scope of systems to which these conclusions apply, and the amount of data supporting these conclusions. Authors should also think about the breadth of the literature cited and the degree of replication of the study. Localized studies are critical to implementing ecological restoration, but all authors, regardless of their intended outlet, need to carefully consider their audience. To publish successfully in an international journal, such as Restoration Ecology, authors need to frame their results within a broad context.