CONCLUSION
The academic publishing system is in crisis, and systemic change is needed to make it more fair and equitable. While there is widespread motivation and desire to make large-scale publishing changes across the academic system, the task feels daunting. To address this, we suggest a set of actions to promote change that can be implemented by researchers across varying aspects of their academic lives—as readers, authors, reviewers, editors, evaluation committee members and colleagues. While many of the actions we propose are lower-risk and can be implemented by ECRs, these actions must be complemented by higher-risk ones undertaken by established researchers. While the main goal of these actions is to improve the publishing system in ecology and evolution, they will also address other inequalities, including the accessibility of research in general, and the evaluation of researchers for employment and promotion. Researchers in ecology and evolution could learn from fairer practices in other fields, such as the common use of alphabetical authorship order in mathematics and economics (Waltman 2012), and the propensity to use preprint servers for studies in physics. Here we focus on researchers as the primary engine of change, yet governments arguably have a part to play to ensure public funding is not lost to the large profit margins of private publishing houses. We hope that through taking these suggested actions, and with the support of established researchers, ECRs will be instrumental in advancing changes that create a more ethical publishing system. As a last note, acknowledging the biases that may arise from our collective experience in the field of ecology and evolution, we embrace the opportunity for feedback and open discussions on this topic, especially from those whose backgrounds differ from the authors.
 
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We thank Nicolas Mouquet, Ophélie Ronce and François Massol for valuable discussion. We also thank three anonymous reviewers for their relevant suggestions.
 
FUNDING
All co-authors are employees or are affiliated with the French Foundation for Biodiversity Research, in the Centre for the Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity (FRB-CESAB).
 
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTION
Conceptualization: AR, JB, SDA, AJH, NM, BFO, CPC, ERB, MS, AS, DV
Supervision: AR, JB, SDA, AJH, NM, BFO, CPC, ERB, MS, AS, DV
Writing – original draft: AR, JB, SDA, AJH, NM, BFO, CPC, ERB, MS, AS, DV
Writing – review & editing: AR, JB, SDA, AJH, NM, BFO, CPC, ERB, MS, AS, DV
 
 
[1] https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/WLY/financials/annual/income-statement
[2] https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/RELX/financials/annual/income-statement