New Phytologist

New Phytologist (new-phytologist)

Journal positioning

New Phytologist, published by the New Phytologist Foundation, is a plant-science journal with a long-standing strength in plant ecology, physiology, environmental interactions, and symbiosis — mycorrhizal and other plant–microbe relationships, whole-plant function, and processes that scale from organism to community and ecosystem. Its defining expectation is a conceptual advance with integrative breadth: a study that changes how a process is understood by connecting levels of organization, rather than a tightly bounded mechanistic result. A study whose contribution is a single gene-to-function molecular mechanism with no physiological, ecological, or whole-organism reach usually fits a cellular/molecular journal better. This skill is a fit / venue-selection / re-framing tool. It does not replace the journal's current author guidelines. Before submitting, re-check the live New Phytologist author guidance.

When to trigger

• The author names New Phytologist and wants a fit/framing check for an integrative plant-ecology, physiology, or symbiosis paper.
• A whole-plant or ecosystem-scale result must be framed as a conceptual advance that connects mechanism to function across scales.
• The author is deciding between New Phytologist and the-plant-journal and needs the ecology/physiology-breadth versus molecular-mechanism distinction made explicit.
• The author needs New Phytologist's desk-reject heuristics and a credible alternative route.

Scope & topic fit

• Plant physiology and whole-plant function: water relations, carbon and nutrient economy, photosynthesis, and stress ecophysiology with conceptual reach.
• Plant–microbe and plant–plant interactions, especially mycorrhizal and other symbioses, including nutrient exchange and community consequences.
• Plant ecology and environmental responses, including community, ecosystem, and global-change-relevant processes anchored in plant function.
• Plant–environment interactions spanning soil, climate, and biotic context where the plant is central to the process.
• Evolutionary ecology, functional and trait-based approaches that integrate across levels.
• Methods and conceptual syntheses that advance integrative plant science.

Method & evidence bar

• The contribution must be an integrative conceptual advance: it should connect levels (molecule → organism → community/ecosystem) or generalize beyond one system.
• Physiological and ecological claims need adequate replication, defensible experimental or observational design, and appropriate mixed-model or multivariate statistics.
• Field and common-garden studies must address environmental variation, pseudoreplication, and scale of inference explicitly.
• Symbiosis and interaction studies need controls that isolate the interaction and quantify fluxes or fitness consequences, not just co-occurrence.
• Data and, where applicable, code/sequence data should be deposited in FAIR community repositories with accessions cited.

Structure & house style

• New Phytologist publishes research articles, rapid reports, and commissioned reviews/ viewpoints (Tansley reviews/insights); re-check current article types on the live guide.
• The introduction must frame the conceptual question and the integrative gap, not catalogue a study system.
• Figures should make the cross-scale or mechanistic-to-functional argument visible; experimental design and statistics must be transparent.
• Methods and data-availability statements must let a reader reproduce the analysis; ecological metadata and sampling design should be complete.

Official-submission checklist

• Before giving submission-ready advice, read ../../resources/source-basis.md and ../../resources/official-source-map.md; start from the official source anchors, then cite the current New Phytologist page you checked.
• Search the live site for "New Phytologist author guidelines" and follow the current New Phytologist Foundation/Wiley version.
• Re-check article types (research vs. rapid report vs. review/viewpoint), word and figure expectations, and abstract format.
• Confirm data, code, and sequence/accession deposition requirements and FAIR expectations.
• Re-check competing-interests, funding, author-contribution, and AI-use disclosure, and open-access terms.
• If the live official instructions conflict with this skill, the official instructions win.

Pre-submission self-check

• The contribution is an integrative conceptual advance, not a bounded single-level mechanism.
• The work connects scales or generalizes beyond one system/site.
• Design addresses replication, pseudoreplication, environmental variation, and scale of inference.
• Interaction/symbiosis claims have controls that isolate the interaction and quantify effects.
• Data, code, and any sequence accessions are deposited in FAIR repositories.
• Article type, statistics reporting, and data-availability statements are prepared.

Common desk-reject triggers

• A single gene-to-function molecular result with no physiological, ecological, or whole-plant reach.
• A descriptive survey or correlation with no conceptual question or integrative framing.
• Pot/glasshouse results over-generalized to field or ecosystem scale without justification.
• Pseudoreplicated or under-replicated ecology presented as general, with weak statistics.
• Symbiosis claims from co-occurrence alone, with no flux/fitness quantification or controls.

Re-routing decision

• Molecular/cellular/biochemical gene-to-function mechanism is the core → the-plant-journal.
• Broad, headline plant-science significance for a Nature audience → nature-plants.
• Field-scale crop yield and agronomy → field-crops-research.
• Climate/global-change process at large scale dominant → global-change-biology.
• Agroecosystem environment outcomes (nutrients, GHG, biodiversity) → agriculture-ecosystems-and-environment.

Output format

[Fit] High / Medium / Low (one-line reason)
[Target] New Phytologist
[Topic tags] <2–3 closest integrative plant topics>
[Conceptual advance] <how it connects scales or generalizes beyond one system>
[Method/evidence] <does design + replication + data deposition clear New Phytologist's bar?>
[Top risk] <the single most likely reason for rejection>
[Official items to re-check] <article type / statistics / data + accession policy / disclosures>
[Re-route suggestion] <if not a fit, a better-matched venue>

Source: brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills → Agriculture-Environment-Journal-Skills/skills/new-phytologist/SKILL.md