Two years ago, we published an editorial demonstrating that submitted and published papers in Journal of Applied Ecology were heavily skewed towards English‐speaking authors from the Global North, with nearly 80% of our submitted papers and more than 88% of our published papers coming from North America, Europe and Oceania. This contribution provoked a strong response on social media, and was followed by a number of studies further demonstrating that research outputs published in leading ecological and conservation journals remain primarily written by authors with affiliations in the Global North (Eichhorn et al., 2020; Hazlett et al., 2020; Melles et al., 2019). These biases are not new, but events this year have triggered further conversations within the scientific community about representation, representativeness and decolonisation as a much‐needed process to improve diversity in disciplines such as applied ecology and conservation (see e.g. Antonelli, 2020; Telegraph, 2020). These discussions, as well as the informal interactions that followed the publication of our 2019 editorial, resonated with us and have motivated us to identify steps we could take as Senior Editors to address the uneven global distribution in Journal of Applied Ecology's authorship, readership and editorial processes.

With this editorial, we aim to discuss what decolonising science means, why decolonising applied ecology is important, and what we, as an international journal, can do to support this decolonisation process. We recognise that these issues are complex, go far beyond journals and transcend science itself. Our contribution does not claim to provide a comprehensive overview of the causes of Humanity's colonial past or its consequences for the practice of science; rather, it aims to provide relevant background information to support the decisions we have made about the way we operate as a journal. Our hope is that these changes will make scientists and research institutions from the Global North more aware of their role in shaping global inequalities in ecological science; support ecologists from the Global South; and promote the development of a more inclusive discipline of applied ecology.

两年前，我们发表了一篇社论，表明《应用生态学杂志》上已提交和已发表的论文严重偏向来自全球北部的说英语的作者，其中近80％的已提交论文和88％以上的已发表论文都来自来自北美，欧洲和大洋洲。这一贡献在社交媒体上引起了强烈反响，随后进行了许多研究，进一步表明，领先的生态和保护期刊上发表的研究成果仍然主要是由全球北部有隶属关系的作者撰写的（Eichhorn等，  2020； Hazlett等人，  2020 ;梅勒斯等人，  2019）。这些偏见并不新鲜，但是今年的事件引发了科学界内部关于代表性，代表性和非殖民化的进一步对话，这是改善应用生态学和保护等学科多样性的急需过程（参见例如Antonelli，  2020； Telegraph，  2020年）。这些讨论以及2019年社论发表后的非正式互动引起了我们的共鸣，并激励我们确定我们可以采取的步骤，以解决《应用生态学报》作者，读者和社论中全球分布不均的问题流程。

通过这篇社论，我们旨在讨论非殖民化科学的意义，为何非殖民化应用生态学很重要以及作为国际期刊我们可以做些什么来支持这一非殖民化进程。我们认识到这些问题很复杂，不仅限于期刊，而且超越了科学本身。我们的贡献并未声称全面概述了人类殖民历史的成因或对科学实践的影响；相反，它旨在提供相关的背景信息，以支持我们就期刊运营方式所做出的决定。我们希望，这些变化将使全球北部的科学家和研究机构更加意识到它们在塑造生态科学中全球不平等方面的作用；支持全球南方的生态学家；