Journal of Applied Ecology celebrates its 60th birthday in 2024. In this Editorial, we explore how the journal's role has changed since its launch and investigate whether the articles we publish are achieving real‐world impact. We designed and ran an author survey for all authors who have published with us between 2017 and 2021. Authors were asked if their publication achieved real‐world impact, and if so, how they achieved it. Forty four percent of respondents achieved real‐world impact with their article, primarily citing engagement with key stakeholders as the reason for this impact. We also assessed our impact on online policy documentation, comparing this to our citations in the published scientific literature. We are the most highly cited British Ecological Society journal for policy mentions with over 2800 citations in total. We also found a weak correlation between policy citations and citations in academic literature, which highlights the fact that article with relatively few academic citations can have large real‐world impact. Synthesis and applications. Whilst these results are encouraging, there are significant challenges involved in achieving and measuring impact scale. To help address some of these, we launch here a suite of new author services to help our authors achieve real‐world impact with their work. This includes offering plain language summaries and the opportunity to present findings to British Ecological Society's stakeholder community.