This special issue compiles the most important studies of plant–plant interactions published in Web Ecology during the last 15 years. Despite the short timespan since the formal study of facilitation was established, it has been a hot topic in the ecological literature with a considerable impact among researchers. The view of plant–plant interactions as primarily competitive was nearly exclusive until the end of the 20th century, when Bertness and Callaway formally established the concept of facilitation, as opposed to competition, to stress the importance of mutualism among plant species in shaping plant communities. Those foundational papers started an important movement devoted to the study of positive interactions among plants, and Web Ecology, first published in the year 2000, has played a significant role in propagating those ideas in its pages since then; including a numerous contributions by R. M. Callaway and many of his collaborators. When Lortie and Callaway studied the relative abundance and quality of scientific literature dealing with competition (metaphorically described as Goliath) and facilitation (David), finding that although the long tradition of the study of competition has produced a much higher net amount of papers dealing with competition, papers dealing with facilitation received a similar mean number of citations. This very clearly illustrated the fact that quality is more important than quantity for the relevance of scientific studies – a vision that we fully embrace in Web Ecology.