Conservation Research Is Not Happening Where It Is Most Needed

PLoS Biology, Mar 2016

Target 19, set by the Convention on Biological Diversity, seeks to improve the knowledge, science base, and technologies relating to biodiversity. We will fail to achieve this target unless prolific biases in the field of conservation science are addressed. We reveal that comparatively less research is undertaken in the world’s most biodiverse countries, the science conducted in these countries is often not led by researchers based in-country, and these scientists are also underrepresented in important international fora. Mitigating these biases requires wide-ranging solutions: reforming open access publishing policies, enhancing science communication strategies, changing author attribution practices, improving representation in international processes, and strengthening infrastructure and human capacity for research in countries where it is most needed.

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Conservation Research Is Not Happening Where It Is Most Needed

March Conservation Research Is Not Happening Where It Is Most Needed Kerrie A. Wilson 0 1 2 Nancy A. Auerbach 0 1 2 Katerina Sam 0 1 2 Ariana G. Magini 0 1 2 Alexander St. L. Moss 0 1 2 Simone D. Langhans 0 1 2 Sugeng Budiharta 0 1 2 Dilva Terzano 0 1 2 Erik Meijaard 0 1 2 0 Funding: KAW and NAA acknowledge funding from the Australian Research Council (http://www.arc.gov. au/) Future Fellowship FT100100413 and Centre of Excellence programs CE110001014. EM acknowledges funding from the Arcus Foundation (http://www.arcusfoundation.org/) G-PGM-1411-1112. KS acknowledges Czech Science Foundation (https:// gacr.cz/en/) 14-32024P and the Christensen Fund (https://www.christensenfund.org/) G-2013-7476407. SDL acknowledges funding from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (https://www.humboldt- foundation.de/web/home.html) (fellowship program, no grant number provided). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript 1 1 School of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland , Brisbane, Queensland , Australia , 2 Institute of Entomology, Biology Centre CAS , České Budějovice , Czech Republic , 3 Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice , České Budějovice , Czech Republic, 4 KPMG Botswana, Gaborone , Botswana , 5 Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries , Berlin, Germany , 6 Indonesian Institute of Sciences , Pasuruan, East Java , Indonesia , 7 School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Management, The University of Queensland , Brisbane, Queensland , Australia , 8 Borneo Futures Initiative, Ciputat, Jakarta , Indonesia 2 Abbreviations: CBD, Convention on Biodiversity; IPBES, Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services; IUCN, International Union for Conservation of Nature OPEN ACCESS Target 19, set by the Convention on Biological Diversity, seeks to improve the knowledge, science base, and technologies relating to biodiversity. We will fail to achieve this target unless prolific biases in the field of conservation science are addressed. We reveal that comparatively less research is undertaken in the world's most biodiverse countries, the science conducted in these countries is often not led by researchers based in-country, and these scientists are also underrepresented in important international fora. Mitigating these biases requires wide-ranging solutions: reforming open access publishing policies, enhancing science communication strategies, changing author attribution practices, improving representation in international processes, and strengthening infrastructure and human capacity for research in countries where it is most needed. - research areas of environmental sciences, ecology, biodiversity conservation, plant sciences, zoology, and geography. We searched both the Thomson Reuters Zoological Records and Web of Science Core Collection databases, which returned 10,036 scientific publications (from 1,061 journals), after the duplicate, unrelated, and incomplete records were removed. For a subset of these publications (n = 7,593, or 81%), we manually identified at least one topic country, and we determined the relative conservation importance of these countries for mammal conservation [2] as well as a broader definition of conservation importance that considers richness of vascular plants, endemic species, and functional species [3]. The countries for which knowledge is sparse coincide with where research is most urgently needed. The top five countries, ranked according to relative importance for mammal conservation (i.e, Indonesia, Madagascar, Peru, Mexico, and Australia), were represented in 11.9% of the publications (Table 1A). However, our determination, based on relative importance for investment in mammal conservation, was that these countries should be represented in 37.2% of the publications. We determined that the United States should be represented in approximately 0.5% of the publications—instead, it was the subject of approximately 17.8% of the publications and was the most studied country overall (Fig 1). If we consider the broader definition of conservation importance that reflects the richness of vascular plants, endemic species, and functional species, then the top five countries (i.e., Ecuador, Costa Rica, Panama, the Dominican Republic, and Papua New Guinea) are the focus of only 1.6% of publications (Table 1B). On the basis of the proposed level of investment for mammal conservation alone, we would expect these countries to be represented in at least 7.3% of the publications. Comparatively less research is published on the most biodiverse countries. This situation needs to be redressed before 2020, else we will fail to achieve Target 19. Furthermore, aggregated biodiversity metrics Table 1. Publishing trends and representation in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Specialist Groups or the Intergovernmenta (...truncated)


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Kerrie A. Wilson, Nancy A. Auerbach, Katerina Sam, Ariana G. Magini, Alexander St. L. Moss, Simone D. Langhans, Sugeng Budiharta, Dilva Terzano, Erik Meijaard. Conservation Research Is Not Happening Where It Is Most Needed, PLoS Biology, 2016, Volume 14, Issue 3, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1002413