Insights from two decades of the Student Conference on Conservation Science

Abstract

Conservation science is a crisis-oriented discipline focused on reducing human impacts on nature. To explore how the field has changed over the past two decades, we analyzed 3,245 applications for oral presentations submitted to the Student Conference on Conservation Science (SCCS) in Cambridge, UK. SCCS has been running every year since 2000, aims for global representation by providing bursaries to early-career conservationists from lower-income countries, and has never had a thematic focus, beyond conservation in the broadest sense. We found that the majority of projects submitted to SCCS were based on primary biological data collected from local scale field studies in the tropics, contrary to established literature which highlights gaps in tropical research. Our results showed a small increase over time in submissions framed around how nature benefits people as well as a small increase in submissions integrating social science. Our findings suggest that students and early-career conservationists could provide pathways to increase availability of data from the tropics and address well-known biases in the published literature towards wealthier countries. We hope this research will motivate efforts to support student projects, ensuring data and results are published and data made publicly available.

Trends in research approaches and gender in plant ecology dissertations over four decades

“…Another focused on the broader field of ecology (Carmel et al., 2013 ). The rest examined slightly different fields, such as conservation science (Geldmann et al., 2020 ; Ríos‐Saldaña et al., 2018 ), or had a narrower scope, such as examining trends within a single journal (Asselin & Gagnon, 2015 ; Shorrocks, 1993 ) or within studies on a single taxa (Lisón et al., 2020 ). Nevertheless, they all found observational or field‐based methods to be the most dominant methodology.…”

“…Direct observational and field studies are particularly important for documenting patterns in today's changing natural world, and the loss of such studies may hinder our ability to understand and respond to anthropogenic changes and conservation threats. Recent studies have quantified trends in research topics in ecology and related fields (e.g., Anderson et al., 2021 ; Carmel et al., 2013 ; Kim et al., 2018 ; McCallen et al., 2019 ; Nobis & Wohlgemuth, 2004 ; Westgate et al., 2020 ), but to the best of our knowledge, trends in research methodologies employed have received much less attention (but see Geldmann et al., 2020 ; Ríos‐Saldaña et al., 2018 ; Spiegelberger et al., 2012 ).…”

Avoiding wasted research resources in conservation science

“…Moreover, even when researchers publish open data, most datasets are incomplete and cannot be reused (Roche, Kruuk, Lanfear, & Binning, 2015). Finally, evidence is emerging indicating pervasive barriers precluding publication, including language and capacity barriers for underrepresented early career researchers (ECR, Geldmann et al, 2020).…”

“…DMPs can be encouraged by rewarding adherence through additional funding, and by having archived data, code, protocols, and software contribute to promotion and tenure packages. Increasing the number and status of journals dedicated to publishing datasets would encourage conservation scientists (e.g., ECR) to publish valuable data and increase the potential for data reuse efforts (Costello, Michener, Gahegan, Zhang, & Bourne, 2013; Geldmann et al, 2020). Moreover, increasing the potential to publish context‐specific studies would provide an important venue for local research (e.g., Ecological Evidence and Solutions; Konno et al, 2020).…”

“…Journal editors and publishers must commit to publishing null results and funding agencies must support scientists who produce sound negative results (Nature Editorial, 2017; Metha, 2019). Finally, journals can assist non‐English speakers and encourage integration of non‐English‐language studies into evidence synthesis to broaden biodiversity conservation (Amano, González‐Varo, & Sutherland, 2016; Amano & Sutherland, 2013; Geldmann et al, 2020; Konno et al, 2020).…”