Tag ethics

Ethical Publishing in Biodiversity Conservation Science

emielrdelange Leave a comment

For many researchers, particularly in academia, publishing in peer-reviewed journals is a necessity, with major implications for their career progression. Yet, it is increasingly recognised that the current scientific publishing model is not fair and equitable, which can have severe consequences for the way science is accessed and used in nature conservation. We evaluated the publishing model of 426 conservation science journals against the Fair Open Access (FOA) principles.

Two-thirds of journals, together publishing nearly half of all articles, complied with only two or fewer FOA principles. Only twenty journals (5%), publishing 485 articles per year (<1%), complied with all five principles. We uncovered a weak negative correlation between journal impact factor and the number of FOA principles fulfilled.

Figure 1: Publications fulfilling different Fair Open Access principles. (a) Number of Journals. (b) Number of Articles associated with those Journals

Lastly, we found that Elsevier, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, and Springer represented 48% of all journals, but 80% of the 25 journals with the highest impact factor. Our results show that conservation science journals largely fail to meet the FOA standards. Conservation researchers are likely to face obstacles such as limited access to published literature, high publishing charges, and lack of ownership of their research outputs.

Figure 3: Impact Factor Scores. (a) Proportion of journals with an impact factor belonging to the four main academic publishers: Springer, Wiley, Taylor & Francis and Elsevier. (b) Mean Fair Open Access score of journals with different impact factors (as assigned in 2017)

To help authors make more informed decisions we made a database of 400+ journals with each journal ranked according to the Fair Open Access Criteria.

Ethical considerations when conservation research involves people

emielrdelange Leave a comment

In 2018, I was privileged to participate in the Interdisciplinary Conservation Network – a biennial workshop organised and run by early career researchers. My colleagues Stephanie Brittain and Harriet Ibbett facilitated an excellent discussion on the ethical challenges faced by early career researchers in conservation science. All social research has ethical challenges, but conservation is particularly fraught given it’s colonial history and the huge areas of contested land that conservation aims to manage. I found this to be a therapeutic venue to discuss ethical dilemnas I have encountered in the field, and I’m very proud of the paper we subsequently published in Conservation Biology.

Abstract

Social science is becoming increasingly important in conservation, with more studies involving methodologies that collect data from and about people. Conservation science is a normative and applied discipline designed to support and inform management and practice. Poor research practice risks harming participants, researchers, and can leave negative legacies. Often, those at the forefront of field‐based research are early‐career researchers, many of whom enter their first research experience ill‐prepared for the ethical conundrums they may face. Here, we draw on our own experiences as early‐career researchers to illuminate how ethical challenges arise during conservation research that involves human participants. Specifically, we discuss ethical review procedures, conflicts of values, and power relations, and provide broad recommendations on how to navigate ethical challenges when they arise during research. We encourage greater engagement with ethical review processes and highlight the pressing need to develop ethical guidelines for conservation research that involves human participants.