Climate emotions: it is ok to feel the way you doRecently, 120 world leaders met in Glasgow, Scotland, for the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference, discussing how to substantially reduce global emissions and, at the same time, limit the devastating effects of climate change.JD developed the is this how you feel project. NRH developed hope? and how to grieve for the planet. NB declares no competing interests.

Recent years have seen increasing calls to better document and understand the human dimensions of the marine and coastal environment and to incorporate this knowledge into decision-making. Human dimensions of the marine and coastal environment are best investigated through the application of marine social science. Individuals within marine social science are not solely “pure” social scientists, but rather are a diverse and interdisciplinary community, including many who have moved from the natural sciences to pursue a career in marine social science. This is particularly the case for early career researchers, with many moving from natural to social science earlier in their academic careers than their predecessors, and thus developing stronger interdisciplinary skills than previous generations of social scientists. In this perspective, we draw on our experiences, highlighting our main motivations for moving from natural to social science, the barriers we have faced and our top tips for early career researchers faced with similar opportunities and challenges. The ten tips include: “Work with like-minded researchers,” “Learn from and be inspired by academic heroes,” “Learn about and engage with research philosophy, positionality and reflexivity,” “Value your own skillset and perspective,” and “Be patient and kind to yourself.”

As conservation researchers operating in the Pacific, we often seek to contribute to solutions through integrative research that involves the inclusion of different voices, knowledge systems and actors in order to build adaptive capacity and ensure system resilience. Implicit in this approach is the need for sound and effective cross-cultural communication skills in a setting where an ill-defined or inexperienced approach could do more harm than good. In this perspective essay, we draw upon the literature and our own lived experiences to offer practical advice for early career researchers (ECRs) in the area of conservation research seeking to engage across communities and cultures. This manuscript is not designed to be a definitive set of rules, but a useful resource with practical advice to help empower ECRs from the Global North to engage with communities across the Pacific.

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Systematic approaches to evidence synthesis can improve the rigour, transparency, and replicability of a traditional literature review. However, these systematic approaches are time and resource intensive. We evaluate the ability of OpenAI’s ChatGPT to undertake two initial stages of evidence syntheses (searching peer-reviewed literature and screening for relevance) and develop a novel collaborative framework to leverage the best of both human and AI intelligence. Using a scoping review of community-based fisheries management as a case study, we find that with substantial prompting, the AI can provide critical insight into the construction and content of a search string. Thereafter, we evaluate five strategies for synthesising AI output to screen articles based on predefined inclusion criteria. We find low omission rates (< 1%) of relevant literature by the AI are achievable, which is comparable to that of human screeners. These findings show that generalised AI tools can assist reviewers with evidence synthesis to accelerate the implementation and improve the reliability of a review.