Hindrance of Conservation Biology by Delays in the Submission of Manuscripts

Abstract

Timely dissemination of scientific findings depends not only on rapid publication of submitted manuscripts, a topic which has received much discussion, but also on rapid submission of research after the research is completed. We measured submission delay (time from the last date of data collection to the submission of a manuscript) for every paper from 14 journals in 2007 and compared these submission delays among four fields of biology (conservation, taxonomy, behavior, and evolution). Manuscripts published in leading journals in the field of conservation biology have the longest delays in publication of accepted manuscripts and the longest intervals between completion of research and submission of the manuscript. Delay in manuscript submission accounts for more than half of the total time from last date of data collection to publication. Across fields, the number of authors was significantly negatively correlated with submission delay, but conservation journals had the second highest number of authors and the greatest submission delay, so submission of conservation manuscripts was not hindered by a shortage of collaboration relative to other fields. Rejection rates were greater in conservation journals than in behavior and evolution, but rejection times were faster; thus, there were no obvious net differences among fields in the time papers spent waiting to be rejected. Publication delay has been reduced significantly in the last 7 years, but was still greater in conservation journals than in any of the other three fields we studied. Thus, the urgent field of conservation biology is hindered in both preparation and publication of manuscripts.

What Managers Want From Invasive Species Research Versus What They Get

“…) and the rest at the feet of slow‐moving authors (O'Donnell et al . ). Here, it would seem that both researchers and managers would want research to be published as swiftly as possible.…”

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The changing landscape of conservation science funding in the United States

“…We assumed a 6‐year lag between disbursement of funding and publication of results to account for study duration as well as submission and publication delays (Kareiva et al 2002; O’Donnell et al 2010). Finally, we estimated growth in the field of conservation science by tallying the number of articles published in explicitly conservation‐oriented journals.…”

We Can Better Manage Ecosystems by Connecting Solutions to Constraints: Learning from Wetland Plant Invasions

“…Practitioners seek rapid solutions to urgent invasive species management concerns (McAninch and Strayer, 1989;Cabin, 2011). This need conflicts with the usually incremental pace at which science proceeds and the subsequent journal publications become available (Kareiva et al, 2002;O'Donnell et al, 2010). For managers to incorporate new knowledge, it needs to reach managers rapidly; in reality managers must often act before such rigorous science can be completed (Dettman and Mabry, 2008).…”