Open access principles and practices benefit conservation

Abstract

Open access is often contentious in the scientific community, but its implications for conservation are under‐discussed or omitted entirely from scientific discourse. Access to literature is a key factor impeding implementation of conservation research, and many open access models and concepts that are little‐known by most conservation researchers may facilitate implementation. Conservation professionals working outside academic institutions should have more access to research so that conservation is better supported by current science. In this perspective, I present elements missing from current discussions of open access and suggest potential pathways for journal publishers and researchers to make conservation publications more open. There are many promising avenues for open access to play a larger role in conservation research, including archiving pre‐prints and post‐prints, more permissive “green” open access policies, and increasing access to older articles. Collectively supporting open access practices will benefit our profession and the species we are working to protect.

A Beginner's Guide to Conducting Reproducible Research

“…Supplementary materials can be lost if a journal switches publishers or when a publisher changes its website. In addition, research is only reproducible if it can be accessed, and many papers are published in journals that are locked behind paywalls that make them inaccessible to many researchers (Desjardins-Proulx et al 2013, McKiernan et al 2016, Alston 2019). To increase access to publications, authors can post preprints of final (but preacceptance) versions of manuscripts on a preprint server, or postprints of manuscripts on postprint servers.…”

Navigating spaces between conservation research and practice: Are we making progress?

“…In 2014, researchers stated that they had little to no knowledge of the projects being implemented by practitioners or which conservation actions had been successful or unsuccessful in the past. Practitioners emphasized that they often had limited access to research findings due to pro- progress made towards open access where appropriate (Alston, 2019;Rabesandratana, 2018), participants in the 2019 workshop identified a lack of time to search the evidence base as a greater barrier than access to publications, a constraint that has also been noted in the literature (Lemieux, Groulx, Bocking, & Beechey, 2018;Nguyen et al, 2019;Young, Nguyen, Corriveau, Cooke, & Hinch, 2016). Practitioners are often engaged in monitoring and evaluation activities that could contribute to the evidence base on conservation, but frequently lack the time, resources, or incentives to share their data with the research community or publish their work in the scientific literature.…”

“…https://www.conservationevidence.com/), and the rise of social media and online networking has brought more researchers and practitioners together. A series of new journals, such as this journal, Ecological Solutions and Evidence , and others such as Environmental Evidence, Conservation Science and Practice , and Conservation Evidence have emerged with clear aims around knowledge sharing across research and practice, and preprints on repositories such as bioRxiv (biorxiv.org) and EcoEvoRxiv (ecoevorxiv.org) are gaining traction with practitioners as well as researchers (Alston, 2019). Open access research is burgeoning, and some funders now enforce an open access policy (e.g.…”

“…By 2019, new language was emerging to better represent the collaborative and interdependent relationship between research and practice and the different ways knowledge is generated, shared, and used by researchers and practitioners. The term ‘gap’ was being replaced and reconceptualized as the ‘spaces’ between research and practice instead (Alston, 2019; Toomey et al., 2017; Walsh, Dicks, Raymond, & Sutherland, 2019; Wowk et al., 2017). Far more than semantics, this shift in characterisation mirrors a shift in thinking; realising that not all conservation problems are tractable, and acknowledging how values, and not only facts and evidence, determine conservation priorities, actions, and effectiveness (Buschke et al., 2019).…”

Embedding biodiversity research into climate adaptation policy and practice

“…Policy‐makers and practitioners may lack the understanding of the appropriate use, limitations and complexities of drawing conclusions from scientific information (Sutherland & Wordley, 2017). Furthermore, in some cases, lack of access to the relevant literature or experts means that useful knowledge simply fails to come to the attention of practitioners (Alston, 2019; Sutherland & Wordley, 2017; Taylor et al, 2017), although the trend towards open‐access availability and free data repositories has increased accessibility (e.g. Conservation Evidence; http://www.conservationevidence.com).…”