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1
Mind the gap!
How conservation practitioners and researchers in
developing countries exchange scientific information
By Céline Gossa
Supervised by : E.J Milner-Gulland and Martin Fisher
September 2012
A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science
and the Diploma of Imperial College London
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DECLARATION OF OWN WORK
I declare that this thesis
‘Mind the gap ! How conservation practitioners and researchers in developing countries
exchange scientific information »
is entirely my own work and that where any material could be construed as the work of
others, it is fully cited and referenced, and/or with appropriate acknowledgement given.
Signature:
Name of student: Céline Gossa
Name of supervisors: E.J. Milner-Gulland
Martin Fisher (external)
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TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables & Figures ........................................................................................................... 5
List of Acronyms ...................................................................................................................... 6
Abstract .................................................................................................................................... 7
Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................ 8
1.INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................... 9
1.1 Problem statement ............................................................................................................ 9
1.2 Aims and objectives .......................................................................................................... 10
2. BACKGROUND ....................................................................................................................... 11
2.1 Information exchange: a snapshot of the current situation ................................................ 11
2.1.1 The gap in conservation: an example of the widespread research-practice gap .............. 11
2.1.2 The uptake of science by practitioners ............................................................................. 12
2.1.3 Which information for conservation researchers? ........................................................... 13
2.2 Barriers to information exchange in conservation .............................................................. 14
2.2.1 The cultural gap ................................................................................................................. 15
2.2.2 The economic gap ............................................................................................................. 16
2.2.3 The role of publishing companies ..................................................................................... 18
2.3 Solutions to bridge the gap ............................................................................................... 18
2.3.1 For-profit publishers’ contribution .................................................................................... 19
2.3.2 Open-access and other online initiatives ........................................................................ 19
2.3.3 Other online initiatives ...................................................................................................... 20
2.3.4 From knowledge dissemination to co-production ............................................................ 21
3. METHODS ............................................................................................................................. 23
3.1 The sample ....................................................................................................................... 23
3.1.1 Definition ........................................................................................................................... 23
3.1.2 Developing countries classification .................................................................................... 24
3.1.3 Sample limits and biases .................................................................................................... 24
3.2 The sampling strategy ...................................................................................................... 24
3.2.1 Direct sampling: the Conservation Leadership Programme ............................................. 24
3.2.2 Other sampling method .................................................................................................... 24
3.2.3 Oryx authors ..................................................................................................................... 25
3.2.4 The MSc in Conservation Science ...................................................................................... 26
3.3 Survey Design .................................................................................................................. 26
3.4 Survey pilot ..................................................................................................................... 27
3.5 Data Collection ................................................................................................................ 27
3.6 Data analysis ................................................................................................................... 28
4. RESULTS ................................................................................................................................ 29
4.1 Sample description .......................................................................................................... 29
4.2 Access and use of scientific information sources ............................................................... 31
4.2.1 Access to Online scientific information .............................................................................. 31
4.2.2 Access to non-online scientific information ...................................................................... 33
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4.2.3 Access to subscription-based journals ............................................................................. 34
4.2.4 Practitioner-subgroup characteristics .............................................................................. 34
4.3 Scientific information sharing .......................................................................................... 36
4.3.1 Who do they share their results with and how often? ..................................................... 36
4.3.1.1 Practitioners ............................................................................................................ 36
4.3.1.2 Researchers .............................................................................................................. 37
4.3.2 Communication tools ....................................................................................................... 38
4.3.3 The gap illustrated? ......................................................................................................... 39
4.4 Use and opinion of research publication ........................................................................... 39
4.4.1 Practitioners and peer-reviewed literature ....................................................................... 39
4.4.2 Researchers and peer-reviewed literature ........................................................................ 40
4.4.3 Journals categories .......................................................................................................... 41
4.4.4 Use of the impact factor .................................................................................................. 42
4.4.5 Improving peer-reviewed literature .................................................................................. 42
4.5. Involvement in peer-reviewed article writing .................................................................... 43
4.5.1 Practitioners’ Involvement ................................................................................................ 43
4.5.2 Non-university researchers’ involvement .......................................................................... 44
4.6 Solutions to enhance collaboration ................................................................................... 45
4.6.1 Free access ....................................................................................................................... 45
4.6.2 Development of new media ............................................................................................. 45
4.6.3 Direct collaboration .......................................................................................................... 46
4.6.4 “Use common English!” ..................................................................................................... 47
5. DISCUSSION .......................................................................................................................... 48
5.1 Use of peer-reviewed literature ........................................................................................ 48
5.1.1 Practitioners do use it ...................................................................................................... 48
5.1.2 Involvement in research ................................................................................................... 49
5.2 Information exchange ..................................................................................................... 49
5.2.1 Information access ........................................................................................................... 49
5.2.2 Communication tools ........................................................................................................ 50
5.2.3 Communication targets .................................................................................................... 50
5.3 Improvement of information ........................................................................................... 51
5.3.1 Criteria to choose information .......................................................................................... 51
5.3.2 How to bridge the gap? ................................................................................................... 52
5.4 Limits to the methods and survey ..................................................................................... 54
5.5 Mind the gap… and the rest .............................................................................................. 55
References ............................................................................................................................ 56
Appendix 1 ............................................................................................................................ 64
Appendix 2 ............................................................................................................................ 74
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LIST OF FIGURES
Fig 2.1. Knowledge transfer and production between researchers and practitioners p12
Fig 2.2. Internet users per 10,000 people p17
Fig 4.1. Origin of the questionnaire answers p 29
FIg 4.2 Work place of the respondents p 30
Fig 4.3. Answers to the question “Who do you share your results with and how often? a. Practitioners p 35 b University researchers / 5c Non- University researchers p 37
Fig 4.4. Answers to the question “Why don’t you use the impact factor ? p 41
Fig 4.5. Answers to the question “Why do you use the impact factor?” p 42
Fig 4.6. Practitioners’ opinion to the question “What would make peer-reviewed literature more useful for you?” p 42
Fig 4.7. Practitioners’ answers to the questions “Why was it a useful experience?” p 43
Fig 4.8. Non-university researchers’ answers to the questions “Why was it a useful experience?” p 44
Fig 5.1. The research-implementation gap – current situation p 53
Fig 5.2. The research-implementation gap: proposed solutions to improve the situation. p 53
LIST OF TABLES
Table 4.1. Use of online sources among Practitioners, Non-University and University Researchers p 29
Table 4.2. Use of non- online sources among Practitioners, Non-University and University Researchers p 33
Table 4.3. Answers to the question « Does your institution have any official access to subscription-based journals ? » p 34
Table 4.4. Answers to the question “Do you use the login and password of colleagues to access the journals you don't have a subscription to?” p 34
Table 4.5. Variation of importance given to information sources p 35
Table 4.6. Answers to the questions “Which sources do you use to share your results?” p 38
Table 4.7 (a) Comparison of the preferred online tools used by practitioners to share information and those used by researchers to access it p 39 (b) Comparison of the preferred non-online tools used by practitioners to share information and those used by researchers to access it. p 39
Table 4.8. Comparison of the categories of peer-reviewed journals used by the 3 samples p 40
Table 4.9. Answers to the question “Do you use the Impact Factor when looking for scientific articles?” p 41
Table 4.10. Practitioners’ answers to the question “Why would you like to reiterate this experience [scientific article writing]?” p 44
Table 4.11. Non-university researchers answers to the question “Why would you like to reiterate this experience [scientific article writing]?” p 45
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LIST OF ACRONYMS
AGORA Access to Global Online Research on Agriculture
AJOL African Journals Online
ARDI Access to Research for Development and Innovation
BOAI Budapest Open Access Initiative
CIFOR Center for International Forestry Research
CLP Conservation Leadership Program
HINARI Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative
INGO International Non-Governmental Organizations
IPE Instituto de Pesquisa Ecologista
ISI Institute for Scientific Information
MNC MultiNational Corporation
NBII National Biological Information Infrastructure
NGO Non-Governmental Organizations
OARE Online Access to Research in the Environment
OA Open Access
PLoS Public Library of Science
Scielo Scientific Electronic Library Online
WHO World Health Oranization
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ABSTRACT
Conservation biology historically has a poor record of translating science into action. This
lack of information exchange –coined the research-implementation gap - increases the
risks of conservation projects being less efficient than they would with open knowledge
flows. To understand this issue, previous surveys have focused on the uptake of peer-
reviewed literature by practitioners from developed countries. In that respect, they have
ignored other parts of the gap: researchers’ uptake of information coming from practice,
and the situation in developing countries. This survey investigates empirically how to
bridge the research-implementation gap, studying how conservation practitioners and
researchers from developing countries exchange scientific information and what would
make it more useful for them. An online survey was created and sent to several samples of
practitioners and researchers from and working in developing countries. The findings
indicate that contrary to the general belief, practitioners do use peer-reviewed literature
(80,4% do), but mainly from open-access journals as only 24% of them benefit from an
access to subscription-based journals. They communicate their results outside their
institution, via reports, websites, newsletters and personal emails. However, results show
that researchers mainly use peer-reviewed literature to access conservation information.
They also show that they grant little importance to the communication media used by
practitioners to communicate. This discrepancy partly explains the gap. Yet both
practitioners and researchers’ group show similar opinion regarding the best options on
how to bridge the gap: they agreed that more direct and online collaboration was needed.
61% of the practitioners and half of the researchers answered that a website where they
could collaborate on research design would help make peer-reviewed literature more
useful for both of them. Following these results, a framework was developed to integrate
these solutions in the current situation in an attempt to improve communication in the
conservation field.
Total word count: 12 023
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Firstly, I would like to thank Dr. EJ Milner-Gulland for all the help, advice and guidance she
has provided during this research project. I also thank Dr Martin Fisher for all his help in
survey design and implementation. Their knowledge of the subject and of how to conduct
this type of survey has been of great help.
I would then like to thank Ana Nuno for her help, not only during this project but also
through out the past year.
Many thanks as well to Robyn Dalzen, Stuart Paterson and Christina Imrich for agreeing to
help me in this research; Christina has helped me several times providing complementary
information and support.
Finally, I would like to thank all the respondents who took their time to answer the survey,
forward the information to peers and colleagues, or simply answer my emails and provide
me with a new point of view on the subject. Their experience and opinions have been
extremely valuable ; thus I hope this thesis may improve the situation of such a topical
subject.
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1. INTRODUCTION
1.1. Problem statement
Larigauderie and Mooney (2010) published a paper where they predicted that participants
to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) who were going to attend the COP10 in
Nagoya would “conclude that, by large, the 2010 biodiversity targets have been missed.”
They were right in their prediction, as widespread evidence keeps on showing the
worldwide decline of biodiversity (Global Biodiversity Outlook-3, 2010) and the
intensification of the threats (Harrop & Pritchard, 2011). These processes are driven by
human activities (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005) and conservation projects have
little success in reducing the consequent biodiversity loss (Hayes, 2006).
One of the main explanations for this lack of success found in the conservation literature is
the failure of science to inform conservation practice and vice versa (Sunderland et al,
2009). At times of major changes where implementation and policy reforms are needed,
free flows of knowledge between science and management are crucial (Roux et al 2006).
This failure of communication isn’t a new problem. In his cornerstone paper (1986), Soule,
stated two key points of conservation science: that it was a crisis discipline, and that the
communication between “on the ground” professionals and academics was “poor at best”.
Meffe (2001) referred to this communication issue as a “crisis in this crisis discipline”, while
Knight et al. (2008) coined it the “research-implementation gap” and Hulme (2011) the
“Great divide”. Consequently, a growing body of literature has been produced calling again
for more synergy between conservation academics and conservation practitioners
(Sutherland et al. 2004; A. T. Knight et al. 2008; Born & Boreux 2009; Sunderland et al.
2009). The failure of scientists to communicate their findings to policy-makers,
practitioners or local people mean that decisions linked with natural resources
management are made without the benefit of science (Shanley & Lopez 2009), at a time
where humanity may be going through the sixth great mass extinction (Barnosky et al.
2011; Veron 2008; Noss 2007). Article 17 of the CBD therefore encourages contracting
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parties to facilitate the exchange of any information relevant to the conservation of
biodiversity, taking into account the specific situations and needs of developing countries.
Conservation science is mainly implemented in developing countries (Sunderland, 2008),
where most of the biodiversity hotspots are (Myers, 2000). However, local capacity to
access scientific information and publications is often poor (Milner-Gulland et al, 2012).
There is also a long tradition of separating scientific knowledge production from its
implementation (Roux et al 2011), separation aggravated here by the economic gap
between developed and developing countries. Most of the research is led in the former
(King 2004) and most of the results are expected to be implemented in the latter
(Sunderland 2008), even if research often fails to embrace local socio-economic issues
(Czech 2006).
Surveys have been conducted asking researchers mainly from developed countries their
opinion on the uptake of their papers (Flashpoler et al, 2000; Ormerod, 2002; Knight et al,
2007; Campbell, 2007). Surveys concerning which information practitioners from English-
speaking countries use to take decisions have also been conducted (Pullin and Knight,
2005; Turner, 2006; Cook et al, 2010). Yet, no survey in the conservation literature has
actually assessed how conservation practitioners and researchers from developing
countries exchange scientific information, between themselves and other geographic
areas.
1.2 Aims and objectives
This study aims to investigate empirically how to bridge the research-implementation gap,
studying how conservation practitioners and researchers from developing countries access
and share scientific information. This aim can be divided into 5 main research questions:
1) How do practitioners and researchers access scientific information?
2) How is scientific information resulting from conservation projects shared with
other stakeholders?
3) How is peer-reviewed literature used and perceived?
4) Are practitioners willing to be involved in research design and article writing?
5) Is the use of peer-reviewed journals correlated to the involvement in research?
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2. BACKGROUND
2.1 Information exchange: a snapshot of the current situation
2.1.1 The gap in conservation: an example of the widespread research-practice gap
Conservation biology historically has a poor record of translating science into action
(Salafsky et al. 2002). This lack of information exchange increases the risks of conservation
projects being less efficient than they would with open knowledge flows (Born, Boreux and
Lawes, 2009).
Nonetheless, it is important to highlight that this issue is not specific to the conservation
field. Also called the “knowing-doing gap” (Pfeffer & Sutton, 1999), the missing link
between research and implementation is quite widespread in environmental applied
disciplines such as ecology (Ehrlich, 1997), ecosystem management (McNie, 2007),
restoration ecology (Higgs, 2005) and landscape ecology (Opdam et al., 2001). Outside the
world of environmental science, references to the gap can be regularly found in
management science (Starkey and Madan, 2002; Van Aken, 2005), training and education
(Nuthall, 2004; McLeskey and Billingsey, 2008), agriculture (Wiren-Lehr, 2001; Omamo,
2004) or medical sciences (Bero et al., 1998; Lenfant, 2003). Frameworks inspired from
medical evidence-based practice have even been developed to influence conservation
actions (Pullin and Knight, 2004; Fazey et al., 2004).
The divide between research and practice has been studied for the past 30 years, and has
led to the creation of models representing knowledge transfer across the researcher and
practitioner communities (Jacobson, 2004). In the “push-model”, scientists “force” on
practitioners their knowledge production; in the “pull-model”, practitioners try to reach
researchers’ knowledge; in the interactive model where the gap doesn’t exist, both
cooperate to create knowledge in the middle (Jacobson, 2004) (Fig 2.1).
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The failure to transfer knowledge efficiently and to coproduce it has been linked to the
intrinsic differences between the researcher and practitioner communities (Caplan, 1979;
section 2.2.1). Yet as a result of the gap, knowledge transfer is unidirectional (Roux et al.,
2006) even though it should go in both directions (Pullin and Knight, 2003).
2.1.2 The uptake of science by practitioners
So far surveys on the divide have mainly studied practitioners’ uptake of the scientific
information produced by academics. They have consisted in asking researchers if they
knew about the use of their results in projects implementation. Flashpoler et al (2000)
found uptake evidence in 54% of the papers they studied from Conservation biology.
Ormerod et al (2002) found a similar rate of 57% in papers from the Journal of Applied
Ecology, while Campbell’s results (2007) confirmed the previous ones with an uptake rate
of 57% across 5 major conservation journals. This type of exercise is difficult and assumes
authors have estimated objectively the impact of their work (Ormerod 2002; Campbell
2007).
In other surveys the uptake was assessed by asking practitioners directly which information
they use in their work. There is a strong discrepancy between these results and the
previous ones, suggesting the results based on asking researchers about uptake were
probably very optimistic. Sutherland et al (2004) reported only 2% of conservation
decisions for wetlands management in England were based on primary scientific literature,
10% on expert advice and 11% on secondary publications. The remaining 77% of these
Fig 2.1 Knowledge transfer and production between researchers and practitioners, adapted from Roux
et al. (2006)
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actions were experience-based. Cook et al (2010) investigated which information is used to
manage protected areas in Australia: around 60% of the decisions relied on experience-
based information. Pullin et al (2004) reported that published scientific papers were among
the least frequently used sources of information by practitioners.
Both types of surveys were conducted in developed countries. Yet in developing countries,
evidence-base management is even less likely to happen as few practitioners can access
scientific journals: a World Health Organization survey (2000) found that only 4.6% of the
journal Conservation Biology subscribers were from developing countries (Research4life,
2012). However, the majority of conservation projects are implemented there (Sunderland,
2008) so the need for sound scientific information for management can be considered
higher (Milner-Gulland et al., 2010).
For instance, Karanth et al. (2003) explained that practitioners in India wrongly used the
“pugmark census method” to monitor tigers for 30 years. It led field managers to report
increases in tiger populations despite evidence of reserve deterioration. He argued that
conservation practitioners didn’t have the capacity or the time to absorb new scientific
knowledge quickly enough to really prevent species loss, leading to poor conservation
practice. However, it is difficult to measure the exact number of conservation failures
which can be attributed to the lack of science access, as failure tends to be underreported
(Campbell, 2007).
2.1.3 Which information for conservation researchers?
Ideally, management on the ground should improve continuously, being fed by and feeding
research which then generates new data to inform practice again (Karanth et al. 2003). This
continuous looping process of testing and learning is known as adaptive management
(Margoluis and Salafsky, 1998). However, do researchers use information from “the
ground” to design their own research? It is generally recognized that practitioners don’t
spend much time sharing their results in a way adapted to scientists’ necessities (Pullin and
Knight, 2003; Sunderland et al., 2009), or may report selected information to repaint
results as successes and ensure donors’ funding (Redford and Taber, 2000; Fleishman,
2001). Still, while several surveys have been conducted to measure the uptake of science
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by practitioners, little research seems to have been conducted to assess researchers’
attempts to uptake results from practice. The problem doesn’t seem to be the lack of
information resulting from practice as much as its availability: there is a lot of existing
information in developing countries, but in a form which remains largely unknown or
acknowledged (Fazey, 2005; Kirsop and Chan 2005), coined the “lost science” phenomenon
(Gibbs, 1995).
Grey literature is one of these forms of information. It refers to publications from
“governments, academia, business, and industry, in both print and electronic formats, but
not controlled by commercial publishing interests, and where publishing is not the primary
business activity of the organization” (Weintraub, 2000). Sa´enz–Arroyo et al. (2005) were
able to contest the belief that the Gulf grouper is a naturally rare fish partly by using grey
literature from the 20th century. In a recent study, Schindler et al. (2011) measured the
effectiveness of conservation projects in Bulgaria and Greece. They reported that even
academic experts who regularly publish scientific papers actually learnt more often from
local management plans and unpublished reports than peer-reviewed literature.
Yet, grey literature is regularly excluded from research design because it isn’t
systematically accessible (Knight et al., 2008) or because it can be difficult to assess data
reliability (Parr and Chown, 2003). As a consequence, researchers mainly use peer-
reviewed literature in their own papers.
2.2 Barriers to information exchange in conservation
Many reasons have been identified and are regularly cited in the literature to explain the
research-implementation gap. The reluctance of practitioners to report their results has
already been underlined (Redford and Taber, 2000, Knight, 2006, Sunderland et al., 2009).
Other explanations include the lack of access to scientific literature (Coloma and Harris
2005), practitioners’ lack of scientific literacy (de la Rosa, 2000), aggravated by the
language and technical barriers for practitioners coming from non-English speaking
developing countries (Sunderland et al., 2009). For further analysis these barriers can be
broadly divided into 2 categories: cultural and economic.
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2.2.1 The cultural gap
Field practitioners and conservation scientists live and work in very different environments
(Sunderland et al, 2009). Roux et al (2006) refers to these differences as the “historical
clash of the cultures”. Interestingly enough, it is quite difficult to know what a practitioner
is. The type of professional activity it implies seems to be more often defined by what it
isn’t then by what it is. In the literature, the expression has been used in opposition to
“researchers” (Fazey et al, 2003; Mace et al, 2000) to “scientists” (Knight et al, 2005), to
“theoreticians“ (Prendergast et al, 1999) or to “academics” (Sunderland et al, 2009;
Sutherland et al, 2009) or “scholars” (Stem et al, 2005). Practitioners are the “amorphous”
group gathering all the professionals who actually work on the ground to implement
conservation projects, but they are “generally not conservation biologists” (The Great
divide, 2007).
One of the usual clichés to represent this gap is the image of researchers only talking to
each other in their ivory tower (Hulme, 2011)about their articles while practitioners only
use their own experience to take decisions (Milner-Gulland et al., 2012). Although more
and more scientists and managers (Arlettaz et al., 2010) are breaking out of these moulds,
it isn’t encouraged by their own institutions: practitioners taking the initiative to spend
more time on academic activities may be accused of not spending enough time on “real
problems”, while scientists run the risk of seeing their publication rate drop and therefore
lose credibility (Roux et al., 2006).
Institutional incentives in academia are mostly based on the quantity of papers published
and on the impact factor of the journals where they are published (Born, Boreux and
Lawes., 2009). Yet several argue these procedures are significant obstacles to the
dissemination of findings (Kainer et al., 2009) and that the impact factor encourages “blind
science” (Morin, 2003), lacking in originality (Lawrence, 2006). It also discourages scientists
to get involved in outreach activities to facilitate project implementation (Arlettaz et al.,
2010), despite the fact that only 15% of the researchers who took part in the CIFOR
(Center for International Forestry Research) survey believed that scientific journals were
effective in promoting conservation to non-scientific publics (Shanley and Lopez., 2009). In
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the same survey, the largest percentage of respondents (34%) ranked other scientists as
the main target audience for their work.
Journals with the highest impact factor tend to be interested in general subjects reaching
wide audiences; this therefore impedes the publication of articles on small and local issues,
especially if they are management-based (Fleishman, 2009). Too theoretical and
conceptual (Brown, 2002), they lack implementability; two thirds of conservation
assessments published in the peer-reviewed literature don’t include implementation
recommendations (Knight et al., 2008); Too biology-focused, they don’t encompass the
political, economic, social and local issues practitioners face either (Prendergast et al.,
1999; Czech, 2006). Conservation science is supposed to be a cross-disciplinary field,
however Fazey’s (2005) assessment of conservation publications, covering 3 major
conservation journals, concluded that only 13% of the articles were truly cross-disciplinary.
Finally, the system also discourages non-English speaking people from sending their
research due to too many rules of language use (de la Rosa, 2000). It reaches the point
where English-as- a-second-language scientists even declined to comment on this fact for
an article, worried about the potential negative consequences for their careers (Powell,
2012). On the other hand, if researchers from developing countries achieve publication in
western journals with high impact factors, they generally make their own research
unavailable to colleagues in their own country, because of lack of access to these journals
(Smart, 2004).
2.2.2 The economic gap
Developing countries’ publications have increased in the past 20 years at a far higher rate
than developed countries’: Latin American by 36% and Europe by 10% between 1990 and
1997 (Holmgren and Schnitzer, 2004). However, science remains dominated by developed
countries. King (2004) found that 8 developed countries were the producers of 85% of the
world’s most cited publications. The inequalities between countries’ abilities to invest in
science are considered to be the main reason for the differences of research production
(Fazey, 2005). However given the publication system, a country needs more than research
investment capacity; today, it needs investment to access the literature from for-profit
publishers. Among the wealthiest institutions in the world, Harvard library is billed around
$3.5billion per year by the main publishers (The Guardian, 2012). It has recently warned its
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research staff it couldn’t afford any more increases in publishers’ fees, which have risen by
5 to 7% per annum in the past years (The Guardian, 2012). Following pressures from
various actors, publishers are getting involved in more open-access initiatives (see section
2.3.1), but mainly online. Practitioners and researchers from developing countries need to
have Internet access in order to access scientific publications, but the digital divide
between countries is still increasing (Fig 2.2).
It is very important to highlight that low Internet penetration due to low income reinforces
the information asymmetry, which then prolongs low income (Wallsten, 2005) and
influences the negotiation of treaties (Richerzhagen, 2011). For instance the Access-and-
Benefit Sharing (ABS) schemes, finally agreed on in 2010 at the Nagoya Conference, aim to
protect biological resources by giving sovereignty over them to governments “from the
South” (Lenteren et al., 2011). In this context, each country must prepare its own
legislation in order to have more bargaining power within markets where they originally
tend to be in a weaker position, negotiating with leading Multinational Corporations
(MNCs) from the developed world (Richerzhagen, 2011). Their access to up-to-date
information is therefore crucial. Much more could be said on the role played by economic
Fig 2.2 Internet users per 10,000 people. (Wallsten, 2005)
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disparities and the MNCs in information exchange barriers; but the scope of this survey is
on scientific information exchange, so the focus will be put on the role of publishing
companies.
2.2.3 The role of publishing companies
Few journals from developing countries are listed in the Thomson ISI JCR database, which
gathers the most prestigious journals (Packer and Meneghini, 2007). Developing countries
have increased their production of science (section 2.2.2) but not the number of journals to
publish it. Packer and Meneghini (2007) link that phenomenon to the status quo of the
publishing industry since World War II. Publishing companies started managing the whole
research production process at a similar time as the impact factor and the ISI were created
by Garfield. Therefore they established strategies for their journals to have the highest
impact factors. In turn, funding agencies encouraged researchers to publish in high impact
factors journals, making their research comply with their scope and goals. As there was no
funding to develop local journals able to compete with those well-established journals
from the North, scientists from the South had nothing but to try to publish their research in
high impact factor journals from the North (Gibbs, 1995). Although far more journals are
now published in developing countries, they still face a higher number of challenges than
those published in developed countries (Salager-Meyer, 2008). Today, the publishing
industry is an extremely concentrated market following several mergers in the last few
years (Moghaddam, 2009). It left little opportunities for new journals to develop on the
same business model, but plenty to create new ones.
2.3 Solutions to bridge the gap
Scientific communication is more and more globalized; in spite of it, the information gap
between countries of different levels of development and between researchers and
practitioners is increasing (Packer and Meneghini, 2007). This section aims to present the
existing initiatives developed to reduce the gap.
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2.3.1 For-profit publishers’ contribution
Giving developing countries free or nearly free access to scientific research is not a recent
phenomenon (Kirsop and Chan, 2005). Publishers have done so for many years, specifically
in partnerships with public organizations as the United Nations (UN): Research4life is an
example of a public-private partnership which aims to provide “those working within
institutions in the world’s poorest countries with this essential access” (Research4life,
2012). It was launched by the WHO and the main scientific publishers, and gathers 4
programs: HINARI (Health program), AGORA (agriculture program), OARE (Environmental
program) and ARDI (innovation and technology program). Elsevier is one of the founders
and an active participant in this program, through which they make all of Science Direct
available while still managing an annual average profit growth of nearly 13% between 2007
and 2011 (Reed Elsevier annual report, 2011).
However initiatives as Research4Life or consortia of libraries (e.g. CARLIGH, the Consortium
of Academic and Research Libraries in Ghana) are still dependent on publishers will to give
information (Kirsop and Chan, 2005), and still disseminate predominantly research from
the North, leaving aside research from the South (AJOL, 2012). Open Access publishing
offers a different approach: it is independent from the traditional publishing companies
and therefore threatens their current business model (Kljaković-Gašpić et al., 2007).
2.3.2 Open-access and other online initiatives
The open access movement (OA) emerged from the recognition that publicly funded
research should be publicly available (Kirsop and Chan, 2005). publishers started
introducing open-access options to their current offers following important actions such as
the foundation of PLoS One (Public Library of Science) in 2000 (Contreras, 2012); or the
Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) in 2001, when a small group from the Open Society
Institute met up in Budapest to expand access to peer-reviewed articles (Contreras, 2012).
The latter played a significant role defining what open-access is: the “free availability on
the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, […] or use
them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than
those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself” (Soros, 2012). The other main
goal of the OA movement consists in solving the “lost science” phenomenon, by publishing
and sharing research led in developing countries (Packer, 2009). A leading example was the
20
creation of Scielo (Scientific Electronic Library Online) in 1998, whose principal objective
was enhancing the impact of Brazilian journals (Meneghini 2003 as cited by Packer 2009).
For Brazilian research to stay in Brazil and be reached by local researchers, Scielo started
referencing the best local journals to attract authors who otherwise would have published
their results in foreign journals (Packer, 2009), thus reducing the South to South gap (Kirsop
and Chan, 2005). Scielo now gives access to 254 journals (Scielo, 2012) and African Journal
Online is doing the same for African scientific journals. However, Scielo relies on
government funding (Packer 2009).
Many OA publishing schemes such as PLoS and Biomedcentral rely on the Gold OA where
writers pay to have their article published (Kirsop and Chan, 2005). Obviously, fees paid by
authors represent significant obstacles too for the dissemination of research from
developing countries (Contreras, 2012), which makes this model widely debated (Harnard
et al., 2004). The other way, the Green OA, consists in scholars directly publishing in non-
open-access journals and archiving their papers in repositories or open access archives
such as ArXiv (Harnard et al., 2004; Bjork, 2004). Although still moderately widespread, a
report showed that the large majority of authors would self-archive willingly if required by
their employer (Swan and Brown, 2004). A Thomson scientific study (McVeigh, 2004)
suggests that over 55% of journals published in Web of Science in 2003 are issued by
publishers who allow a type of self-archiving. Other strategies include OA Aggregators,
such as Bioline International which provides online platforms for journals, while new free
indexes such as Google Scholar (2004) have allowed authors and journals outside of ISI and
to be more cited and accessed (Kousha and Thelwall, 2008). The OA market has been
growing rapidly but still only represents about 3% of peer-reviewed journals global market
(Guardian, 2012). This situation may change quickly given the UK government’s decision to
make research publicly funded instantly available to everyone by 2014 (Guardian, 2012).
This decision was rapidly followed by the European Commission. Their goal is to make
open-access 60% of all European publicly funded research articles by 2016 (Nature, 2012).
2.3.3 Other online initiatives
Other online initiatives bring scientific information freely to specialists and non-specialists.
Databases like Amphibiaweb (2012) or Avibase (2012), which is available in 21 languages,
gather information on specific species; some organizations share their information sources
21
via special websites (e.g. Conservation Gateway, 2010, Kew Archive catalogue, 2008-2010).
Networks like TEAM (Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring) provide real-time data
on tropical forests through a network of 50 field station (Fonseca and Benson, 2003).
Finally others have tried to tackle the lost science resulting from the difficulties to
communicate practitioners ‘results to researchers (see 2.1.3). Conservation Evidence
(2007) is one of them, gathering information from practitioners’ experience. Although
addressed to UK practitioners mainly, it is a first step to gain access to scientists and
practitioners’ knowledge in a more systemic way (Pullin et al., 2004). There are many of
these initiatives but they rely mainly on grants which may not be renewed: the American
NBII’s (National Biological Information Infrastructure) budget wasn’t renewed in 2012,
which made its databases, applications and tools inaccessible (nbii, 2012).This is why one-
way knowledge transfers as described in 2.3.1 and 2.3.2 aren’t a permanent and unique
answer: capacity-building and co-design of projects by researchers and implementers are
needed.
2.3.4 From knowledge dissemination to co-production
Conservation projects are more easily accepted by local communities when developed by
local authorities (Rodriguez, 2007) and implemented by local institutions (Smith et al 2009).
This is why initiatives as the Conservation Leadership Program offer training in developing
countries for practitioners and researchers to develop their writing skills and increase their
capacity to share information. However, research is often developed and conducted
independently from inhabitants of the places where it aims to be implemented (Garnett et
al., 2009). International Non-governmental Organizations tend to concentrate all the
funding and may not distribute it where it is most needed, while local agencies may remain
dependent on these foreign institutions to obtain funding (Rodriguez, 2007) - in a similar
situation to scientific organizations remaining dependent on access to foreign journals
because the local ones can’t develop (AJOL 2012; section 2.3.1). Social learning institutions
such as the Thicket Forum in South Africa, research institute such as CIFOR or the IPÊ
(Instituto de Pesquisas Ecológicas 2012) in Brazil, gather stakeholders from NGOs,
government, local communities and academia to design research and conservation projects
in a co-production scheme similar to the recommendations made by Roux et al (2006; see
2.1.1). This type of structure allows the balancing of viewpoints and makes sure local
interests are taken into account. Researchers start engaging in outreach activities as well,
22
to help implement their results (Arlettaz, 2010) or to make sure research is designed
collaboratively with managers (Caudron, Vigier and Champigneulle, 2012). This attitude
should increase as recent articles suggest engaging in implementation activities doesn’t
reduce academics’ productivity (Landry et al., 2007). Graduate students are an important
part of the development of this new collaborative approach, as their research projects
constitute a considerable proportion of those conducted in tropical countries (Duchelle et
al., 2009). As such, giving them an early training to develop their skills and interests for
outreach activities with a wide variety of stakeholders can be part of the solution to reduce
the information gap in conservation (Courter, 2012).
23
3. METHODS
3.1 The sample
The research-implementation gap has been described in the previous parts as even larger
in developing countries. Many articles have outlined the need for better communication
between researchers and practitioners but there has been little investigation so far – at
least in the English scientific literature – to empirically analyse how these two groups
exchange information. Consequently in an attempt to complete existent literature, this
survey will study how scientific information relevant to conservation science is exchanged
in developing countries.
3.1.1 Definition
Margoluis and Salasfsky (1998, p7) defined practitioners as “managers, researchers, and
local stakeholders who are responsible for designing, managing, and monitoring
conservation and development projects.”; however, as discussed in section 2.2.1,
practitioners and researchers come in a range of types, with different visions of
information production and access. Therefore for the sake of this survey, I separated
practitioners from researchers: the term practitioner will encompass any decision-maker
whose main occupation isn’t research, but instead the implementation of conservation
actions in order to protect and manage natural resources. Researchers themselves are
divided in 2 groups: researchers working in universities and researchers working in other
institutions. The sample is consequently made of 3 groups which will be referred to as
practitioners, non-university researchers, university researchers.
3.1.2 Developing countries classification
The World Bank classification of countries by Gross National Income per capita was used.
The groups are: low income, ($1,025 or less), lower middle income, ($1,026 - $4,035),
upper middle income ($4,036 - $12,475) and high income ($12,476 or more). It is generally
admitted countries classified from low to upper middle income may be referred to as a
whole as “developing countries” (Worldbank, 2012), even if within this broad category,
countries may experience different levels of development.
24
3.1.3 Sample limits and biases
Given the methods chosen (on-line survey in English, French or Spanish sent to
practitioners from developed countries), it wasn’t possible to reach practitioners who truly
lack technology, and who would have required face to face interviews in their own
language. Consequently the survey targets a precise category within the category: those
who have regular Internet access, professional contacts with researchers from developed
countries, and a certain awareness of the research-implementation issue. For that reason
the results cannot be extrapolated to the whole practitioner population. Another
consequence is the lack of precision in the targeting. Many researchers from developing
and developed countries actually answered the questionnaire, very often instead of giving
practitioners’ contact details as asked for in the email. Consequently, given the large
number of respondents working as researchers, the focus of the survey was expanded to
include them even if some questions were unsuitable for them. In that situation, their
answers were not included in the results. Their non-inclusion will be precised when
necessary in the results section.
3.2 The sampling strategy
An on-line survey was sent to practitioners and researchers in developing countries,
accessed via three different routes; direct sampling of an email list maintained by the
Conservation Leadership Programme, and indirect sampling via authors of Oryx papers and
the MSc in Conservation Science:
3.2.1 Direct sampling: the Conservation Leadership Programme
The Conservation Leadership Program was created in 1985. This initiative results from the
collaboration of four main NGOs: BirdLife International, the Wildlife Conservation Society,
Conservation International and Fauna and Flora International. The mission of the CLP
includes the training of future conservation leaders from developing countries in different
aspects of their work and aims at promoting collaboration in conservation. An email was
sent to 1016 individuals via the alumnus network, inviting them to answer the online
survey (officially the network includes 1060 email contacts; 44 emails were returned as
undeliverable).
25
3.2.2 Other sampling method
Two groups (Oryx authors and current and past members of the MSc in Conservation
Science at Imperial College London) were emailed and asked for practitioners’ contact
details. The contacts given were emailed and asked to complete the survey if they were
practitioners themselves, or to send it to other contacts if they weren’t. These other
contacts were therefore reached by a sampling method referred to as snowball sampling.
As practitioners from developing countries face technological barriers to accessing
scientific information (Sunderland, 2009), getting in touch with them implies facing similar
problems. Snowball sampling is an established technique to enable access to populations
who are hidden or difficult to reach (Atkinson and Flint, 2001), which was therefore used to
get in touch with practitioners.
3.2.3 Oryx authors
The field of conservation science is covered by many journals, each of them with a different
positioning and editorial policy. Oryx, the International journal of Conservation is published
for the INGO Fauna and Flora International and has developed a special positioning in the
conservation journal market which makes it ideal for this survey. It is focused on
biodiversity conservation and how conservation science interacts with social, political and
economic issues. It “has a particular interest in material with the potential to improve
conservation management and practice” (Oryx the journal, 2008). It is also one of the rare
journals to have a high proportion of published studies carried out in developing countries
(Campbell, 2007). Therefore sampling articles from Oryx maximized the chances of getting
in touch with practitioners from developing countries.
All the papers and short communications published in Oryx between April 2012 and April
2009, and whose recommendations could be implemented in a developing country as
defined in 3.1.2, were downloaded in an Excel spreadsheet. For each article, the title, the
Oryx volume in which it was published, the contact details of the corresponding author and
the countries of implementation were recorded. The database was then checked to make
sure each author was affiliated to one article and so would only be contacted once. If not,
the most recent article was kept in the database and the older ones removed. An email was
then sent to the corresponding authors. They were presented the survey and asked for
26
contact details of practitioners who could have used the results of the paper or similar
ones in their jobs.
3.2.4 The MSc in Conservation Science
The MSc in Conservation Science alumni from 2007 to 2011, the students and the lecturers
of the 2011-2012 course were included in this group. An email was sent to the 165
members of this group. They were presented the survey and asked for contact details of
practitioners from developing countries who they worked with and who could answer the
questionnaire.
3.3 Survey Design
The survey (APPENDIX 1) was designed as a mix of open and closed format questions, to
facilitate the analysis but also to get a real understanding of a subject which has not been
studied before from this angle. Some of the questions were multiple choice and multiple
answer questions, given the potential for more than one answer to be adequate. Some
others were forced ranking questions to obtain qualitative data on the use of information
sources, and the last 2 questions were open questions giving the opportunity for
respondents to share their thoughts on the issue and potential ideas to reduce the gap.
The design of the questions drew from the survey results of Pullin et al (2004) and
Campbell (2007).
Several questions were answer-dependent. Therefore depending on the answers chosen,
the shortest version of the survey contained 23 questions and the longest 33 questions.
The survey was divided into 5 sections.
a) Background of the respondents
This section addressed the origin of the respondent, the country they are working in and
their work position. Given the snowball sampling methods, it was likely a lot of people
emailed would answer the questionnaire even if they weren’t asked to. These first
questions allowed the quick elimination of any respondents who didn’t belong to the
target sample, such as respondents from developed countries.
27
b) Access to scientific information
This part aimed at getting an understanding of which sources of information are used, how
frequently they are used relatively to one another, and the place of peer-reviewed
literature among them.
c) Sharing of scientific information
Little is known about practitioners’ and researchers’ actual communication with other
stakeholders. The objective of this part is to understand who their main correspondents
are, how and how often they communicate with them.
d) Opinion of conservation research
This part aims at understanding if and how they use peer-reviewed literature and what
would make it more useful for them.
e) Their involvement in research
This part aims at seeing their current degree of involvement and their willingness to take
more part in it.
3.4 Survey pilot
The English version of the survey was tested on a pilot group of 10 people working for
NGOs in developing countries and emailed through personal contacts. Following their
feedback, some questions were reformulated and the vocabulary simplified. This final
version was then translated in French and Spanish. Each questionnaire was sent to 2
natural French speakers and 2 natural Spanish speakers to test for potential
misunderstanding. Following their feedback, some questions were reformulated too.
3.5 Data Collection
Emails were sent to the different groups as explained before. The language of the email
was dependent on the language of the recipient if enough information on them could be
gathered. If not, they were sent in English. In each email were added links to the different
versions of the questionnaire. The survey was created online using the website
SurveyMonkey (Copyright © 1999-2012 SurveyMonkey), and was run for 2 months from 7th
28
June to 7th of August 2012. Responses from the questionnaire were downloaded into an
Excel spreadsheet.
3.6 Data analysis
Respondents who didn’t meet the criteria of the targeted sample (see 3.1) were removed.
The validity of the answers was then checked independently for each question.
This project aims to identify patterns in the communication of practitioners, non-university
researchers and researchers in developing countries. As the subject has been little studied,
one of the goals of the survey is providing some explanations to the research-
implementation gap by presenting patterns and trends of behaviour. To get a more
meaningful understanding, the data collected was both qualitative and quantitative. Open-
questions were coded to carry out content analysis, combined with mainly descriptive
statistics to apprehend the results of the closed questions. A few tests were run to test for
representativeness of the sample as well. Few were included in the results due to the
relatively small sample sizes and the lack of need for tests in order to discern trends. The
analysis was conducted in Excel 2010 and R (version 2.1.5.1).
29
4. RESULTS
4.1 Sample description
A total of 216 individuals started the online survey, and 124 finished it. Of these 124, 25
were excluded as they were coming from a developed country. Therefore the total
response sample used for the analysis was made of 99 answers.
- 181 Oryx authors were emailed and asked for practitioners contact details. 18%
replied. Thanks to these responses, 182 persons were then contacted and asked to
answer the questionnaire and/or forward the link to colleagues.
- 165 MSc members were emailed and asked for practitioners contact details. 7%
replied. Thanks to these responses, 206 persons were then contacted and asked to
answer the questionnaire and/or forward the link to colleagues.
- 1016 members of the CLP were emailed and asked to answer the questionnaire and
forward the link. 3% completed the questionnaire; they represent 31% of the 99
answers (Fig 4.1).
Among the contact details coming from the Oryx authors and Msc groups, 33 emails were
undeliverable and no other email addresses were found on the web; 16 practitioners were
in the field and came back too late to take part to the survey. Although respondents were
asked how they heard about the survey (Fig 4.1), it is quite difficult to attribute to an
original sample the answers received – except for the CLP – as part of the respondents
were reached by snowball sampling (16% of the 99 answers, Fig 4.1).
Fig 4.1 Origin of the answers
30
The response sample is made of 3 groups: 28 university researchers, 46 practitioners and
25 non-university researchers. The 2 second groups are mainly split between governments
and NGOs (Fig.4.2), more than half of which are national NGOs.
Overall, responses came from Asia-Pacific (n=41), South America (n=32), Africa (n=18),
Central America (n=8).
The questionnaire had a completion rate of 57%, which is a bit small but also
understandable given its length and the type of questions asked. The influence of the work
institution of the respondents wasn’t significant (χ2 = 2.77, df = 5, p-value = 0.73).
However, the geographic origin of the respondent seemed to influence the completion of
the questionnaire (χ2 = 9.4, df = 3, p-value = 0.02) with a smaller completion rate for
respondents from African countries. The online format of the questionnaire was an issue
raised by a few respondents from this region (personal communication), which may bias
the results even more towards people having an effective Internet connection.
Fig 4.2 Work place of the respondents
31
4.2 Access and use of scientific information sources
4.2.1 Access to Online scientific information: comparison of the 3 samples
The first question consisted in asking the respondents to rank their favourite media to
access online information. The 3 groups classified open-access journals and databases in
the top 3 of the most important resources (Table 4.1).
Table 4.1. Use of online sources among Practitioners (valid answers = 41/46), Non-University Researchers
(valid answers = 22/25), and University Researchers (valid answers = 24/28). The sources are ranked by
decreasing importance for Practitioners. “Ranked as the most important” refers to the proportion of
respondents who ranked the source as 1st
, 2nd
or 3rd
. Grey cells outline the 3 most important sources for
each group.
Practitioners Non-university
researchers
University researchers
Sources Ranked as the most important by
Total users
Ranked as the most important by
Total users
Ranked as the most important by
Total users
Open-access journals 66% 35 91% 22 92% 24 Databases 56% 27 31% 16 58% 19 Networks 55% 33 20% 15 33% 18 Convention websites (BCD..) 47% 30 38% 16 28% 18 Newsletters 38% 29 6% 16 18% 17 Subscription-based journals 33% 27 21% 14 81% 21 NGO reports 32% 37 6% 16 11% 18 Media 25% 28 13% 15 12% 17 NGO websites 17% 29 22% 18 18% 17 Social Networks 14% 21 15% 13 7% 14 Blogs 9% 23 8% 12 21% 14
When asked for examples, practitioners answers of online sources generally include
scientific databases as OARE (Online Access to Research in the Environment), Academic
journals, Madagascar Conservation and Development, Scielo or Plos One. Their third most
important resources is Networks, and the examples include specific and/or local websites
as save-vultures.org or the Snow Leopard Network. Overall, only 2 “official” names of
NGOs are cited more than 3 times by practitioners: IUCN (n=14) and Birdlife (n=9), and only
one search engine: Google (n=1)/Google scholar (n=8). Overall, practitioners tend to give
more similar value to each source than the researchers ‘groups. Non-university researchers
clearly singled out open-access journals (ranked as most important by 91% when the
second source was ranked as most important by only 38%); university researchers clearly
singled out peer-reviewed literature (Open-access journals were ranked as most important
by 92%, subscription-based by 81%).
32
Regarding the examples given in open-questions, Google scholar is the only online medium
cited more than twice, quoted 8 times by non-university researchers and 10 times by
university researchers. Non-university researchers ranked in the 3 most important sources
Convention websites, while university researchers chose subscription-based journals as the
second most important.
However, subscription-based journals come in 5th and 6th position respectively for non-
university researchers and practitioners in terms of importance. They come even lower in
terms of total users showing a clear discrepancy in the use of subscription-based peer-
reviewed literature. Finally, it is interesting to see the least used consist of blogs for
practitioners, when NGO reports are ranked among the 2 least important for the 2
categories of researchers.
33
4.2.2 Access to non-online scientific information: comparison of the 3 samples
The second ranking question consisted in asking the respondents to choose their favourite
media to access non-online information. For practitioners, hard copy reports are the first
source followed by books and local community knowledge (Table 4.2). Non-university
researchers ranked first local conferences, books, than hard-copy reports and subscription-
based journals. Finally, university researchers prefer books, followed by historical
documents and subscription-based journals. Hard copies of subscription-based journals are
the third most valued for both groups of researchers, showing the importance of peer-
reviewed literature for academic activities, while it is the least used by practitioners with a
relatively low importance attributed. A similar comparison can be made with books: they
are among the 3 most important sources across the 3 samples, but their importance is
clearly superior for the 2 groups of researchers.
Table 4.2. Use of non-online sources among Practitioners (valid answers = 42/46), Non-University
Researchers (valid answers = 24/25), and University Researchers (valid answers = 26/28). “Ranked as the
most important” refers to the proportion of respondents who ranked the source as 1st
, 2nd
or 3rd
. The
sources are ranked by decreasing importance for Practitioners. Grey cells outline the 3 most important for
each category.
Practitioners Non-university
researchers
University researchers
Sources Ranked as the most important by
Total users
Ranked as the most important by
Total users
Ranked as the most important by
Total users
Hard-copy reports 64% 36 44% 18 33% 21 Books 57% 37 82% 22 73% 22 Local communities knowledge
47% 30 32% 19 26% 19
Handbooks 41% 32 24% 17 33% 18 Local conferences & workshops
32% 34 53% 19 40% 20
Subscription-based journals 32% 25 44% 18 47% 17 Historical local documents 31% 29 33% 18 60% 17 Local meetings 30% 27 21% 19 24% 21 Newspapers 21% 28 8% 13 25% 20 Unofficial meetings abroad 21% 28 11% 18 32% 19 Conferences & workshops abroad
19% 31 22% 18 41% 22
34
4.2.3 Access to subscription-based journals
We have seen previously that peer-reviewed literature is largely used by practitioners and
researchers. However, subscription-based journals still represent the majority of it.
Therefore assessing the access to subscription-based literature is necessary to evaluate the
gap.
There is a significant difference of access across the samples (X2= 16.89, df = 2, p-value <
0.001), with an interesting trend showing an increasing access rate with the increased
disconnection from implementation (Table 4.3).
Table 4.3. Answers to the question « Does your institution have any official access to subscription-
based journals ? »
Answer Practitioners Non-University researchers University researchers Yes 11 14 21 No 30 9 7 I don’t know 5 2 0 % who have access 24% 54% 75%
Conservation professionals can also access journals which require a login using someone
else’s. The proportion of respondents doing so – or acknowledging doing it - is higher
among researchers than among practitioners (Table 4.4) but the relationship isn’t
significant (χ2 = 2.43, df = 2, p-value = 0.3).
Table 4.4. Answers to the question “Do you use the login and password of colleagues to access the
journals you don't have a subscription to?”
Answer Practitioners Non-university researchers University researchers
Yes 10 10 10 No 33 15 18 I don’t know 3 0 0 % who answered yes 22% 40% 36%
In total, nearly half of the practitioners (n=22/46) don’t have official access via their
institutions and don’t use colleagues’ logins and passwords. These practitioners with
considerably reduced access capacity will be referred to as the “practitioner-subgroup” in
the rest of the survey.
4.2.4 Practitioner-subgroup characteristics
Neither the geographic origin nor the type of institution they are working in seem to have a
significant impact on the practitioner-subgroup access capacity. However, a slightly larger
35
proportion of them work in national governments (32% vs 26%) and a smaller in
International NGOs (18% vs 24%) in comparison to the practitioner group. Studying the way
the practitioner-subgroup accesses information, their behaviour is similar to the whole
practitioner group except for a few main differences reported below (Table 4.5). They rank
more highly online NGO reports (Rank 3 in this group, Rank 7 in the Practitioners group)
but lower Databases (Rank 5 in this group, Rank 2 in the Practitioners group) and
Newsletters (Rank 9 in this group, 5 in the Practitioners group). Among non-online sources,
the rankings are similar except for the fact they value more meetings abroad with other
professionals, which seems a bit odd a result given that their lack of access is very probably
due to their lack of resources.
Table 4.5. Variation of importance given to information sources. Only the most different are shown (>5%).
Practitioner-
subgroup
Practitioners
complete group
Practitioner-
subgroup
Practitioners
complete
group
Non-online
sources
Ranked as the most important by
Ranked as the most important by
Online
sources
Ranked as the most important by
Ranked as the most important by
Books 44% 57% NGO reports 44% 32% Historical local
documents
19% 31% Databases 38% 56%
Newspapers 31% 21% Newsletters 27% 38% Abroad
meetings
29% 21%
They also value more newspapers (Hindu newspaper, Actualidad Ambiental, El Comercio)
and magazines (National Geographic), confirmed by the fact the few examples cited were
given by respondents from the subgroup only. However oddly enough, books and local
documents seem less important for them.
36
4.3 Scientific information sharing
The information gap exists because of a communication deficiency. It is therefore critical to
identify the main communication targets of the sample.
4.3.1 Who do they share their results with and how often?
4.3.1.1 Practitioners
With the exceptions of 6 respondents, all practitioners stated having to report within their
institution. Reports are used by the entire sample and the most widespread frequency is
monthly (n=18). A majority stated sharing their results outside their own institution (n=42)
as well, in order of priority to Local people, National practitioners and National Researchers
(Fig 4.3(a)). This may be quite a good representation of the sphere of influence and
responsibilities of practitioners: with the exception of national policy-makers, Locals and
Nationals appear to be the most communicated with and the most regularly, but foreign
professionals are overall the least communicated with (although foreign practitioners seem
to be more regular contacts than foreign researchers).
Fig 4.3(a). Practitioners’ answers (n=42) to the question “Who do you share your results with and how
often?” The communication targets are classified from the most communicated with (absence of “never”
answer) to the least communicated with (maximum of “never’ answers).
Practitioners
37
4.3.1.2 Researchers
Four university researchers don’t report within their institution, but all of them stated
sharing information outside of their institution. They always communicate with other
researchers and local people, but practitioners actually appear quite low in their priorities,
only followed by policy-makers (Fig 4.3 b).
Three non-university researchers don’t report within theirs institution; they include the 2
researchers who don’t report outside either. Non-university researchers appear to
communicate differently from practitioners and the university researchers (Fig 4.3 (c)). In
graphs 4.3 (a) and (b), the number of respondents who answered “regularly” declines as
the number of respondents who answered “never” increases. It clearly shows the
categories on the right side of the graph are less important communication targets, but this
trend isn’t as visible for non-university researchers.
Finally, foreign policy-makers are the last communication targets for both types of
researchers and practitioners. It is still unfortunate to see that national policy-makers
appear at the bottom of the list.
Fig 4.3(b). University Researchers’ answers (n=28) to the question “Who do you share your results with
and how often?” (c). Non-university Researchers’ answers (n=23) to the question “Who do you share your
results with and how often?” The communication targets are classified from the most communicated with
(absence of “never” answer) to the least communicated with (maximum of “never’ answers)
38
4.3.2 Communication tools
As explained in section 3.1.3, the researchers’ groups are not always included in the
analysis. This question focuses on practitioners only as it wasn’t designed to integrate
researchers’ potential answers.
The website of their institution and personal emails are practitioners’ preferred way of
sharing their results, quickly followed by the newsletter of their institution (Table 4.6).
Regarding non-online tools, hard-copy reports are preferred; Maps and other documents
are the second one, closely followed by in-country conferences.
Online Sources Ranking Total users Non-online Sources Ranking Total users
Institution website 79% 29 Hard-copy reports 84% 38 Personal emails 78% 32 Maps/local documents 55% 29 Institution newsletter 56% 25 In country conferences 50% 32 Networks 41% 27 Meetings abroad 47% 30 Forums 41% 27 In country meetings 44% 34 Databases 38% 24 Local media 42% 19 Online media 35% 23 Handbooks 19% 26 Blogs 26% 19 Conferences abroad 16% 31 Books 13% 24
Generally, meetings and conferences are quite highly used and ranked as ways to share
information whereas online and non-online media are ranked among the 2 lowest in each
category.
Table 4.6. Answers to the questions “Which sources do you use to share your results?” (Valid answers =
41/46)
39
4.3.3 The gap illustrated?
To elaborate solutions to reduce the research-implementation gap, it is important to
understand how the main communication tools used by some groups to share information
are used by the others to access information. If we compare Tables 4.1, 4.2 and 4.6, we can
see why part of the information gap exists in the way practitioners share information and
researchers access it. Indeed, the tools mostly used by practitioners to communicate are
among the least used by researchers to access scientific information (Table 4.7), as
researchers rank reports, NGO websites and newsletters among the least useful to access
scientific information.
Table 4.7 (a) Comparison of the preferred online tools used by practitioners to share information and those
used by researchers to access it; (b) Comparison of the preferred non-online tools used by practitioners to
share information and those used by researchers to access it. Personal emails were not included in the
answers offered in the question on information access, hence the impossibility of comparison.
(a) Online Sources Importance given by
practitioners to share
information
Importance given by non-
university researchers to
access information
Importance given by
university researchers to
access information
Institution Website 79% 22% 18% Personal emails 78% X X Institution newsletter 56% 6% 18%
(b) Non-online sources Importance given by
practitioners to
share information
Importance given by non-
university researchers to
access information
Importance given by
university researchers
to access information
Hard-copy reports 84% 44% 33% Maps/other local documents 55% 33% 60% In country conferences 50% 53% 40%
However, Maps/other local documents which aren’t reports and face to face meetings via
conferences seem to be more promising in terms of information exchange between the
professions. It is difficult to judge the importance of information exchange between
practitioners. They mainly look for information in open-access journals, not on other
institutions websites. However they communicate a lot via personal emails which suggests
there is exchange in this format.
4.4 Use and opinion of research publication
4.4.1 Practitioners and peer-reviewed literature
In the same vein, it is important to understand how peer-reviewed literature is used since it
is the main communication tool used by university researchers to disseminate information.
40
Nine practitioners out of 46 stated they don’t use peer-reviewed literature in their work, 7
of them belonging to the Practitioner - Subgroup. The 2 main reasons are the costs but also
that “they don’t know where to look for peer-reviewed articles”, although a few of them at
one point stated using peer-reviewed journals. The concept of “peer-review” may not be
completely comprehended. Following the question “Which journal do you use the most?”,
a total of 34 different journals were cited by practitioners. Among them, only Conservation
Biology and Oryx were cited more than twice (respectively n=9 and n=6). The 2 main
reasons were because their articles focus on conservation issues of interest and because of
the journal’s reputation. Oryx’s focus on local issues was another reason mentioned, as
many times as the journal’s reputation.
4.4.2 Researchers and peer-reviewed literature
Two non-university researchers out of 25 don’t use peer-reviewed literature. They cited 19
different peer-reviewed journals. Oryx (n=6), Conservation Biology (n=5) and Biological
Conservation (n=4) were the most frequently cited because their articles focus on
conservation issues of interest and because of the journal’s reputation. As expected, all the
university researchers use peer-reviewed literature. They cited 29 different journals, and
the same journals as previously were cited more than twice - Oryx (n=5), Conservation
Biology (n=4) and Biological Conservation (n=4) - for the same reasons.
4.4.3 Journals categories
In total, 62 journals were cited by the whole sample. Different categories were created (see
Appendix 2) in order to see if the profession influenced the choice of the type of peer-
reviewed journal (Table 4.8).
Journal categories Practitioners Non-university
researchers
University-
researchers
Conservation journals
18 15 18
Journals with a focus on areas /ecosystem/ species 15 6 15
Biology/ecology/zoology journals 5 5 5
Journals with a focus on implementation 4 2 0
General-interest scientific journals (Nature..) 1 2 7
Other 1 0 0
Table 4.8. Comparison of the categories of peer-reviewed journals used by the 3 samples.
Interestingly, it seems practitioners and researchers have similar attitudes regarding the
choice of journals but 3 main differences can be outlined – although larger numbers may
41
reinforce patterns:
- Non University Researchers seem to use far less journals focused on a specific area or
ecosystem.
- Practitioners are the main ones using journals focusing on implementation or
management of resources.
- University Researchers are the main ones using scientific journals of general interest
(Nature, Science).
4.4.4 Use of the impact factor
The majority of respondents don’t use the impact factor in their selection process when
looking for articles (Table 4.9). There was no significant difference between the groups
regarding the effect of impact factor on their choices (χ2 = 04, df = 2, p-value = 0.978).
Answer Practitioners
(n=37)
Non University Researchers
(n=23)
University Researchers
(n=28)
YES 11 7 9 NO 26 16 19
The main reason why respondents don’t use the impact factor is because they choose the
articles which match with their interest first (Fig 4.4). A few practitioners – otherwise the
largest group of respondents who don’t use it- added they couldn’t afford to be “choosy
anyway”. It is interesting to see the respondents who mainly answered that high impact
factor journals were too disconnected from practice are University Researchers.
Table 4.9. Answers to the question “Do you use the Impact Factor when looking for scientific articles?”
(n=37)
Fig 4.4. Answers to the question “Why don’t you use the impact factor ?
42
On the other hand, reasons for respondents who use the impact factor are the facts that it
is a measure of article credibility and a sign of up to date science (Fig 4.5).
Fig 4.5. Answers to the question “Why do you use the impact factor?”
4.4.5 Improving peer-reviewed literature
The main barriers to uptake of research put forward in the literature are the costs and the
language (section 2.2). Therefore the solutions include among other more open-access,
translation from English to local languages and more implementability (section 2.3).
However interestingly, the answers to the question “what would make peer-reviewed
literature more useful?” don’t suggest these solutions are the most needed. Sixty-one per
cent of the practitioners thought a website allowing them to collaborate with researchers
on research design would make the peer-review literature more useful for them (Fig. 4.6),
far before open-access or article translation.
Fig 4.6. Practitioners’ opinion to the question “What would make peer-reviewed literature more useful for
you?” (n=46)
43
Interestingly, both types of researchers had similar responses to the practitioners: fifty per
cent of University and Non-university researchers chose this answer as well, followed by
more open-access, having someone doing synthesis for them, and finally having articles
translated in their own language.
4.5. Involvement in peer-reviewed article writing
4.5.1 Practitioners’ Involvement
42 practitioners have been involved to various degrees in article writing, 7 of them though
don’t use peer-reviewed literature in their work. Nearly half of the group has been main
author at least once (n=21/46) while the majority has participated in data collection
(n=37/46) and data analysis (n=33/46). Therefore, as expected, the sample is
representative of practitioners who already know part of the work involved in the writing
of an article, and therefore quite integrated in the world of research. Only 4 practitioners
have never been involved in the writing of a research paper, 2 of them don’t use peer-
reviewed literature. “Is the use of peer-reviewed journals correlated to the involvement of
practitioners in research?” is one of the research questions, therefore the correlation was
tested but wasn’t found to be significant (Fisher’s exact test, p=0,17). However it is safe to
say the proportions of practitioners who use peer-reviewed literature are highly similar to
the proportions of those who have been involved in the writing of an article. Being involved
in research was considered a useful experience. “It helped me get a project funded” was
the least chosen explanation (Fig 4.7).
Fig 4.7 Practitioners’ answers to the questions “Why was it a useful experience?”
44
One respondent doesn’t want to reiterate the experience though because doing research
and working on publication take a lot of time, “but the impact on real conservation is very
limited”, and 2 don’t know. The rest of the group willing to write articles in the future
justified it for personal development reasons: getting more knowledge, experience and
skills (Table 4.10) was the main reason and sharing knowledge only came as a second
explanation.
Table 4.10. Practitioners’ (n=39) answers to the question “Why would you like to reiterate this experience
[scientific article writing]?”
Answer Number of respondents
To develop skills for professional evolution 16
To share knowledge with different stakeholders 11
To improve conservation project management 8
To analyse data efficiently 1
I don’t know 1
Other 1
4.5.2 Non-university researchers’ involvement
As expected, all of the university researchers use peer-reviewed literature and were
involved in article writing. However, 3 non-university researchers never had the
opportunity to be involved, 2 of them being non-users of peer-reviewed literature. The rest
of the group has been involved in article writing and all but one use peer-reviewed
literature. The correlation was tested and was found significant (Fisher’s exact test,
p=0,03). It was overall a useful experience for them as well, but “It helped me get a project
funded” was the least chosen explanation here too (Fig 4.8).
Fig 4.8. Non-university researchers’ answers to the questions “Why was it a useful experience?”
45
Twenty-one are willing to write articles in the future, for similar reasons as practitioners.
The same number of non-university researchers cited “to develop skills” and “share
knowledge” as the main reasons (See Table 14), when knowledge sharing perceptibly came
second for practitioners.
Table 4.11. Non-university researchers (n=39) answers to the question “Why would you like to reiterate
this experience [scientific article writing]?”
Answer Number of respondents
To develop skills for professional evolution 9
To share knowledge with different stakeholders 9
To improve conservation project management 2
It is my job 3
To analyse data efficiently 1
4.6 Solutions to enhance collaboration
The questionnaire was concluded by an open-question asking respondents for their opinion
on how best to improve collaboration and communication in conservation science. Four
main axes emerge from the answers.
4.6.1 Free access
Free access to research remains one of the main recommendations. It outlines again the
importance of this economic issue. Both practitioners and researchers called for more free
dissemination via open-access journals and online databases. It has been suggested by one
respondent from the university researchers group that publishers’ policies were completely
hindering the advancement of science and its communication, which is why open journals
like PLoS One were such a success and fought by editorial groups. Given that the crucial
role of free access has already been assessed, I will focus on the 3 other axes.
4.6.2 Development of new media
The need to develop new media through which researchers and practitioners could
communicate is expressed mainly among practitioners (n=11/46). Suggestions include
forums, websites, networks, or something different “that everybody feels comfortable
with”, “an exchange zone where we could share our experiences, findings and problems
met in practice” (original answer in French). Others suggest the use of:
46
� blogs for scientists to disseminate their information (although the “blog” option
received among the lowest levels of responses in the questionnaire),
� online libraries where complete books in pdf format can be found,
� free databases such as Ordinafrica (Ocean Data and Information Network of Africa):
this website gathers scientists’ contacts from 25 African countries to facilitate
exchanges
� broadcasting scientific talks on the net via TED (www.ted.com/talks) or RSA (the
Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce,
www.thersa.org).
4.6.3 Direct collaboration
About half of the respondents wished there was more collaboration between practitioners
and researchers “at the site level” but also at national and international levels. It comes all
the more important as NGOs’ “needs are not always the same as academicians”, a fact
underlined several times in responses. This call for more collaboration comes equally from
practitioners and researchers: more workshops and meetings where both would be invited
are suggested. A few practitioners had other concrete recommendations. They wish
researchers would spend more time in the field for 2 main reasons:
- To develop the program’s credibility in order to keep local people involved in it
when researchers leave.
- To make sure research projects are written with the managers to include and
represent local NGOs’ research interests.
This direct collaboration is crucial as gaps easily appear between research and practice,
especially when different nationalities are involved and the language barrier is an issue. A
respondent gave a very detailed example of that situation, where an IUCN specialist group
works independently from the natural resource’s governmental authority. The lack of
communication resulted in the “utter failure” of the IUCN action: “Most of the Specialist
Groups have become elitist institutions that look down upon the staff of the management
authority because of their lack of English language proficiency. They dominate international
meetings and pontificate on matters that find no resonance at home”.
47
Another solution proposed by a respondent (university researcher) consisted of asking
NGOs and government to create means to get researchers more interested in their work
through “rather unofficial channels”, possibly to overcome cultural resistance. Generally,
there is agreement on the necessity of sharing freely the results between stakeholders in a
given place, where the scientific significance of the results is the most important. A
practitioner synthesized it by explaining that “results can be published in any type of
scientific journals as long as they are first shared freely between the different conservation
stakeholders involved [in the project]” (original answer in French).
4.6.4 “Use common English!”
Eight practitioners and 4 researchers underlined the need for simpler English in the
publications. Headlines should be shorter, the vocabulary “less brain-heavy” and the
papers written with less “jargon”. Two practitioners reiterated the need for translation of
scientific conservation papers into “digestible popular articles”, such as in Science,
potentially on a “continent by continent basis”. It is all the most important as research led
in isolated areas by foreign scientists very rarely reaches back to managers once published
in English journals and therefore “have no impact on them”. Several respondents argued it
was researchers’ responsibilities to diffuse their work (“especially those focused on applied
research”; original answer in Spanish) in a simple language to “make it easy” for
practitioners to use them. The English barrier also works both ways: as seen in section
4.5.1, practitioners are interested and willing to write articles to share their results.
However it is “time-consuming” and more difficult for non-English speakers. Publication
and peer-reviewing are one way of sharing knowledge, whose importance was
acknowledged by practitioners throughout the questionnaire. However the necessity to
have the results disseminated to the right stakeholders was even more frequently
expressed: “Get the results published is good, get them read is better”.
48
5. DISCUSSION
5.1 Use of peer-reviewed literature
5.1.1 Practitioners do use it
The main aspect of the research-implementation gap scientists tend to focus on is the lack
of science uptake by practitioners (Sunderland, 2009; Knight et al., 2008; Born, Boreux and
Lawes, 2009). Surveys that have studied the subject focused on the uptake of science from
subscription-based conservation journals (Ormerod, 2002; Campbell, 2007; Cook, 2010),
which have a more restricted access than open-access journals. One of the main findings of
the results is that practitioners do use peer-reviewed literature (80.4% do) but more
commonly from open-access (ranked as the first source) than subscription-based journals
(ranked as the sixth source). However, when asked to cite examples of journals they use,
practitioners mainly cited subscription-based journals despite their access to such journals
being more restricted than that of researchers (Table 4.4). Even the 22% of practitioners
who declared having neither official nor unofficial access (using someone else’s login)
mainly cited non-open access journals. A possible explanation is that well-established
scientific journals from developed countries remain preferred sources (see 5.3.1), and
would be chosen if they weren’t that expensive to access.
With respect to the type of journals preferred, conservation journals such as Oryx and
Conservation Biology appear to be the most used by practitioners, closely followed by
journals with a specific focus on areas, ecosystems or species (Table 4.8). It seems logical
that this combination of journals will provide most of the information they need. University
and non-university researchers have interests similar to practitioners, except for the fact
that only 6 non-university researchers cited journals with a specific focus.
Interestingly, journals with a focus on implementation were the most cited by
practitioners, then by non-university researchers and not used at all by university
researchers. Conversely, scientific general-interest journals (e.g. Science, Nature) are cited
by one practitioner, by 2 non-university researchers and by 7 university researchers. In
other words, the journals that are more disconnected from practice are the most used by
university researchers and the least used by practitioners. However, the survey sample is
small and this finding needs to be examined with a larger sample.
49
5.1.2 Involvement in research
One of the research question was “Is the use of peer-reviewed journals correlated to the
involvement in research?”. As expected, all university researchers publish articles and use
them in their work. The relationship was tested among practitioners and no significant
difference was found, but a small difference was found among non-university researchers
(See 4.5.1. and 4.5.2). These results may be due to the sample biases (See 3.1.3), but it
does show across the groups that the more a professional category is used to writing peer-
reviewed articles, the more they use it in their jobs. It seems that training practitioners in
articles writing as done by the Conservation Leadership Program could increase the uptake
of the science published in peer-reviewed journals, as suggested by collaborative research
approaches (Salafsky et al., 2002; Donlan 2003; Caudron, Vigier and Champigneulle, 2012)
and thus reduce the gap.
5.2 Information exchange
5.2.1 Information access
One of the main objectives of this survey was finding out how practitioners and researchers
in developing countries access scientific information (see 1.2). All of them use peer-
reviewed literature from journals, open-access journals being the most frequently used.
Yet researchers rely more on this literature than practitioners (Table 4.1), maybe because
they remain the main communication target of authors (Shanley and Lopez, 2009).
Practitioners on the other hand appear to be less concerned about the source of
information, with all sources having a more similar importance for them, whether peer-
reviewed or not. Campbell (2007) has already underlined this fact, and also that the uptake
was facilitated if researchers disseminated information via local media, report or public
meetings. Reports are the first-ranked non-online source used by practitioners but they
didn’t rank media or meetings highly, although many of them called for more direct
collaboration (see 5.3.2).
50
5.2.2 Communication tools
(The questionnaire was initially designed for practitioners; therefore only practitioners’
answers to this question were analysed)
One of the other main objectives was to understand if and how practitioners share
information. Nearly all of them stated having to report within and outside their institution,
which shows there is a habit of sharing information. Outside, the results indicate
practitioners mainly communicate online via the website of their institution, personal
emails, newsletters, and via hard-copy reports for non-online media. It confirms what
Fazey (2005) and Kirsop and Chan (2005) hypothesized: there is a lot of information coming
from practice but in a form difficult for researchers to find –whatever their country of
origin. It is the” lost science” referred to by Gibbs (1995). It partly explains the lack of a
feedback loop from practice to research.
5.2.3 Communication targets
Practitioners stated that they mainly communicate with local people, which may seem odd
given their privileged communication tools (Website and newsletter of their institution,
personal emails and hard-copy reports). The Internet penetration is generally considered to
be low in developing countries (Wallsten, 2005) - although such countries are not a
homogenous group (WorldBank, 2012). Therefore it seems there is a mismatch between
who they say they communicate with and the reality. A case by case study at the country
level could help capture the nuances relevant to each situation.
The two following groups that practitioners communicate the most regularly with are
national practitioners and national researchers, then donors and national policy-makers.
The group least communicated with are foreign policy-makers. It may be an interesting
representation of practitioners’ sphere of influence for the implementation of conservation
actions. Campbell (2007) suggested that researchers who identified habitat loss as a major
threat were less likely to see their recommendations implemented than researchers who
identified other threats as the main threats. In 2012, Lenzen et al. explained how
international trade is the main driver of habitat loss in developing countries. It could
therefore mean that practitioners don’t have the capacity to address this type of threat, or
51
that they don’t need peer-reviewed literature to understand that habitat loss is harmful to
biodiversity (Possingham, 2009).
Non-university researchers and university researchers communicate the most frequently
with other researchers from their own country. The least communicated with are national
and foreign policy-makers, confirming previous findings in the literature (Shanley and
Lopez, 2009). Interestingly, non-university researchers seem to communicate more evenly
across the different targets, which may be a good illustration of the diversity of their work
environments. Indeed, eight of them work in government agencies, 11 in NGOs and three
in research institutes. Therefore their work may require them to be in touch with more
varied categories of stakeholders.
5.3 Improvement of information
5.3.1 Criteria to choose information
Two main criteria would make research more interesting for practitioners: easier access
and more relevance. This is illustrated by the fact overall, they use more open-access than
subscription-based journals, and generally more “free” information than university
researchers (Tables 4.1 & 4.2). It is also illustrated by the fact 70% of the practitioners who
use peer-reviewed literature don’t take into account the impact factor to choose articles.
The main reason is that they mainly look for information relevant to their needs, and the
impact factor is not considered as an appropriate measure of an article interest. The
second reason is because high impact factor journals tend to be disconnected from
practice: therefore ironically, a high impact factor may be a reason to not choose an article.
69% of non-university researchers who use peer-reviewed literature and 68% of university
researchers don’t use it either for the same reasons. These results confirm the general
disregard for the impact factor expressed in scientific literature (Morin, 2003; Lawrence,
2006), and the need for a new measure integrating the impact of research outside of
academia, on conservation projects (Shanley and Lopez, 2009).
52
5.3.2 How to bridge the gap?
From the information gathered in the background and the results of the survey, 2
frameworks have been developed. The first one (Fig 5.1) represents the current situation
and the second one (Fig 5.2) represents how the potential solutions would be integrated in
the system to reduce the gap.
Solutions suggested by practitioners aim to increase the availability of scientific
information via free access and direct collaboration. It may mean practitioners don’t seem
to think having more local journals would help: they are still trying to access and use the
dominant English language peer-reviewed literature.
However surprisingly, the barriers to access presented in the peer-reviewed literature
(Sunderland, 2009; Coloma & Harris 2005; de la Rosa; 2000) don’t seem to matter as much
as has been assumed previously. To the question “what would make scientific literature
more useful for you?”, 61% of them answered creating a website allowing them to
participate in research design. They didn’t suggest the translation of the articles nor their
simplification into more “implementable” information.
In other words, online or direct collaboration before and during the realization of research
is called for by practitioners (see Fig. 5.2). This seems to be key, as it would increase not
only the availability of the research but also its relevance and therefore probably its
implementability. Developing country researchers chose the same answer, perhaps
because they aren’t as “in control” of the research agenda as they would like to be, given
that it tends to be designed by foreigners (Smith et al 2009). Therefore a website or other
forum to encourage participation in research design could help communication between
researchers and practitioners (see Fig. 5.2).
53
Fig 5.1 The research-implementation gap – current situation
Fig 5.2. The research-implementation gap: proposed solutions to improve the situation.
The websites to upload reports and collaborate on research priorities could be developed on a geographic
basis to overcome language barriers and focus on local issues.
Lack of uptake
54
Practitioners questioned in this survey have already taken part in research to some extent,
and the majority wishes to repeat that experience. Thus it is now time for researchers to
learn science from practice as suggests Opdam (2001). It is time to co-design conservation
projects with practitioners, and maybe conjointly write the resulting papers to feed back to
academia. Many articles and initiatives have focused on bringing the “best science” to
practitioners (see 2.3), and practitioners appear to want improved access to scientific
knowledge. Maybe the “best science” for practitioners would simply be research
developed with them and for them, and therefore including their needs and the
specificities of their local context.
As highlighted in 4.3.3, practitioners share information via media that researchers don’t
consider useful to access valid and interesting scientific information. Therefore a
communication tool which might be missing –though it may exist but remain unknown
from English-led conservation - is a website for practitioners to share their experience
directly with researchers (see Fig 5.2). The initiative of the Journal of Applied Ecology
“Practitioners’ Perspective” is a first step but it needs to be developed, and quickly. It could
be interesting as well to develop it on a geographical basis to reduce language barriers,
make case studies more specific to local issues, and especially make the presentation of
information less complicated and demanding than that of peer-reviewed journals.
5.4 Limits to the methods and survey
As already underlined in 3.13, the sample was limited to those with Internet access, English
skills and an awareness of the subject. A few researchers declined to forward the survey as
the practitioners they work with don’t have those characteristics. It clearly outlined the
limits of the sample, but also of the research-implementation gap impact in conservation
science; it is an issue which can only be understood by the “elite” scientists (personal
communication), therefore which may not be relevant to some practitioners. If further
research is done, it would be of value, therefore, to carry out in-depth surveys in a few
countries to examine the importance of local issues and balance them with the impact of
the research-implementation gap.
This survey has provided understanding of what this sample - which corresponds to the
elite of certain countries (personal communication) - thinks of the subject. Yet given the
55
allotted time and the difficulties of making contact with researchers and practitioners in
developing countries, it was not possible to devise a more targeted and efficient method.
5.5 Mind the gap… and the rest
Do we really need to know the exact genetic relationships of that small plant on the top of the
mountain, or should we just inform everyone that the ski resort will almost certainly destroy a
unique population?
Possingham, 2009
Ironically, there is still little proof that better scientific evidence would improve
conservation outcomes (Lach et al 2003), yet conservation researchers regularly express
their guilt for not achieving enough (Possingham 2009). The barriers to science uptake have
been described (see 2.2) but even without them, would conservation be more efficient?
The low success rate of conservation projects may not be as closely linked to the research-
implementation gap as much as conservationists presume. However practitioners and
researchers from developing countries do express their needs for more access to science
and for more communication between the different professional categories. In that sense,
direct collaboration before, during and after research is a key part of the solution to make
researchers step aside from academia and more into action, which is what conservation
truly needs.
56
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APPENDIX 1 – THE QUESTIONNAIRE
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APPENDIX 2 – Categorization of peer-reviewed journals
Conservation journals (n=8) Journals whose main focus is conservation research to advance the research and practice of
conservation
Biological Conservation Biodiversity and Conservation Conservation Biology Oryx Animal Conservation Primates Conservation Conservation Letters Bird Conservation International
Biology/ecology/zoology journals (n=10)
Journals whose main focus is bringing new understanding to the ecology, biology, evolution of species. This information may be used for conservation purposes but it isn’t the initial goal of the
journals
Journal Wildlife Disease Journal Of Zoology Landscape Ecology Ecology Biodiversitas Animal Behaviour Journal Of Ecology International Journal Of Current Life Science Canadian Journal Of Zoology Trend in Ecology and Evolution
Journals with a focus on specific areas /ecosystem/ species (n=32)
Journals whose main focus is bringing new understanding to specific areas /ecosystem/ species. This information may be used for conservation purposes but it isn’t the initial goal of the journals
Zoology In The Middle East Journal Of Mammalogy Journal Of Bombay Natural History Indian Birds Indian Forester African Journal Of Ecology Marine Biology Biologia Tropical Journal Of Mammalogy Acta Chiroptelogica Ecología En Bolivia Marine Mammal Science Ecologia Neotropical Mammalia Neotropical Mammalogy Journal Of Tropical Ecology Journal Of Primatology American Journal Of Primatologist Malagasy Nature Forktail Journal Of Avian Biology Ornitologia Neotropical Coral Reefs Forest Ecology Neotropical Primates Revista Mexicana De Biodiversidad East African Wildlife Journal International Journal Of Primatology American Journal Of Primatology African Journal Of Marine Sciences Journal Of Arid Environments Revista Chilena De Historia Natural
Journals with a focus on management (n=6)
Journals whose main focus is the implementation of scientific information to raise awareness and manage sustainably natural resources.
Journal Of Wildlife Management The Journal Of Environmental Education Environmental Education Research Forest Ecology And Management Environmental Monitoring Fisheries Research
Generalist scientific journals (n=4)
Journals whose main focus is the implementation of scientific information to raise awareness and manage sustainably natural resources.
Journal Of Wildlife Management The Journal Of Environmental Education Environmental Education Research Forest Ecology And Management Environmental Monitoring Fisheries Research
Other: Environmental Health Perspective