13. Supplementary Material from Online Resources
© 2022 Book’s Contributors, CC BY-NC 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0321.13
This chapter provides links to sources of evidence, to material that aids teaching evidence use, and to tools for delivering change. It also lists 1,100 collaborators in the Conservation Evidence project that underpins much of this book.
13.1 Sources of Evidence
13.1.1 Catalogue of evidence sources in conservation
https://www.conservationevidence.com/content/page/127
13.1.2 Non-English evidence
The 53 members of the translatE (https://translatesciences.com/) project identified 365 relevant journals (https://www.conservationevidence.com/journalsearcher/nonenglish) in 16 languages (other than English) from 30 countries, screened 423,840 papers and identified 1,356 relevant papers (https://www.conservationevidence.com/data/nonenglishstudies) that describe tests of conservation actions.
13.1.3 Grey literature catalogue
The criteria for inclusion are that the reports must be online, must give details of the action and consequences and must be organised, for example, if the reports are numbered or ordered by the date completed. Report/grey literature series which have already been searched by Conservation Evidence can be found here, https://www.conservationevidence.com/journalsearcher/consrep, and individual reports that tested actions and met the inclusion criteria can be found here, https://www.conservationevidence.com/data/consrep.
13.2 Teaching Evidence Use
13.2.1 Evidence-use teaching materials
The Evidence in Conservation Teaching Initiative (Downey et al., 2021; https://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/applied-ecology-resources/about-aer/additional-resources/evidence-in-conservation-teaching) provides a range of open-access teaching material about evidence use, including lectures in nine different languages, with more underway.
13.2.2 Courses teaching evidence use
145 undergraduate, postgraduate or professional development courses teach evidence-based conservation (https://doi.org/10.1002/2688-8319.12032 — see supplementary material) — the courses are taught by a group of 117 educators from 23 countries (Downey et al., 2021).
13.3 Building the Evidence Base
13.3.1 Assessing impact
The PRISM tool (Practical Impact Assessment Methods Small and Medium-sized Conservation Projects, https://www.cambridgeconservation.org/resource/prism-evaluation-toolkit) provides users with guidance and methods for evaluating outcomes/impacts resulting from five different kinds of conservation action: Awareness and Attitudes, Capacity Development, Livelihoods and Governance, Policy, and Species and Habitat Management.
13.3.2 Material to aid publication of results
Oryx provides a library of recommended open access software for research, analysis and writing (https://www.oryxthejournal.org/authors/tools-and-resources/), the guide Writing for Conservation (https://www.oryxthejournal.org/writing-for-conservation-guide/) and suggestions for promoting the research conclusions (https://www.oryxthejournal.org/authors/promoting-your-research/). Lövei’s (2019) open access coursebook, Writing and Publishing Scientific Papers: A Primer for the Non-English Speaker)
Templates make it easier to write a journal publication. These are available for Conservation Evidence Journal (https://conservationevidencejournal.com/collection/journaldetails) and Oryx (https://www.oryxthejournal.org/authors/guidelines-for-authors/).
13.3.3 Tools for creating systematic maps and reviews
The Collaboration for Environmental Evidence has a set of tools for creating systematic maps and reviews (https://environmentalevidence.org).
13.3.4 Journals providing assistance to authors not writing in their first language
A number of academic journals have committed to tackling language barriers. Tatsuya Amano and Martin A. Nuñez created a list outlining which conservation journals provide assistance for authors not writing in their first language (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1n24A3O2EvuTk1WH5PHSHr6nWlvdCPuUaA6D6CADt6gs/edit#gid=0).
13.4 Delivering Change
13.4.1 Conservation organisations that have evidence roles
The best indication that evidence use has become mainstream will be organisations creating posts with responsibility for evidence use. Positions with evidence in the title have recently become much more common (some are listed here, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tV32besT3IinUBvqTDF_SxsgbhkgyVbPu1PajazuXhs/edit), which indicates how evidence-based practice is becoming mainstream.
13.4.2 Funders require use of evidence
Funders have identified ten different ways in which the evidence underpinning a project proposal can be established (https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cobi.13991). To aid grant applicants, a group co-created some key principles for including evidence in proposals (https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cobi.13991). As more funders adopt this principle we expect it to transform evidence use.
13.4.3 Journals with processes to place research in context
As described in Section 12.8, research papers often, problematically, did not place the results in the context of the existing literature (too much ‘standing on the toes of giants’, rather than on their shoulders). To help overcome this problem, 40 conservation‐focused journals (Sutherland et al., 2020; https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cobi.13555) established processes to ensure that authors outline how they have placed the literature in context.
13.4.4 Databases link to evidence of effective actions
As part of collaboration with other organisations, Conservation Evidence searches are embedded within species pages of other conservation data resources including the IUCN Red List website (https://www.iucnredlist.org/), the British Trust for Ornithology BirdFacts (https://www.bto.org/understanding-birds/birdfacts), the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (https://www.unep-aewa.org/en/species/conservation-evidence) and the National Biodiversity Network (https://species.nbnatlas.org/) so that the page describing each species links to any relevant evidence on actions for that species (e.g. skylark https://species.nbnatlas.org/species/NHMSYS0000530139#literature).
13.5 Collaborators
13.5.1 The 1,100 named contributors to the Conservation Evidence project
At least 1,100 named collaborators created the work of the Conservation Evidence project that underpins this book (https://conservationevidenceblog.wordpress.com/2022/02/14/the-conservation-evidence-project-a-truly-collaborative-and-international-effort).
References
Downey, H., Amano, T., Cadotte, M., et al. 2021. Training future generations to deliver evidence‐based conservation and ecosystem management. Ecological Solutions and Evidence 2: e12032, https://doi.org/10.1002/2688-8319.12032.
Lövei, G.L. 2019. Writing and Publishing Scientific Papers: A Primer for the Non-English Speaker (Cambridge: OpenBook Publishers), https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0235).
Sutherland, W.J., Alvarez-Castañeda, S.T., Amano, T., et al. 2020. Ensuring tests of conservation interventions build on existing literature. Conservation Biology 34: 781–83, https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.13555.
Sutherland, W.J., Dicks, L.V., Petrovan, S.O., et al. 2021. What Works in Conservation 2021 (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers), https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0267.
Tinsley-Marshall, P., Downey, H., Adum, G., et al. 2022. Funding and delivering the routine testing of management interventions to improve conservation effectiveness. Journal for Nature Conservation 67: 126184, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnc.2022.126184.