Biological Conservation 243 (2020) 108478 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Biological Conservation journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/biocon Insights from two decades of the Student Conference on Conservation T Science ⁎ Jonas Geldmanna,b, , Helena Alves-Pintoc,d,a, Tatsuya Amanoe,a,f, Harriet Bartletta,g, Alec P. Christiea, Lydia Collasa, Sophia C. Cookea, Roberto Correaa, Imogen Crippsa, Anya Dohertya, Tom Finchh, Emma E. Garnetta, Fangyuan Huai,a, Julia Patricia Gordon Jonesj, Tim Kasoara, Douglas MacFarlanea,k, Philip A. Martina,l, Nibedita Mukherjeea, Hannah S. Mumbya,m, Charlotte Paynea, Silviu O. Petrovana, Ricardo Rochaa,n, Kirsten Russella, Benno I. Simmonsa,o,p, Hannah S. Wauchopea, Thomas A. Worthingtona, Rosie Trevelyanq, Rhys Greena,h, Andrew Balmforda a Conservation Science Group, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Downing St., Cambridge CB2 3EJ, UK b Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, GLOBE Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark c Programa de Pós Graduação em Ecologia, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, CEP 21941-590 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil d Rio Conservation and Sustainability Science Centre, Department of Geography and the Environment, Pontifícia Universidade Católica, Rio de Janeiro 22453-900, Brazil e School of Biological Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane 4072, Queensland, Australia f Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of Cambridge, 16 Mill Lane, Cambridge CB2 1SB, UK g Department of Veterinary Medicine, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0ES, UK h RSPB Centre for Conservation Science, RSPB, The Lodge, Sandy SG19 2DL, United Kingdom i Institute of Ecology, Peking University, Haidian Road, Beijing 100871, China j College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Bangor University, LL57 2UW, UK k School of Psychological Science, University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Hwy, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia l BioRISC, St. Catharine's College, Cambridge CB2 1RL, UK m School of Biological Sciences, Kadoorie Biological Sciences Building, University of Hong Kong, Pok Fu Lam Road, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region n CIBIO-InBIO, Research Centre in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources, University of Porto, Vairão, Portugal o Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Western Bank, Sheffield S10 2TN, United Kingdom p Centre for Ecology and Conservation, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Penryn, UK q Tropical Biology Association, Cambridge, UK ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Keywords: Conservation science is a crisis-oriented discipline focused on reducing human impacts on nature. To explore Bias how the field has changed over the past two decades, we analyzed 3245 applications for oral presentations Capacity building submitted to the Student Conference on Conservation Science (SCCS) in Cambridge, UK. SCCS has been running Cross-disciplinarity every year since 2000, aims for global representation by providing bursaries to early-career conservationists Early career from lower-income countries, and has never had a thematic focus, beyond conservation in the broadest sense. Field study We found that the majority of projects submitted to SCCS were based on primary biological data collected from New conservation Student local scale field studies in the tropics, contrary to established literature which highlights gaps in tropicalre- search. Our results showed a small increase over time in submissions framed around how nature benefits people as well as a small increase in submissions integrating social science. Our findings suggest that students and early- career conservationists could provide pathways to increase availability of data from the tropics and address well- known biases in the published literature towards wealthier countries. We hope this research will motivate efforts to support student projects, ensuring data and results are published and data made publicly available. ⁎ Corresponding author at: Conservation Science Group, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Downing St., Cambridge CB2 3EJ, UK. E-mail address: [email protected] (J. Geldmann). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2020.108478 Received 23 October 2019; Received in revised form 7 February 2020; Accepted 14 February 2020 Available online 14 March 2020 0006-3207/ © 2020 Published by Elsevier Ltd. J. Geldmann, et al. Biological Conservation 243 (2020) 108478 1. Introduction had changed the framing around the value of nature to people or the integration of the social sciences. Conservation science focuses on understanding and reducing the negative impacts of human activities on nature, and has, from its in- 2. Material and methods ception, been framed as a “mission-oriented discipline” (Soulé, 1985). It has its origins in biology and, as a result, its initial emphasis was on We included 3487 submissions for oral presentations (i.e. poster describing and explaining the distribution of biodiversity as well as the submissions were excluded) at SCCS-Cambridge covering 15 individual ecological and evolutionary processes shaping the diversity of life under years spanning the 18 years between 2002 and 2019. These are the human pressure. However, over the last few decades it has become years for which we had access to all the original conference submis- increasingly clear that understanding biological processes alone is in- sions, not only accepted submissions, to ensure we captured the full sufficient in identifying robust solutions to reduce pressures on nature scale of work undertaken and to avoid any selection bias by the con- and the environment (Balmford and Cowling, 2006; Bennett et al., ference organizers. The years 2000, 2001, 2004, 2005, and 2006 were 2017; Kareiva and Marvier, 2012; Meine et al., 2006). This has led to excluded due to missing data. Ethics approval was obtained through the the integration of the social sciences, economics, and psychology to Human Biology Research Ethics Committee, School of Biological understand the role of people when addressing conservation problems Sciences, University of Cambridge (ref no.: PRE.2018.068). Conference (Mace, 2014; Martin et al., 2012b; Teel et al., 2018) and an interest in submissions were anonymized before being used to generate a database the motivations for conserving nature (Greenwald et al., 2013; Kareiva, of submissions containing: 1) Row ID, 2) Nationality, 3) Country of 2014; Kareiva and Marvier, 2012; Noss et al., 2013; Soule, 2013). residence, 4) Stage in career, 5) Talk title, and 6) Talk abstract. E-mails Even though primary data are the foundation for conservation sci- were sent to all applicants asking them to reply if they did not want to ence and management (Tewksbury et al., 2014; Wilson, 2017), the be included in the study. This led to the removal of seven submissions. proportion of published studies based on primary data collection has The data extraction protocol and guidelines outlining the informa- decreased over the past two decades, though they still represent 70% of tion extracted from each submission were developed prior to reviewing ecological studies (Ríos-Saldaña et al., 2018). In addition, the con- the submissions (Table S1). The protocol was pilot tested on a subset of servation literature continues to exhibit considerable geographical bias submissions (n = 20) by a sub-group of reviewers and subsequently towards wealthier, often English-speaking countries (Amano and revised based on these experiences. Two workshops were conducted Sutherland, 2013; Martin et al., 2012a) and certain taxonomic groups prior to the data extraction to explain and discuss the final protocol. In (Clark and May, 2002) and away from the tropics (Collen et al., 2008; total, 25 of the paper's authors participated in the data extraction based Mammides et al., 2016; Meijaard et al., 2015). These biases limit our on the information in the submissions database. The conference-sub- ability to assess what conservation actions work and where. missions were assigned randomly among all 25 reviewers, with each Analysis of trends in peer-reviewed articles can give an un- reviewer extracting data from approximately 140 abstracts. The year of representative picture of the work being done on the ground (Godet and submission was removed to avoid biasing the data extraction. Devictor, 2018). Understanding the extent to which the peer-reviewed literature is missing specific types of studies or research from certain 2.1. Data extraction parts of the world can help to highlight publications gaps and improve the uptake of data and experiences outside the Western dominated For each submission (title and abstract), the reviewers extracted academic environment. One possible pathway to address the evidence information on the applicant (nationality, country of residence, career gap and entrenched biases is to analyze conference submissions. Con- stage) as well as on 25 elements pertaining to the research carried out ferences are an important part of academic culture and student con- by the student. The abstracts for 2002 and 2003 consisted of a title and ferences especially provide early-career scientists with an opportunity an abstract with no formatting requirements. For subsequent years the to showcase and discuss their ideas, projects, and fieldwork at a stage abstract was divided into four parts: 1) What conservation problem or prior to publication. While not immune or without possible biases of question does your talk address?, 2) What were the