Blog

EcoEvoRxiv is expanding beyond English-language manuscripts

By Dan Noble and Tim Parker
English editing by Rachael Blake
Translations by Elvira D’Bastiani (Portuguese) and Pablo Recio-Santiago (Spanish)

English

Researchers around the world use scientific publications to share the knowledge and insights about global biodiversity, ecology, and evolutionary biology gained from their research. Unfortunately, many scientists face obstacles to sharing the knowledge that they generate because they can’t write scientific papers in English. There is now a growing body of research in non-English speaking countries which provide important data on global biodiversity that is relevant for conservation and management practices (Chowdhury et al. 2022). Such data is also essential for filling major research gaps globally that can be critical for evidence synthesis (Amano et al. 2023; White et al. 2022; Zenni et al. 2023).

Continue reading

SORTEE two-year anniversary: our members’ voices

Between June and September 2021, we started the #SORTEEvoices blog series by asking inaugural members to choose a few questions to answer from a list of 30 options (15 questions about open science, reproducibility, and transparency; 15 miscellaneous questions)¹. Responses from sixty-four inaugural members were posted on our blog every week until October 2022. To celebrate SORTEE’s 2-year anniversary in December 2022, we’d like to look back and summarise our members’ voices.

Continue reading

SORTEE member voices – Alfredo Sánchez-Tójar

[SORTEE member voices is a weekly Q&A with a different SORTEE member]
   

Name: Alfredo Sánchez-Tójar.

Date: 06 September 2021.
 

Position: Principal Investigator.
 

Research and/or work interests: I’m an evolutionary ecologist with a soft spot for birds and a great interest in evidence synthesis, meta-research and open science.
   

How did you become interested in open research?
I became interested in open research during my PhD and mostly as the result of multiple failed replication attempts of a textbook example in behavioural ecology, the badge of status or signalling status hypothesis in house sparrows. During my PhD I was also surrounded by a few persistent colleagues that would not stop talking about low reproducibility, low replicability, reduced data and code openness, etc… so it was relatively straightforward for me to become more and more interested in these topics, and to feel more and more the need for changes in the way we do science.    

Continue reading

SORTEE member voices – Owen Petchey

[SORTEE member voices is a weekly Q&A with a different SORTEE member]
   

Name: Owen Petchey.
 

Date: 19 July 2021.
 

Research and/or work interests: Ecological responses to environmental change.
   

How did you become interested in open research?
Some years ago I was particularly interested in a published research report that included the data. I wanted to know more about how the quantitative analyses were done. So I downloaded the data, and set about reproducing the analyses. From that grew further interest, and then a class during which I and the participants worked on several similar reproductions. We learned a lot about how to prepare research reports and data so that they could be readily reproduced (and what not to do!). Some of the reports are published here: http://opetchey.github.io/RREEBES/    

Continue reading

SORTEE member voices – David Wilkinson

[SORTEE member voices is a weekly Q&A with a different SORTEE member]
   

Name: David Wilkinson.
 

Date: 18 July 2021.
 

Position: Postdoctoral Research Fellow.
 

Research and/or work interests: Joint species distribution modelling; occupancy modelling; computational reproducibility; version control; code/data sharing practices.
   

How did you become interested in open research?
It wasn’t really the “open research” concept directly that first interested me, but as a primarily methods-based quantitative ecologist it was code and data sharing that made my PhD research possible, and from there I got into other practices.    

Continue reading

SORTEE member voices – William Gearty

[SORTEE member voices is a weekly Q&A with a different SORTEE member]
   

Name: William Gearty.
 

Date: 13 July 2021.
 

Position: Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
 

Research and/or work interests: The degree to which species diversify taxonomically and functionally varies dramatically across time, space, and the tree of life. This ultimately has resulted in the vast diversity and disparity that we see on Earth today. Numerous physiological, ecological, and environmental conditions have been implicated as the causes for this variation. I integrate tools and theory from paleontology, geology, ecology, and physiology to study how these components collectively drive and constrain diversity and disparity across time, space, and life. Beyond understanding how and why life diversified the way it did in the past, my research provides insights into how modern anthropogenic environmental shifts may ultimately influence the ecology and evolution of today’s biosphere.
   

Continue reading