Biodiversity researchers need confidence, writing skills

African biodiversity conservation and ecology researchers in Sub-Saharan Africa are under-represented in high-impact factor journals, although a third of primary authors in those fields are based in institutions in the region, according to a study published in the October issue of Conservation Science and Practice, a journal of the Society for Conservation Biology in Washington, DC.

Marie Fidele Tuyisenge, a botanical researcher, and her research partners at the Ellen DeGeneres Campus of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund in Rwanda found that African authors were inadequately represented in large and multi-country studies.

“African researchers accounted for only 6% of primary authors in major biodiversity conservation and ecology journals, while 66% of those publications contained no African author,” according to the study.

Efforts to inform the African researchers’ footprint in biodiversity conservation literature were made through a bibliometric examination of 10 conservation journals available on the Clarivate Analytics Web of Science platform, the leading scientific global information service provider.

These included three Africa-based journals, namely the African Journal of Ecology, African Journal of Wildlife Research and Koedoe, and seven international conservation periodicals: Oryx – The International Journal of Conservation, Biodiversity and Conservation, Conservation and Society, the Journal of Wildlife Management, Biological Conservation, Conservation Letters and Conservation Biology.

The researchers retrieved 1,176 studies published between 2015 and 2021, completely or partially set in any country in Sub-Saharan Africa, and noted that 359 articles (31%) had no African authors.

Authorship equity stagnant

Comparing their findings with those of a similar study by Christy Pototsky and Will Cresswell, wildlife researchers at the Centre of Biological Diversity at the University of St Andrews in the United Kingdom, Tuyisenge and her associates found that, although African conservation research output is slowly increasing, the trend does not include authorship equity.

In this regard, the researchers identified inequalities in the way scientific articles are accepted by journals and even how they are shared with the scientific community. “For example, publications originating from Sub-Saharan Africa face lower acceptance rates and tend to be frequently published in lower-impact journals,” they found.

There was substantial variation in African authorship across countries, as 17 countries had no local primary authorship although studies were conducted in 13 of those countries. This correlates with Pototsky’s and Cresswell’s findings in the 2021 article, ‘Conservation research output in Sub-Saharan Africa is increasing, but only in a few countries’, that established a serious mismatch of biodiversity conservation research output in African countries.

Low-impact factor disheartening

The slight increase in African authorship in the selected biodiversity conservation journals, according to Tuyisenge and associates, is dimmed by a low-impact factor, an indicator that measures the frequency in which an article in a journal has been cited in a particular period. The modest increase of authorship of biodiversity conservation in Sub-Saharan Africa is also highly skewed in favour of South Africa whose researchers accounted for 82% of all articles led by an African first author.

In their bibliometric analysis, Pototsky and Cresswell identified Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Nigeria, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Cameroon (in that order) as other countries in the region that have a significant number of first authors in biodiversity research.

Still, Pototsky’s and Cresswell’s list of the top 15 most productive universities in biodiversity conservation research in the region is dominated by South African universities, headed by the University of Pretoria, Stellenbosch University and the University of Cape Town. The only universities on the list that are not in South Africa are Benin’s University of Abomey-Calavi, Makerere University in Uganda, Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania, and the University of Ghana.

Subsequently, the low representation of African researchers was attributed to the high rejection of articles from African authors, as well as influenced by the fear of rejection which generally keeps African authors from submitting articles to high-impact factor journals. The researchers argue that the underrepresentation of African authors in multi-country studies may be linked to hesitancy in recognising and valuing their contributions.

Career prospects in jeopardy

In this context, the researchers are worried that limited African representation in conservation science may not just hinder efforts to generate more robust conservation solutions but might push African researchers into the periphery of biodiversity conservation research. Subsequently, a lack of scientific visibility may limit those researchers’ potential as leading experts in the fields, eventually hindering their career progression and funding opportunities.

The study notes that, in addition to increasing unequal partnerships, a declining number of high-profile African researchers in biodiversity and ecology was perpetuating parachute science in the region, whereby researchers from developed countries collect data without engaging or acknowledging the contribution of local researchers.

In the past, academics attributed the lack of African researchers as first authors of scientific articles in conservation science to brain drain, ineffective higher education systems, language barriers, and the fact that science was not an immediate socio-economic priority. However, Tuyisenge and her associates think new barriers are emerging. They identified low skills in academic writing, lack of self-confidence and self-efficacy, and financial limitations as challenges.

The study also faulted most African academic researchers for focusing on the quantity of research output rather than the quality or diversity of articles. Above all, they noted that, in many research institutions in Africa outside the universities, African scientists are not in positions that carry analytical and publishing responsibilities.

“Instead, local staff are often relegated to data collection or collation, or employed in administrative, logistic, or managerial positions,” the authors say.

English writing skills need work

To improve scientific writing in Sub-Saharan Africa, more Africans should be appointed to positions with analytical responsibilities. Considering that most biodiversity conservation journals are published in English, the authors note that African researchers in that field should increase their English writing skills.

They propose stimulating the self-esteem of African conservation scientists as one way of increasing their propensity to lead research publications production. Other suggested solutions include mentorship of young African researchers beyond data collection.

Tuyisenge’s team also highlights the need for international scientific journals to invite under-represented scientists in developing countries as editors, authors and collaborators.