I was just re-reading the paper of Joern Fischer and his colleagues about academia`s obsession with quantity, more papers, more grants and more everything. Here, I focus on one potential aspect of this issue. I am aware that here and there I may look crazy, and exaggerate, but the intention is to offer a short blog and maybe one short second of reflection.

Cover of the Rene Guenon`s book: ‘The Reign of Quantity and Signs of the Times’ (source: internet). Recommended for further reflections about quantity-quality issues in broader perspective.

I wonder to what extent this obsession is rooted in and induced by our new (researcher) population demographics. Yearly, thousands of ‘scientists’ may be produced in just one field of biology, in just one continent. Each being extremely enthusiastic, clever, inventive and willing to do great things in research and life. The sad news is that each of them will not end up being a successful ecologist. And this is not because they don`t deserve it. No, there is nothing personal. It is even worse: we may be (and I am sorry for being so direct) too many. The researcher population is growing, resources are scarce, and it is already stressed by its own demography.

We all feel the symptoms of this, let me enumerate just few: the review system is increasingly random (excellent papers being rejected without review while other papers go under review). This randomness makes difficult to publish even good stuff. There are new journals available every week almost (each aiming to be revolutionary), and new journal initiatives, as a response to the growing population of … manuscripts. Permanent jobs are rare resources today in this field (postdocs positions increasing?). I even feel that ‘transdisciplinary science’ may flourish, to an unknown degree, as a result of the above mentioned population demographics: being transdisciplinary allows scientist to pass the border of the ‘science habitat’ and establish outside academia.

One can feel that such an environment is full with pain and frustration. The strong natural selection processes acting on each member of this growing and crowding researcher population. In any other animal species, e.g. rats, such a crowding certainly would select for behaviours and morphs which are not ‘normal’. We know this from Darwin and subsequent works. Below some abnormal behaviours in science (there may be other, more proper examples too) selected in and by the overcrowded researcher population: The ‘obsession with quantity’, described by Joern and his colleagues. The goal of science changes in an overcrowded scientist population: generating valuable knowledge may not be the main objective, but papers which cease being a means (through which knowledge is communicated) and become the goal. In this way, papers are displays of alpha ranking and the most highly ranked members of the community are given more (re)production rights via grants, PhD students and permanent positions. The selection of PhD students (future researchers) is interesting too: image is valued, the created noise and the ability to sell (in other words, the ability of the candidate to capture what the alpha fe/male want from her/him and act accordingly in order to get the position). Being silent and humble is not valued – such people are generally not noticed (of course, noisy people can be humble and clever too…but the selection criteria is the noise and not always the humility and wisdom behind, and that is the problem).

If the scientific products of our days are the result of the struggle for life (in its Darwinian sense), induced and controlled by the demographic context (i.e. the result of an abnormal behaviour, induced by an abnormal situation, basically), how we can ever expect a society to take us (and our big explosions, i.e. papers) seriously?

After recently having two posts about a project in Papua New Guinea (PNG), people who want to know more about what research can be like in that pacific country might be interested in the recently published book “Notebooks from New Guinea”.

In short essays the Czech Entomologist Vojtech Novotny describes his experiences with local tribes, remote research stations, the spirits of the forests, driving a car when having a malaria attack and many other aspects of daily life but also deep reflections coming from ten years of field work there.

Not knowing PNG myself I can’t really judge how close it is to the reality. What I can say is that it was fun to read and offered some amazing perspectives not only about the people of PNG, but also about the Czech Republic, scientists, research and nature conservation in general.

I can only agree with the conclusion of Alan Steward in his recent TREE review on the book: “It will also generate a deep respect for the scientists who manage to carry out top-quality groundbreaking research in this most challenging environment”.

And if you ever planned to go to PNG, take Novotny’s advice: “The tropics are safer than you think. After all, most of humanity lives there more or less contentedly. So keep to the same level of caution, paranoia, and hypochondria as you are used to at home.” (Well, but don’t forget to take anti-malaria meds with you!)

Not much is known about chytrid fungus in eastern Europe, as shown in a recent paper by Olson and colleagues. The fungus has decimated many amphibian populations around the world. What’s its role in Romania?

Funding is getting harder and harder to find right? And, the future doesn’t look great, well, at least in Australia (http://www.nature.com/news/fears-grow-over-australian-science-funding-1.12934). But, before you get depressed and start contemplating another career there IS a way we can find funding to undertake important research. It doesn’t rely on governments or funding bodies, it relies on you, me, anyone! It’s called crowd funding. I’m sure this concept may not be new to everyone and it’s been written about elsewhere before (http://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/abstract/S0169-5347(12)00298-4), but I wanted to briefly reflect on my own experience of crowd funding (bearing in mind I’m only three days in of a 45 day campaign), having just begun my first project (www.pozible.com/tenkile) and what I believe are some of its benefits, acknowledging there are downsides too.

 “Tenkile or Scott’s tree kangaroo” (source: Tenkile Conservation Alliance)

Perhaps the biggest difference I’ve noticed already is the instant feedback you get about your ideas, and this is reflected both in a monetary sense (people funding you or not), but also by people’s comments. You know very early on how important the public thinks your work is, not just a small number of people on a grant review panel. There is no hiding, people either like what you’re doing or they don’t, but perhaps this is how a lot of science should be funded? The community decides what is of most value to them and how much support it deserves (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMj_P_6H69g) . The other terrific aspect of the process is that the public is with you from day one, so they are more invested (some financially, but many emotionally as well) in your research. This can only be a good thing for everyone in terms of communicating just what scientists do and why research is so important. I’ve already had a long list of people wanting to come and help us in Papua New Guinea. Perhaps this is not surprising though.

“Torricelli Mountains” (source: Tenkile Conservation Alliance)

Another major upside of undertaking a crowd-funding project is developing promotional videos and engaging with the media in all its forms. In my case, I was fortunate enough to work with a talented young filmmaker, Reuben Warren (http://framereactor.com/site/). It was a wonderful process that brought together the arts and sciences, and we ended up with a video that I believe captures the message and importantly emotion in our project (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmAhomk1tU0). If there’s one thing science needs a whole lot more of, it’s passion and emotion. In a world where scientific papers keep increasing (http://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/fulltext/S0169-5347(12)00125-5), in some cases exponentially, but the environment tracks in the opposite direction for the most part, such partnerships may help us to sell our messages better and connect with society.

The last benefit I’d like to mention is profile building. Since starting the project, I’ve been retweeted and shared countless times and importantly, encouraged by people from all over the world and from all walks of like. I’m very grateful for this support and recognize that this project has opened up new opportunities to me, well beyond just gaining the support we need for our project.

“The future of conservation” (source: Tenkile Conservation Alliance)

So in short, if you’ve been thinking about crowd funding for a while but aren’t sure it’s for you, like I had, give it go!

A colleague and collaborator of mine — Euan Ritchie — just launched his first crowd funding campaign, on rare mammals in Papua New Guinea. Knowing Euan personally, I trust whatever he manages to get started in PNG will be very good science, and firmly focused on being of real-world use. It’s for this reason that I’m happy to help distribute Euan’s call for funding.

Find out more in the video below and on his project website. More on crowd funding in general in this previous post.

Today I’d like to recommend a new manuscript in PNAS, available here.

Europe’s other debt crisis caused by the long legacy of future extinctions.

Dullinger S, Essl F, Rabitsch W, Erb KH, …, Kühn I, Pergl J, Pysek P, Hulme PE. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2013 Apr 15; PMID: 23589873 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1216303110

An interesting additional finding is that current expenditure on conservation further improves model fit; but does not fundamentally change the fact that current red lists are best explained by past socioeconomic conditions. 

It struck me that my previous post might possibly make me seem slightly clownish (I guess the balloon modelling did not help?). So here is a little bit of a scientific corrective:

It is now relatively well established that land-use diversity/habitat heterogeneity in agro-ecosystems plays a key role in the conservation of biodiversity, the maintenance of ecological functions and the provision of multiple ecosystem services. There is therefore a compelling argument that societies should encourage diverse agricultural landscapes. However, agricultural landscapes are generally not managed by societies. Farmers, have their own sets of priorities in the management of their land, primary amongst them is the need to maintain a viable and stable income. In a recent paper we explored the relations between agricultural land-use diversity and the level, volatility and resilience of farmed incomes over a period of 44 years in lowland agricultural landscapes in the UK.

Employing portfolio theory (from the finance literature) we found that there was a strong linear trade-off between the expected farmed income and the volatility of that income across landscapes. The stability and economic resilience of farmed incomes increased with increasing land-use diversity. From this we conclude that land-use diversity may have an important role in ensuring resilient agricultural incomes in the face of uncertain future market and environmental conditions, and that this economic resilience can be achieved while maintaining aggregate yield across landscapes. So what’s good for the goose (or assemblage of farmland bird species… see future post) may also be good for the gander (farmer).

The paper is open access and can be downloaded from here.

Who am I? A highly cynical, slightly grumpy and rapidly aging ersatz Yorkshire man (or Island Monkey as some Germans charmingly refer to the English… well mainly my German in-laws). Academically I guess I am a social-scientist/economist/landscape-ecologist/geographer (a less charitable description might be jack of all trades and master of none). After an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering and three years as a design engineer I decided to take a short holiday (six years) and see a bit of the world, from this experience I concluded that the world (rather than just Yorkshire) is rather nice and that I would quite like for it to remain nice in the future. So I went back to University did a Master’s degree in sustainable development and then a PhD in social-science/economics/landscape-ecology/geography. In my PhD I used the notion of landscape heterogeneity as integrating concept to link the ecological (farmland bird conservation) and socio-economic (stability and resilience of farmed incomes) functions of agricultural landscapes.

(Serious academic profile picture, balloon models on request)

I was convinced to move to Germany based on the promise of warm, sunny summers (a terrible lie if last year is anything to go by) and the high quality bread (no complaints there). Since May 2012 I have been a post doc at Leuphana university working for the FuturES Research Center on ecosystem services and generally sticking my oar/voicing my (often unasked for) opinion on various bits of the Fostering sustainable development in Eastern Europe project.

My research interests can be summed up as an interest in the integration of social and natural science conceptualisations/perspectives of sustainability in rural landscapes, with particular interests in systems thinking, the meaning and application of value theory to ecosystem services and spatially explicit modelling of socio-ecological systems, more about me can be found here.

Some of you may know of the Faculty of 1000. It’s a bunch of supposed “experts” who recommend papers that might be interesting to others in the field.

The Faculty of 1000 has recently launched its own research journal for the life sciences (i.e. including things like conservation biology but not including truly broad conceptions such as sustainability science) — it’s called F1000 Research. This journal is pretty different to most (all?) others out there at the moment.

When you submit your paper, it immediately goes online. All data that was part of the work (when reasonable/ethical/legal) needs to be provided, too. Next, after it’s already online people can review the papers and say they are basically sound or not sound. If something does not get any “basically sound” ratings, it gets taken off again. If it gets “basically sound” assessments, it is then possible to write in-depth reviews for the paper. The authors can then consider those reviews and write a new version of their manuscripts. So, that part is like normal peer-review in a way, apart from the fact it’s all completely open and transparent; including who reviews; and the whole world can witness the whole process.

From what I understand — and I’d be interested in comments on this — the initial “basically sound” assessment can only be made by members of the Faculty of 1000. But then detailed peer reviews (I think?) can be submitted by anyone. I am not sure though if I understood this part correctly, so if you can confirm this (or otherwise), please use the comments field below.

And the whole thing is open access, so anyone can read it.

In many ways this sounds kind of neat. What do you think? Is this the way forward? Should we be publishing there, even though there’s no impact factor yet, and few people know of this journal? Is it kind of like PLoS One, or is it way more radical and hence better or worse?

I am trying to make up my own mind about this new journal, and for that reason, I’d be really interested in what readers of this blog think. Thanks in advance for commenting!