Brief description
This data set is a collection of Highly Important Papers in Ecology (HIPE). Three files are included: VoteArticles.final.csv : a comma-delimited text file with the vote assessments on the relative quality of the submitted papers (Top 10, Between 11-25, Between 26-100 or Not in the top "100") and an indication of how well each voter knew the paper (Read it, Know it or Don't know it) HIP.refs.txt : tab-delimited text file with all paper bibliographic information citation.csv : a comma-delimited text file with the citation data (Google Scholar, Web of Knowledge) for each paper and each journal (Impact Factor).Lineage
Survey-Vote: The list of must read papers faced two major challenges: how does one objectively define whether a published article is important, and how can we compare such articles objectively? The importance of scientific articles is difficult to assess and requires experience and knowledge; it is also a subjective definition by nature, and requires refraining from biasing choices towards one's own, necessarily restricted field of expertise, despite familiarity being a necessary precursor for selection. For these reasons, we decided to rely on the expertise of acknowledged experts in ecology and ask them directly, as a community, which scientific articles they deemed most important in the context described above. We thus contacted the editorial members of some of the most renowned journals in general ecology (avoiding journals that are either specialized or multidisciplinary). We contacted all the editorial members of the following journals: Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Ecology Letters, Ecology, Oikos, The American Naturalist, Ecology and Evolution and Ecography. We also contacted all the members of the Faculty of 1000 Ecology Section (f1000.com/prime/thefaculty/ecol). The common point of all these scientists is that they have normally been selected as editors for their wide knowledge of ecology and their ability to assess the novelty, importance, and potential disciplinary impact of submitted ecology research manuscripts.
Following this selection, we contacted 665 scientists by email to describe the project and to ask them first to send us the details of three to five peer-reviewed papers (or more if they wished). This selection was based on the criterion that these scientists deemed each postgraduate student in ecology regardless of their particular topic should read by the time they finish their dissertation, and that any ecologist should also probably read. We also specified that these could include any type of research paper, and that they need not be strictly ecological if still deemed essential to a general knowledge in ecology. Collectively, the editorial members (147 respondents of the 665 contacted) nominated 545 different articles to include in the primary list, or 3.71 articles on average suggested by each person who replied. Once we obtained the list of nominated articles, we asked these same 665 experts to vote on each of them to obtain a ranking provided collegially by this community. Because there were so many papers to assess and score, participants could not reasonably be requested to examine each and vote on a relative rank. This trade-off necessitated a resampling approach (see Analysis) to tally the relative rank of each article. Therefore, we provided each voter with a randomly generated sample of 20 papers from all the nominated papers in the original list.
We asked surveyed scientists to vote on the papers provided in at least one randomly generated sample of 20 papers, and preferably on five or more randomly generated samples of 20 papers. Participants could vote on as many papers as they wanted in each sample. In the randomly generated samples, each paper was presented with its full reference, an abstract (available by hovering the cursor over the entry), and a downloadable pdf of the full article. We requested that the voter first provide for each paper an importance score, assigning each to one of four categories: Top 10, Between 11-25, Between 26-100 or Not in the top "100". We also instructed respondents to provide information on how well they knew each paper: Read it, Know it or Don't know it. For each voter, we also asked her/his gender, country of education, and scientific experience (< 10 years, between 10 and 25 years, or > 25 years). We gave one (1) point for each selection of the Top 10 category, 2 points for the Between 11-25, 3 points for the Between 26-100, and four points for the Not in the top "100". We also classified each of the 545 papers into one of six types (review, case study, methodology, concept, career, or opinion), one of 17 fields (general ecology, biodiversity/distribution, community ecology, conservation biology, functional ecology, evolutionary ecology, population ecology, paleo-ecology, molecular ecology / microbiology / genetics, behavioral ecology, chemical ecology, ecophysiology, landscape / spatial ecology, or macroecology / bio-geography), and one of six approaches (lab experiment, field experiment, modelling, argumentation, data analysis, or observation). Of course, some papers could belong to several types, fields, or approaches, so we allowed repeat categories.
Notes
CreditWe at TERN acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians throughout Australia, New Zealand and all nations. We honour their profound connections to land, water, biodiversity and culture and pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.
Reading scientific articles is a valuable and major part of the activity of scientists. Yet, with the upsurge of currently available articles and the increased specialization of scientists, it becomes difficult to identify, let alone read, important papers covering topics not directly related to one's own specific field of research, or that are older than a few years. Our objective was to propose a list of seminal papers deemed to be of major importance in ecology, thus providing a general must read list for any new ecologist, regardless of particular topic or expertise. We generated a ranked list of 545 papers from 368 ecology experts (journal editorial members), covering six article types, six approaches, and 17 fields. Most recommended papers were not published in the highest-ranking journals, nor had they the highest number of mean annual citations. The articles proposed through the collective recommendation of several hundred experienced researchers probably do not represent an ultimate, invariant list, but they certainly contain many high-quality articles that are undoubtedly worth reading regardless of the specific field of interest in ecology to foster understanding, knowledge and inspiration of early-career scientists.
Created: 2016-11-30
Issued: 2017-02-03
Modified: 2024-05-23
Data time period: 2015-08-01 to 2016-11-30
text: Global. Literature related to ecology worldwide.
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Point-of-truth metadata URL- URI : geonetwork.tern.org.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/406df430-db6c-4795-8316-0c4f16e332fd
- global : 406df430-db6c-4795-8316-0c4f16e332fd
