932 P. C. Pototsky andW. Cresswell


such research is positive in terms of overall capacity, the emigration it causes also results in a depletion of the human resource base that would otherwise encourage fur- ther national conservation research capacity development (Habel et al., 2014). To mitigate the negative effects of intellectual exports, institutions that fund scholarships for sub-Saharan African students in Western universities should also invest in conservation employment within Africa. Jimma University in Ethiopia, a country from which national primary authors published .600 papers in the 30 years of our sample, has implemented this (Habel et al., 2014). In our sample we located only one paper with an academic from Jimma University as a primary author, but as students progress in their academic career this seems likely to change. Considerable conservation exper- tise may exist within institutions but, because of a lack of tradition of publication and because many conservation students work in the field rather than as academics follow- ing graduation, this expertise is not visible in bibliometric analyses. For example, conservation practitioners working in non-governmental organizations can rarely prioritize the publication of reports in the scientific literature (Fuller et al., 2014). The current development of competency frameworks for professional development in protected areas could be used to encourage publication skills as a requirement for middle and higher-level positions (O’Connell et al., 2019). Donors and grant-makers should continue to support and encourage publication, so that the scientific literature can better serve to minimize the gap between researchers and practitioners.


Trends in primary authorship


Although the proportion of African primary authors to pri- mary authors from outside the region decreased over time, we found that this was the result of the high rate of increase in primary authorship in the USA, UK, and possibly South Africa, which was greater than the rate of increase in other sub-Saharan African countries. A previous study concluded that the contribution of authors from economically less de- veloped countries has declined over time (Mammides et al., 2016). All of the top countries for primary authorship that were not sub-Saharan African countries were more eco- nomically developed countries and situated predominantly inWestern Europe. South Africa, a country that has a strong research culture, may account for some regional collabor- ation (Yevide et al., 2016).


Conclusions


The rationale for conservation research is that it provides a scientific basis for conservation action (Milner-Gulland et al., 2010). Assuming the ability to generate peer-reviewed


conservation papers nationally has at least some influence on national conservation action, our results emphasize the need to address inequalities in terms of research capacity in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Although our findings suggest that conservation research capacity in this region has increased to some extent, considering the low baseline in 1987,we conclude that development of local con- servation research capacity, at least as indexed by the output of peer-reviewed research, has stalled across much, but not all, of sub-Saharan Africa. This suggests that the link be- tween science and practice is weak in many countries be- cause there is limited capacity to publish information re- lating to conservation, and probably also restricted oppor- tunity to do so. Given the diversity of social, economic and demographic contexts across sub-Saharan Africa, there is no one-size-fits-all approach for conservation research capaci- ty building, but economic development appears to have a major influence. But a paradigm shift is needed in the aca- demic conservation biology community to focus more on inclusive research capacity development (O’Connell et al., 2019) because conservation research capacity in sub-Saha- ran Africa outside South Africa is in need of major devel- opment.


Acknowledgements This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, or commercial or not-for-profit sectors.


Author contributions Study design, data collection: PCP; data analysis, writing: both authors.


Conflicts of interest None.


Ethical standards All data were collected from a public database of the published scientific literature and this work otherwise abided by the Oryx guidelines on ethical standards.


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Oryx, 2021, 55(6), 924–933 © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605320000046


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