Biases in the production of knowledge 871


FIG. 1 Number of publications in the primary search article sample by year. Note that we searched only up to May 2016. The dotted line is an exponential trend line.


total of 537 outlets or academic proceedings, across a wide range of disciplines. However, almost half of the publica- tions (602 of 1,430) were published in only 29 journals, which represent 61% of the total number of citations that the 1,430 articles accumulated over the study period (12,771 of 20,938). The top-10 journals in terms of number of articles published were (in order): Ecological Economics, Ecology & Society, Ecosystem Services, Land Use Policy, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), Ecological Indicators, PLOS ONE, BioScience, Global Environmental Change,and Landscape and Urban Planning. The top-10 journals in terms of accumulated citations were (in order): PNAS, Ecological Economics, Ecology & Society, Conservation Biology, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, Ecology Letters, World Development, Science, BioScience and the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B—Biological Sciences. The lead authors were un- evenly distributed geographically: 27% were based in North American institutions (Canada, 3%; USA, 24%), 38%in Europe, 7%in Australia, 14%inAsia, LatinAmerica,Middle East and North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa, 3%in inter- national institutions, and we could not find affiliation infor- mation for 11% of the authors (SupplementaryMaterial 1). Of the 401 authors with at least two publications and


$24 citations, 69% were men and 31% women, and 60% had a background in ecology and conservation biology, bio- logical sciences or physical sciences, followed by economics (14%; Table 2). There were few authors from the humanities. The gender imbalance was greater amongst those with an ecology, biological or physical sciences background and less so in those from the social sciences and humanities (Table 2). Approximately 80% of these 401 authors received their PhD from academic institutions in the EU, USA or Canada. The most common countries of PhD training were


TABLE 2 Gender and PhD discipline of the 401 authors with at least two publications and $24 citations.


Number of authors by gender


PhD discipline No PhD


Ecology & conservation biology


Biological sciences (other than ecology & conservation biology) Physical sciences Humanities


Social sciences Economics Engineering No data Total


Women Men 8


8


37 28


11 4


21 12 0 4


125


17 5


27 43 4


24


Total 16


78 115 70


98 28 48


9


55 4


28 276 401


the USA (126 authors) and the UK (79 authors; Table 3). There was a similar pattern regarding employment: 80% were based in the EU or North America, with 120 and 76 in the USA and UK, respectively. This mirrors the geographical distribution of the lead authors in the full sample of articles. Regardingmobility between PhDtraining and current employ- ment, 80 and 85%of the authors received their PhD in the EU or in NorthAmerica, respectively, and are currentlyworking in the same region; 58%of thosewhowork in Sub-SaharanAfrica, and 30% of those who work in Latin America, received their PhD in EU- or USA-based institutions (Table 3).


Collaboration patterns and institutional trajectories


The 401 nodes (i.e. authors) of the co-authorship network (Fig. 2) fell into 41 components. Overall the network was


Oryx, 2021, 55(6), 868–877 © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605320000940


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