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campusreview.com.au
‘Greatest hits’
research papers
spark debate
Flinders professor releases controversial list
of most important ecology papers.
By Kirstie Chlopicki
A
list of 100 must-read scientific papers for ecologists is
causing a stir in scientific circles, and it can all be traced
back to Flinders University.
Published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, the paper
was co-authored by Matthew Flinders fellow in global ecology
Professor Corey Bradshaw.
Bradshaw designed the paper to specifically answer a broad
question: With more than 1.5 million new articles published each
year across all scientific disciples, how can the really important
ones be clearly identified?
“People need to be led, especially young graduates who aren’t
familiar with papers that are already considered classics and haven’t
digested their relevant information,” Bradshaw said.
“This shows through in a lot of unnecessary research effort, with
young graduates trying to re-do or re-design what has already been
done. We need to get younger researchers up to speed with all the
very best scientific literature.”
The article has been met with more than 1000 tweets raising
the possibility of other disciplines creating their own essential
article lists.
“It seems to have had an effect – and every scientific discipline
should do this,” Bradshaw said. “It has been embraced as a very
popular idea.”
Bradshaw had the idea when he spent a six-month sabbatical in
2015 with Dr Fra nck Courchamp of the University of Paris-Sud and
the CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research).
The pair discussed the need for a list to be used as an aid for
students, and two-and-a-half years later 544 papers had been
ranked for the project.
The authors studied the relationships between rank and other
aspects such as journal impact, citation rates and article age.
Bradshaw said he found it interesting that more highly ranked
papers tended to be older, and that not all of the most cited papers
were published only in top-tier science journals.
“I’d say about 80 per cent of the reaction was positive, but a few
people went straight to the list and freaked out without bothering
to read its purpose or how it was compiled,” he said.
“People should be reminded that this ‘greatest hits’ package of
papers stretches back to Charles Darwin’s article on the tendency of
species to form varieties, published in 1858 [ranked no. 1] – and that
there were few papers published by women before the 1970s.
“It has generated a lot of hot conversation among ecologists
around the world, which is great because it provides a sample of
articles that we should all read – or even re-read.”
Bradshaw and Courchamp have analysed the issue of gender
bias in published ecology articles in another paper being reviewed
by the same journal. ■
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