TY - JOUR
T1 - Building a tool to overcome barriers in research-implementation spaces
T2 - The conservation evidence database
AU - Sutherland, William J.
AU - Taylor, Nigel G.
AU - MacFarlane, Douglas
AU - Amano, Tatsuya
AU - Christie, Alec P.
AU - Dicks, Lynn V.
AU - Lemasson, Anaëlle J.
AU - Littlewood, Nick A.
AU - Martin, Philip A.
AU - Ockendon, Nancy
AU - Petrovan, Silviu O.
AU - Robertson, Rebecca J.
AU - Rocha, Ricardo
AU - Shackelford, Gorm E.
AU - Smith, Rebecca K.
AU - Tyler, Elizabeth H.M.
AU - Wordley, Claire F.R.
PY - 2019/10
Y1 - 2019/10
N2 - Conservation practitioners, policy-makers and researchers work within shared spaces with many shared goals. Improving the flow of information between conservation researchers, practitioners and policy-makers could lead to dramatic gains in the effectiveness of conservation practice. However, several barriers can hinder this transfer including lack of time, inaccessibility of evidence, the real or perceived irrelevance of scientific research to practical questions, and the politically motivated spread of disinformation. Conservation Evidence works to overcome these barriers by providing a freely-available database of summarized scientific evidence for the effects of conservation interventions on biodiversity. The methods used to build this database – a combination of discipline-wide literature searching and subject-wide evidence synthesis – have been developed over the last 15 years to address the challenges of synthesizing large volumes of evidence of varying quality and measured outcomes. Here, we describe the methods to enhance understanding of the database and how it should be used. We discuss how the database can help to expand multi-directional information transfers between research, practice and policy, which should improve the implementation of evidence-based conservation and, ultimately, achieve better outcomes for biodiversity.
AB - Conservation practitioners, policy-makers and researchers work within shared spaces with many shared goals. Improving the flow of information between conservation researchers, practitioners and policy-makers could lead to dramatic gains in the effectiveness of conservation practice. However, several barriers can hinder this transfer including lack of time, inaccessibility of evidence, the real or perceived irrelevance of scientific research to practical questions, and the politically motivated spread of disinformation. Conservation Evidence works to overcome these barriers by providing a freely-available database of summarized scientific evidence for the effects of conservation interventions on biodiversity. The methods used to build this database – a combination of discipline-wide literature searching and subject-wide evidence synthesis – have been developed over the last 15 years to address the challenges of synthesizing large volumes of evidence of varying quality and measured outcomes. Here, we describe the methods to enhance understanding of the database and how it should be used. We discuss how the database can help to expand multi-directional information transfers between research, practice and policy, which should improve the implementation of evidence-based conservation and, ultimately, achieve better outcomes for biodiversity.
KW - Delphi technique
KW - Evidence-based conservation
KW - Evidence-based policy
KW - Evidence-based practice
KW - Research-implementation space
KW - Subject-wide evidence synthesis
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85070247922&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.biocon.2019.108199
DO - 10.1016/j.biocon.2019.108199
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85070247922
SN - 0006-3207
VL - 238
JO - Biological Conservation
JF - Biological Conservation
M1 - 108199
ER -