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The continuing lack of ornithological research capacity in almost all of West Africa

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Creswell_2017_Continuing_lack_research_Ostrich_AAM.pdf (478.2Kb)
Date
2018
Author
Cresswell, Will
Keywords
Capacity building
Conservation capacity
Research capacity
GF Human ecology. Anthropogeography
QH301 Biology
Z665 Library Science. Information Science
NDAS
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Abstract
West Africa has high bird diversity and is a crucial non-breeding area for over one-third of European breeding species, yet local capacity for ornithological research and so targeted bird conservation is perceived to be limited. I reviewed all the published literature on Web of Science classified as “ornithology” with accompanying key word of a country’s name, over the last three decades, from the 16 countries within West Africa and compared them to 16 Western European countries. Inclusion of the country’s name as a search term identified any papers produced by local authors, and so should provide an index of local ornithological capacity. Overall only 129 papers were produced from 1987 – 2016 with West African authors (range 0 Burkina Faso to 45 Nigeria), significantly fewer compared to 12,380 with European authors (range 71 Greece to 2,745 England). The number of papers produced increased significantly at similar rates over the three decade period in both continents. The number of papers produced by local authors in West Africa and Europe approximately doubled each decade, but variation between countries was large, particularly in West Africa. The results are broadly the same when paper output is adjusted for the population of each country. Of the three West African countries that showed a consistent increase in numbers of locally authored ornithological papers only Nigeria showed a highly significant increase and this increase was down to a single ornithological research institute established there in 2002. The results confirm that there is little local ornithological capacity in West Africa and this is not changing except in Nigeria, where even a single new research institute can make a significant difference because of the very low baseline.
Citation
Cresswell , W 2018 , ' The continuing lack of ornithological research capacity in almost all of West Africa ' , Ostrich , vol. 89 , no. 2 , pp. 123-129 . https://doi.org/10.2989/00306525.2017.1388301
Publication
Ostrich
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.2989/00306525.2017.1388301
ISSN
0030-6525
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © NISC (Pty) Ltd. Ostrich is co-published by NISC (Pty) Ltd and Informa UK Limited (trading as Taylor & Francis Group). This work has been made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.2989/00306525.2017.1388301
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/16728

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