GLOBAL SCIENTIFIC DISCOURSE ON FOREST SCIENCE

Examining characteristics of the global scientific discourse on forest science is the starting point of this analysis. The number of articles analyzed was: for forest fires 69, for biodiversity 92, and for climate change 65. When using these numbers it should be kept in mind that they represent the 25% most frequently cited articles for each issue. Thus, when referring from here on forward to the „published articles‟, the 25% most frequently cited articles of each journal are meant.

Table 4.1 shows the number of articles published for the whole time frame analyzed according to each of the journal sources. 92 articles were analyzed for biodiversity, which are mainly found in the journal Forest Ecology and Management (FEM). With 72 biodiversity articles published, this journal seems to focus, in comparison to the other issues, on this specific topic. Canadian Journal of Forest Research (CJFR) favored less, in relative terms, the topic of biodiversity than the other issues. Nine articles were published regarding this issue in contrast to 23 of forest fires and 27 of climate change. Forest Science (FS), Forestry (F), and Journal of Forestry (JF) all had similar publication tendencies in which few articles regarding the three issues were published. Taking into account this result, one must consider that these last three journals were in disadvantage when comparing them with the previous two in terms of citations received. Both CJFR and FEM are the journals that received over the 10 year time frame the most citations, thus they are the ones that determine in these cases the scientific discourse on forest science.

Table 4.1. Total number of scientific articles according to issues and selected journals (Source: own calculations)

Forest Fires Biodiversity Climate

Change TOTAL

Canadian Journal of Forest Research 23 9 27 59

Forest Ecology and Management 41 72 33 146

Forest Science 2 4 2 8

Forestry 0 6 2 8

Journal of Forestry 3 1 1 5

TOTAL 69 92 65 226

Figure 4.1 shows for each journal examined the percentages of each issue relative to all issues present in a specific journal; so for example, the issue forest fires in CJFR reaches 38,98% of all issues in that specific journal. Through the figure it is clear that biodiversity is the dominant topic in FEM (49,32% of all articles published in the journal), FS (50%), and F (75%). JF gave similar importance to both climate change and biodiversity. The only journal in which biodiversity was neither the dominant topic or second to first was in CJFR. Here biodiversity loses against climate change and forest fires, being climate change the dominant issue of the three (45,76% of all articles published in the journal).

The topic with least variation through all journals was climate change. Similar percentages are seen in four of the five journals (ranging from 20% to 25%); CJFR is the one journal in which climate change breaks this tendency. Forest fires, on the other hand, clearly dominates in JF, has similar tendency on both FS and FEM (25% and 28,08%

respectively), and is second in the CJFR.

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Figure 4.1. Percentage of articles for issues in each journal source (Source: own calculations)

Over the ten year time frame an increase in the number of articles that were published for each issue was observed. Figure 4.2 shows the distribution through time of the different topics and their 25% most frequently cited articles. All three topics began in 1994 with similar number of articles published. In absolute values, biodiversity is the issue which increased the most, going from two articles published in 1994 to 23 articles published in 2003. Forest fires went from three to 14 articles published and climate change from 3 to 10 articles published. This increase in the amount of published articles peaks for the first time in 1999 for both biodiversity and forest fires. Climate change, in the same year, decreases to the level of 1994 (namely three articles published). However, of the three issues it was the only one that increased its numbers in the following year; both biodiversity and forest fires decreased. Furthermore, biodiversity was the non-stop issue beginning in the year 2001 until 2003 with a steady increase. Both forest fires and climate change, even though increasing through time, had ups-and-downs in terms of total number of articles published in the same period. Climate change reached its highest peak in the year 2002 with 14 articles published, forest fires on the other hand peaked in the year 2003 (with 14 articles).

As forests and forest ecosystems have evermore become the source of discussion regarding their role in mitigating climate change through the sequestration of greenhouse gases –or as well as a source of emissions of greenhouse gases- the tendency presented in figure 4.2 might have changed.

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Figure 4.2. Scientific issues through time (Source: own construction)

It has already been mentioned that the contribution to the total amount of articles published by FS, F, and JF is low in comparison to the articles published in CJFR and FEM. In order to examine the distribution through time of each issue in both these particular journals, figure 4.3 can be observed. From this figure it is clear that CJFR has with time become more involved in publishing articles in all three topics. In 1994, this journal only published articles dealing with climate change. As time passed, it included in its repertoire biodiversity and forest fires articles, alternating the issues in the year 1995 and 1996; climate change however, was always present in their publishing strategy. FEM on the other hand, started the period analyzed publishing two issues in 1994 (forest fires and biodiversity). Climate change irrupted with great force in this journal in the following year, to afterwards become a stable participant in the issues being published. Comparing the two journals, FEM published a relatively balanced mixture of the three topics throughout the period examined, whereby CJFR had a great variability in its publication behavior. From the ten year, in three of them (1995, 1996, and 2002) dedication was given to only two subjects (climate change and an alternation between biodiversity and forest fires) and in one of them (1994) to only one subject (climate change).

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Figure 4.3. Distribution of articles published (in %) per issue, year, and source in CJFR and FEM (Source:

own construction)

The role of forests and thus the necessity for scientific information on the issues that concern them have been made apparent with the uprising of international process such as the Convention of Biodiversity (1992) and the Kyoto Protocol (1997). If these dates are taken as starting points for the development of new research it should be expected that within the following years, both these subjects increase in importance within the scientific discourse. For the time frame analyzed, and from figures 4.2 and 4.3, it seems that the research process and the publication of results regarding these issues is a slow one within forest science.

Up until the year 1999 biodiversity had similar publication growth rates as the other two subjects. In FME from this year on it accounted for at least 50% of all issues covered;

however in CJFR its importance was not reflected. For climate change, in this last journal, the importance of the issue was seen in the three first years of the period analyzed, but decreased in importance the following years (with the exception of 2002). It might be that the scientific discourse served as initiator for the political discourse; meaning that attention on the part of politics was paid to the discussions taking place in the scientific field. However, from the data gathered this cannot be ventured. For FEM it was always an issue of some importance. Therefore the impact of these international processes on forest science production cannot be clearly seen through the analysis of the articles and journals selected.

Another characteristic that is interesting to note, and which gives basis for discussions found further on, is the number of authors present in the articles published. Table 4.2 depicts the number of authors found in the 226 articles published for the three issues.

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With 272, biodiversity is once again the topic that scores the highest, climate change follows with 239 authors, and finally forest fires with 218. However, if consideration is given to the total number of articles for each issue (namely 92 for biodiversity, 65 for climate change, and 69 for forest fires) a new picture arises: the topic with most authors per article is climate change (3,68 authors per article) followed by forest fires (with 3,15 authors per article), and finally biodiversity with 2,96 authors per article. This result delivers first evidence of the presence of collaboration within forest science (discussed below) -at least regarding the number of authors per paper- as all topics are written in average by more than two authors. The median for all three issues was of three authors.

Table 4.2. Authors in scientific articles in global science sphere (Source: own calculations) Total number of

authors Maximum number of

authors Average authors per

article Median

Forest Fires 218 10 3,15 3

Biodiversity 272 8 2,96 3

Climate Change 239 9 3,68 3

TOTAL 729

The maximum number of authors found in one paper was ten; this number was found once in a forest fires article reviewing road paving, fire regime feedbacks and the future of the Amazonian forest where the authors find that decisions of Brazilian government policy regarding investing in new roads will lead to deforestation and forest impoverishment through illegal logging and understory fire (Nepstad et al., 2001). In climate change, one article had a total of nine authors. This specific article dealt with estimations of carbon emissions from Canadian forest fires, which is noted by the authors to impact carbon sequestration by forests as well as emitting green house gases that potentially affect the climate (Amiro et al., 2001). Both of these papers extended through a large geographical area (Canada and the Amazonia) and one regarded a large amount of disciplines (Amazonian paper), hence the need to count with a large amount of collaborative partners; therewith the large amount of authors can be explained. The biodiversity article that scored the maximum number of authors (eight) was a Portugal based article dealing with the effects of prescribed fire on the diversity of vegetation structure and breeding birds of northern Portugal (Moreira et al., 2003).

Figure 4.4 gives detail on the number of authors found in each of the three topics. For climate change the figure shows that only ten articles were written by one author and that the 55 articles remaining were co-authored (84,62% of all climate change articles). For forest fires only eight of the 69 total articles (11,59%) were written by one author and for biodiversity only 16 (representing 17,39%). The articles analyzed were thus in their majority co-authored articles. The knowledge produced and published was the result of a cooperative effort most frequently undertaken by two scientists. For forest fires 24 (34,78%) of all articles were written by two scientists, this same number of authors co-authored biodiversity articles (representing 26,1%), and 15 climate change articles (23,08%) were co-authored by two persons.

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Figure 4.4. Number of authors per articles (Source: own calculations)

If the affiliation country of the authors is observed an interesting picture arises when examining this variable for the different journals analyzed. The journal which had the widest variety of countries as affiliation country of authors was FEM. This journal reflected 31 different countries, ranging from the United States of America, to Brazil and Bolivia, to the Central Republic of Africa and Ethiopia, to Germany and the United Kingdom. The distribution of countries according to journal source can be seen in table 4.3.

The journals FS and JF reflect a true “home-based” publishing behavior. Both these journals are published by the Society of American Foresters (United States) and mainly publish articles of authors from this country (90% and 100% respectively), with the small exception of a few authors from another English speaking country, namely the United Kingdom (10% of all authors in Forest Science were from this later country). Forestry is an England-based journal edited by the Institute of Chartered Foresters of the UK (a similar organ as the Society of American Foresters) and as such reflects as well a “home-based”

publishing behavior, where 63,64% of its authors are affiliated to an organization within this country⁵⁰.

The CJFR includes a greater diversity of countries than the previous mentioned journals.

However, more than 86% of the total authors published were affiliated to either a Canadian institution or a United States based one (46,34% and 40,98% respectively); here not a “home-based” but a “neighbor-based” behavior is the norm. Mainly industrialized countries such as Finland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom amongst others complete the list.

FEM published as a majority authors from the United States (37,15%). English speaking countries take up second and fourth place: tied for second are United Kingdom and Australia, and fourth place is taken by Canada. This journal can then be characterized as

50 The affiliation country of the scientists participating in an article was derived from the correspondence address given in the article. Cases were found where more than one institutional (or affiliation) address was given, in those cases only the first address was considered. 32 countries made an appearance in all article.

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one which favors English speaking countries throughout the globe. This journal, in spite of the English-speaking-country bias, is as well characterized by the presence of authors from European countries such as Finland and Sweden (two mayor forestry countries);

Germany, Belgium, and France are as well considered. Brazil has also an important author presence with 24 authors (5,10%) being included in articles published by this journal. It is noteworthy that representatives from countries such as Argentina, Bolivia, Central Republic of Africa, Ethiopia, Panama, and Mexico –which are not industrialized countries-, amongst others, also find resonance in this journal making for the remaining 15,92% of all authors present.

Table 4.3. Affiliation country of authors according to journal source (Source: own calculations) Canadian

Journal for Forest Research

Forest Ecology

and Management Forest Science Forestry Journal of Forestry expected that scientists affiliated to forest science dominate as authors and that, because of the interdisciplinary character of two of the three issues (climate change and biodiversity) participation of other scientists is also found but on a lower scale. The question to answer now becomes whether the scientific discourse on forest science is dominated by forest scientists or can participation of other fields be found? To answer this question, author‟s field was classified according to the institution to which they were affiliated⁵¹, which serves as an approximation of the field of science that the author belongs to. A scientists affiliated to a forestry faculty was classified as belonging to forest science; on the contrary, a scientists affiliated to a biology faculty was classified as a natural scientists when dealing with life sciences and belonging to formal sciences when affiliated to institutions such as mathematic or statistics departments. Nature conservation was also a category as well as social sciences, where authors were classified if they belong to, for example, economic departments. Since there was the possibility that authors participating in the discourse were actors not associated with research institutions, the category others was used (actors were coded as other when they, for example, belong to

51 Authors affiliated to two or more institutions were coded based on the first of the institutions named in the contact address.

The names of the affiliation institutions reflected a wide variety of possible combinations between fields (ecology, biology, natural resources, and environmental management amongst others) which made difficult the classification of the authors into one field.

To solve this, in those cases that presented this the first field mention was taken to be the field of the author. However this was only the case in at most three articles. Then, they do not have an impact on the results presented.

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museums). Figure 4.5 summarizes for each topic analyzed the affiliation field of the authors.

Figure 4.5. Affiliation field of authors of scientific articles (Source: own calculations)

In the issue of climate change the majority of the authors writing in global forest peer-reviewed journals were affiliated to the natural sciences. 48,95% of the total authors were classified as natural scientists versus 45,61% of forest affiliated authors. Biodiversity is also a topic where, even though not as noticeable as in climate change, this is as well the case: natural science affiliation reaches 44,85% of all authors where as forest science 44,12%. Forest fires, on the other hand is the issue where forest science marks its presence; of the 218 authors participating in discourse 48,62% were affiliated to a forest science institution where as 43,12% to the natural sciences in general. This result speaks of the limited interdisciplinary of the two issues, in the sense that only specific areas of natural science are incorporated into the discourse and not many other scientific disciplinary fields. The issues of climate change and biodiversity are not issues that are solely domain of forest scientists but accept the participation of other fields such as biology and ecology.

There are articles that are only written by natural scientists throughout the three issues.

From the 33 articles that were written by only one author (figure 4.4), 20 of them (60,06%) were written by natural scientists and only 8 by forest scientists (24,24%). For each issue, the articles written by a single authors, five of forest fires (2,29%), seven of biodiversity (2,57%), and eight of climate change (3,34%) were written by authors affiliated to natural sciences. These articles reflect, for example in the forest fires issue, the use of software for modeling fire growth and behavior (Stephens, 1998) as well as literature reviews regarding the response of certain species to forest fires (Minshall, 2003).

For the biodiversity issue, single authored articles associated with natural science include articles on, for example, the validity and use of the indicator species concept to the future direction of biological conservation in managed forests (Lindenmayer, 1999) or the effects and management considerations of natural disturbances on boreal forests and the

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diversity of species found within them (Niemelä, 1999). For climate change, biomass energy in industrialized countries as a way to ameliorate CO2 emissions (Hallie, 1997) is one subject dealt with in singly authored articles; as well as estimating forest biomass through wood density in order to reduce uncertainties in emissions calculations (Fearnside, 1997). These are all subjects that can be the culmination of research undertaken by both natural as well as forest scientists, in other words it is not specific to any of these scientific fields.

The approximation through the affiliation institution gives some insight into the type of scientists working in the field, but it does not give exact information. Many scientists working in institutions with the name “Natural Resource Management” may both be natural or forest scientists. The fact that these institutions have names that are applicable to a wide field of sciences is a sign that they are not exclusively dealing with forest related issues and thus may extend their research field to different problems, not only forest-related ones.

There are other scientists incorporated into the global discourse on forest science, for example authors affiliated to statistical institutions as is the case of a forest fires article that deals with a statistical methodology for estimating historic forest fire frequency which has as first author a scientists from a department of mathematics and statistics (Reed et al., 1998). Social scientists are as well incorporated in the discourse on forest fire and climate change articles. In climate change the author affiliated to this science is incorporated in a ten author-written article set in the Brazilian Amazonia which examines the effects of governmental policy of road paving. However, the presence of these actors is minimal in comparison to presence of forest and natural scientists, which together

There are other scientists incorporated into the global discourse on forest science, for example authors affiliated to statistical institutions as is the case of a forest fires article that deals with a statistical methodology for estimating historic forest fire frequency which has as first author a scientists from a department of mathematics and statistics (Reed et al., 1998). Social scientists are as well incorporated in the discourse on forest fire and climate change articles. In climate change the author affiliated to this science is incorporated in a ten author-written article set in the Brazilian Amazonia which examines the effects of governmental policy of road paving. However, the presence of these actors is minimal in comparison to presence of forest and natural scientists, which together

Im Dokument Discourses and Distortions: Dimensions of Global and National Science Communication (Seite 77-85)