Collaboration between modellers and experimentalists is essential in ecological research, however, different obstacles linking both camps often hinder scientific progress. In this commentary, we discuss several issues of the current state of affairs in this research loop. Backed by an online survey amongst fellow ecologists, modellers and experimentalists alike, we identify two major areas that need to be mended. Firstly, differences in language and jargon lead to a lack of exchange of ideas and to unrealistic mutual expectations. And secondly, constraint data sharing, accessibility and quality limit the usage of empirical data and thereby the impact of ecological studies. We discuss ways to advance collaboration; how to improve communication and the design of experiments; and the sharing of data. We hope to start a much-needed conversation between modellers and experimentalists, to further future research collaboration and to increase the impact of single ecological studies alike.
Result of full bibliometric search for ecology articles
We searched ISI web of knowledge (Core collection) for all ecology (Topic: Ecology) related papers published in leading journals for the time period 1990-2010. This was done on the 18th October 2016. We narrowed the dataset further down by restricting it to the following journals: ECOLOGY, FUNCTIONAL ECOLOGY, MARINE ECOLOGY PROGRESS SERIES, JOURNAL OF ECOLOGY, HYDROBIOLOGIA , OECOLOGIA , OIKOS , ECOLOGICAL MODELLING , SCIENCE , BIOLOGICAL CONSERVATION , JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL MARINE BIOLOGY AND ECOLOGY , PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES , ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR , PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA , NATURE , MARINE BIOLOGY , ECOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS , LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY , AMERICAN NATURALIST, ECOLOGY LETTERS, and for the document type: Article and the ‘Web of science category’: Ecology. This yielded a total of 7415 articles.
ecologysearchPristineSearch.txt
Subsetted bibliometric search for ecology articles
This dataset is a subset of a bibliometric search (see data description of full dataset). We choose every 5th article and used the information in the abstract, keywords and the title to manually classify each of those articles into 3 categories: Modelling article (MO, SM, MOFI, PHY, FI) , experimental article and articles that combined an experimental (EX) and a modelling approach (MIX) . The individual classification is described for each entry in the field code GR. We pooled the different modeling types (statistical modeling, phylogenetic modeling, individual based modeling, etc) into one category for the bibliometric analysis.
PristineSearchSubset5thAnnotatedNEW.txt
List of highly cited ecologists
List of the top cited ecologists identified within the Clarivate analytics (formerly Thomson Reuters) list of “Highly cited researchers 2016 (http://hcr.stateofinnovation.thomsonreuters.com) in the category Environment/Ecology (n = 113) and sorted them into three groups: 1) researchers that only apply modelling approaches; 2) researchers that only apply experimental approaches in the laboratory or in the field; and 3) researchers that apply both modelling and experimental approaches. We further discriminated between researchers that collect their own observational data from non-manipulative descriptive studies (e.g. monitoring) and those that do not use observations or obtain them from other sources (e.g. databases). Information about research approaches was gathered by studying their publication lists and websites.
highly_cited_ecologists.xlsx
Responses to questionnaire
This datafile contains the answers to the questionnaire from all participants of the questionnaire. "Time" and "country" data was removed prior to submission. Free-form answers were altered when necessary to anonymize the data. The corresponding questionnaire can be found as a separate file in this submission.
Finalreponses20150615Dryad.xlsx
Questionnaire
This pdf contains all the questions from the questionnaire used to gather data about opinions of modelers and experimentalists about the collaboration between the two approaches.
Bibliometric analysis
This file is based on Rmarkdown and contains the steps of the bibliometric analyis of the bibliometric datafiles that are part of this submission.
Biblio3.html
Statistical analysis of questionnaire
This file is based on Rmarkdown and contains the statistical analysis and visualization code of the questionnaire answers.
Onthemissinglink_20170126Dryad.html
