Data and code from: Public participation in tropical conservation and environmental management research: Towards a locally grounded and reflexive practice

This dataset supports an investigation into the publication records of public participation in tropical conservation and environmental management research. It includes information from 453 relevant papers published up through 2020 and identified via Web of Science core collection, processed by the co-authors, and analyzed using R. It also includes preliminary information on relevant papers identified by the same methods from the years 2021-2024. This additional information is meant to facilitate similar research focused on these years, which were quite different from those prior due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Data included in this dataset are associated with the paper titled, "Public participation in tropical conservation and environmental management research: Towards a locally grounded and reflexive practice" and accepted in Biotropica. They include: SupplementaryInfo_Data.csv : The dataset used for this study. ScriptFigs.R : The R script used to create Figures 1-3. SupplementaryInfo_2021-2024Data.csv : Incomplete dataset for search results from 2021-2024. Preliminary analysis on this dataset is included in Section F of the Supplementary Information document associated with Piland et al. This dataset can be the base for another bibliometric review as a comparison with this manuscript. Script_2021-2024Data.qmd : The R script used to sample the incomplete dataset for search results from 2021-2024 for the preliminary analysis. SupplementaryInfo_2021-2024Sample.csv : 25% sample of “SupplementaryInfo_2021-2024Data.csv. The dataset covers: ●      Authorship variables: number of authors, first author, institution of first author, the country of the first institution, whether a local institution was included in the author list, and whether the first author’s institution was a local institution to the research. ●      Publication variables: year published, the language the paper was published in, the journal that published the paper, whether the paper was a part of a special issue, and the type of paper it was. ●      Practice of participation variables: categories of people who participated, whether the participation was active or passive (if there was a structure of participation set up for the research, or whether it used data from an existing structure such as eBird), the stage of research at which people participated, whether there was any training mentioned in the paper, and whether social media or mobile applications were used to collect data. ●      Subject matter variables: whether the research was basic or applied science, what the research topic was, and the taxonomy studied, if applicable. For both the research topic and taxonomy variables, we further categorized them. ●      Geography variables: where the research took place in terms of country, political region, ecosystem, and biogeographic region, and whether or not the research took place in an urban area. ●      Funding variables: The first funding institution listed, where the institution is based (country), and the type of funding institution it is. Data was collected via: i) Search Our literature review focused on the peer-reviewed literature published in English and available in the Core Collection of the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI; Thomson Reuters) Web of Science database. Please see figure S1 for a schematic representation of the process described herein. The search included all the papers published online by August 12, 2020, containing the key terms: “Citizen science” OR “Public science” OR “Voluntary science” OR “Volunteer science” OR “Participatory Science” OR “Community science” OR “Community-based science” OR “Crowd-sourced science” OR “Participatory monitoring”  OR “Collaborative monitoring” OR “Community-based monitoring” OR “Voluntary biological monitoring” OR “Voluntary monitoring” OR “Participatory management”  OR “Collaborative management” OR “Collaborative-environmental management”  OR “Community-based management” OR “Public engagement in science” OR “Public participation in scientific research”. These terms were identified a priori in the literature to encompass the terminologies most frequently employed in the field (Conrad & Hilchey 2011; Shirk et al. 2012; Eitzel et al. 2017; Piland et al. 2020). After the initial search, we filtered the research categories: “ecology”, “biodiversity conservation”, “plant sciences'', “marine and freshwater biology”, “zoology”, and “fisheries”. A total of 1,986 articles were identified and processed. A second identical search was carried out on December 10, 2024, at the request of Biotropica editors. We limited the search to papers published between August 12, 2020, and December 10, 2024. This search resulted in 3,785 articles identified for processing. ii) Paper processing We manually identified the papers that did research in tropical and subtropical ecoregions of the globe (total of first search = 661, 33.3%; total of second search = 1,832, 48.4%). For terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, we included all the research conducted in the Neotropic, Afrotropic, Indomalaya, Australasia and Oceania biogeographic realms (sensu Olson & Dinerstein 2002). For marine ecosystems, we included research conducted in the Tropical Eastern Pacific, Tropical Atlantic, Western Indo-Pacific, Central Indo-Pacific, and Eastern Indo-Pacific marine ecoregions (sensu Spalding et al. 2007). Broad literature reviews, synthesis or insights that do not focus specifically on the tropics or subtropics were not included. The same applies to analytical tools like apps, models and software that are not designed specifically for a tropical or subtropical region, or do not explore a tropical or subtropical case study. During the processing, we also excluded the papers that just mention citizen science or community-based management as recommendations or as future goals, instead of being an actual contribution based on citizen science or community-based efforts already in place. We also excluded papers in which community members and/or participants were the subject of the research rather than participants in the research process, papers in which volunteers were incorporated on an ad hoc basis rather than as an intentional part of the research process, where participants were part of graduate level courses, and where participants were paid. This process left us with 414 papers from the first search (20.9% of search results, 62.6% of tropical papers) and 1,015 papers from the second search (26.8% of results, 55.4% of tropical papers). We furthered limited the second search results to those papers published through 2020 to limit the effect of potential influence from the COVID-19 pandemic and to adapt to our research team’s current capacity. This resulted in a dataset for the main publication that included 453 papers. The incompletely processed 2021-2024 dataset (958 papers) is described in Section F of the Supplementary Information document associated with this manuscript. While processing papers for the bibliometric analysis, we realized that some publications (15 total) report results for more than one research investigation, which can be quite different in scope, research topic/location, approach, and type of public participation. Therefore, we opted to focus our analysis on the “research activities” described in the 453 papers, which we define here as the independent research investigations reported in each paper. We refer by “independent” the investigations applying completely different research methods and involving a unique set of public participation, which generally also focused on distinct ecosystems, locations, and taxonomic groups. For instance, Liebenberg et al. (2017) report the use of handheld computers with the software CyberTracker from two independent case studies monitoring large mammals, one conducted in Australia and another one in South Africa. Similarly, Matose & Watts (2010) present three independent case studies about timber harvesting and community-based forest management in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and South Africa. These examples illustrate the existing papers reporting more than one research activity that were accounted as independent sampling units in our data compilation.   A total of 484 research activities emerged from the 453 research papers selected for further examination in the bibliometric analysis. Resulting research activities were assessed for variables relating to authorship, publication, terminology, practice of participation, subject matter, geography, and funding. We also took additional notes from papers regarding the strategies taken for outreach of participants, the benefits to participants and to science identified, type of data collected, and other comments of interest. As authorship, publication and funding variables refer to the papers rather than the independent research activities, they were replicated across the activities reported in the same paper. The final dataset was then explored to produce the descriptive stats and visualizations presented in Section 3 (“Main trends in published literature”) of the associated manuscript. # Data and code from: Public participation in tropical conservation and environmental management research: Towards a locally grounded and reflexive practice Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.dfn2z35fv](doi.org) ## Description of the data and file structure The data in this dataset are based on a literature search in English and in the Core Collection of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI; Thomson Reuters) Web of Science database, and a subsequent collection of information from manual extraction of data from each paper into a table of variables. ### Files and variables #### File: SupplementaryInfo_2021-2024Data.csv **Description:** This is the data table for all the papers that were found in the literature search, time-bound for years 2021 to 2024. The papers were not completely processed, thus that many of the columns are blank, with the intention that if someone wants to focus on these four years, they have a base to start with. ##### Variables * processed_initials: Initials of the researcher that processed that paper, if applicable. * exclude?: Yes_*, No, or blank depending on whether the paper was excluded from the analysis. Exclusion criteria can be found in the Supplementary Information associated with this dataset (Piland et al. in *Biotropica*). The asterisk after the underscore in yes is meant to be replaced with the criteria by which papers were determined to be excluded. Blank means that the paper was not processed. * experience_id: Some papers have more than one research experience/activity described. In these cases, each experience/activity received a letter associated with the research experience.  * number_of_experiences: Number of research experiences/activities described in the research. * paper_id: Unique ID for each paper composed of Year_Author_PaperAbbreviation * search_id: This is the search by which this paper was found. "[official_search]" refers to the first search and "[updated_search]" refers to the search requested by *Biotropica* editors. * title: Title of the paper. * Number_authors: Number of authors. * first_author: LastName_FirstInitial for the first author of the paper. * first_inst: Institutional affiliation of the first author of the paper. * inst_country: Country where the institutional affiliation is headquartered. * inst_type: Type of institution at which the first author of the paper is affiliated. * inst_subnat: Subnational administrative unit (e.g., state in the United States) of the institution at which the first author of the paper is affiliated. * local_institution: Yes/No, whether any of the authors have an institutional affiliation that is in the same country as where the research was located. * lead_local_inst: Yes/No, whether the first author has an institutional affiliation that is in the same country as where the research was located. * main_fund: The first funding source listed in the acknowledgments of the paper, if available. NA means there was none listed. * fund_country: Country where the first funding source listed in the acknowledgments of the paper is located. * fund_national: Yes/No whether the first funding source listed in the acknowledgements of the paper is in the same country as the research. * fund_type: Type of funding source (corporate, academic, international cooperation, individual person, government, private foundation, network) * pub_year: Year the paper was published. * special_issue: Whether it was published as part of a special issue. Yes means yes, NA means that no special issue was mentioned. * language: Language the paper was published in. * journal: Journal the paper was published in. * paper_type: Type of paper (research means original empirical research; methods; review; comment; conceptual) * notes_paper: Any additional notes about the paper itself. * citizen_science: 1/0, whether the authors called their research "citizen science" * other_word: List of terms that the authors used other than "citizen science" to describe participation in their research. * science_type: Applied or Basic science, where applied meant that the research was specifically motivated by solving a problem. * citizen_pop: List of terms describing the people who participated in the research. * category_citizen_pop: Categories formed based on the list of terms describing the people who participated in the research. * active_passive: Type of participation described in the paper where active means that the participants knew they were participating in a specific research project while passive means that participants submitted data but did not actively know what research project they were participating in (e.g., eBird participants without any targeted outreach). * transparency_exp: Yes/No whether the paper described any communication about the research project with the participants. * training: Yes/No whether the paper described any training participants received. * participation_type: Research stages in which participants participated based on Shirk et al. 2012 * P_Category_Shrik: Based on Shirk et al. 2012, the type of participation the research described fit into. * benefit_cit_exp: Yes_* / no, where benefits to citizens were explained in the paper. If there was a benefit described, a short description of the benefit is included instead of the asterisk. * benefit_sci_exp: Yes_* / no, where benefits to science were explained in the paper. If there was a benefit described, a short description of the benefit is included instead of the asterisk. * technology: Analog or digital technology used to collect data. * data_type: List of types of data collected. * social_media: Yes_* / no whether social media was reported to be used in any part of the research (data collection, volunteer recruitment, etc.). If social media was named, the name replaces the asterisk. * natural_hist_app: Yes_* / no whether a natural history app was reported to be used in any part of the research. If an app was named, the name replaces the asterisk. * subnat: Subnational administrative unit of where the research described took place. * Country: Country where the research described took place.  * Region: Political region where country is located (Africa, Asia, Latin America and Caribbean, Multiple, Northern America, Oceania) * ecosystem: Freshwater / Terrestrial / Marine / Multiple, ecosystem the research studied. * biogeo_region: If freshwater or terrestrial, Neotropic, Afrotropic, Indomalaya, Australasia, and Oceania biogeography realm (sensu Olsen and Dinerstein 2002). If marine, Tropical Eastern Pacific, Tropical Atlantic, Western Indo-Pacific, Central Indo-Pacific, and Eastern Indo-Pacific marine ecoregions (sensu Spalding et al. 2007). * urban: Yes/No, whether the research was exclusively about urban ecosystems. * research_topic: Paper's research topic. * research_topic_reviewed: Higher order category based on the Paper's research topic. * taxonomy: Taxonomy studied * taxonomy_reviewed: Animals, plants, other : specific taxonomy studied. * notes_exp: Any additional notes on the experience. * Checked...yes.no._.Who..: If it was double checked and by whom. #### File: SupplementaryInfo_2021-2024Sample.csv **Description:** Sample from SupplementaryInfo_2021-2024Data.csv to do the preliminary analysis described in the associated paper's Supplementary Info. Variables are the same as SupplementaryInfo_2021-2024Data.csv.  #### File: SupplementaryInfo_Data.csv **Description:** Full dataset used for the main analysis in the associated paper. Timebound up through 2020. ##### Variables **are the same as SupplementaryInfo_2021-2024Data.csv, except for the following:** * X: Artifact from R joining. * X.1: Artifact from R joining. * X.2: Artifact from R joining. ## Code/software -       **ScriptFigs.R** : The R script used to create Figures 1-3. -       **Script_2021-2024Data.qmd** : The R script used to sample the incomplete dataset for search results from 2021-2024 for the preliminary analysis. Figures 1 and 2 were created using R, RStudio, and ArcGIS. Figure 3 was created using R, Rstudio, and PowerPoint. Figure 4 was created in PowerPoint. ## Access information No other sources were used for the production of this dataset.