Continued growth of Tropical Conservation Science: three years of existence

Editorial Continued growth of Tropical Conservation Science: three years of existence i-v Alejandro Estrada and Rhett Butler The current issue of TCS marks the third year of existence of Tropical Conservation Science. During 2010, TCS published 32 papers plus four editorials, totaling 472 pages, across four issues.

Notably, in 75% of the papers published in 2010, the main author was native to the tropics, 97% were written in English and 1 in French.

Through the first 11 months of 2010, TCS papers were downloaded more than 58,000 times, a 29% increase over the same period last year. The TCS site had about 26,000 visitors, a rise of roughly 30% over 2009.

As of November 2010, the executive editor of TCS had received 90 manuscript submissions, accounting for a total of 210 manuscripts received in the editorial office since the launching of the journal in March 2008. Manuscript submission increased significantly in 2010 (see graph below).

All manuscripts received by the executive editor go through an initial process of evaluation to assess their suitability, a task accomplished with the assistance of members of the editorial board. Manuscripts that are considered suitable are submitted to the peer-review process and scored into three categories: accept with minor revision, accept with major revision, and reject. In 2010, 124 referees (see Appendix 1) kindly assisted TCS in the peer review, and we are grateful for their participation in this process. The above process results in an important filter that sustains the high quality of manuscripts published in TCS. In this context, the graph below shows that only about 45% of total submitted manuscripts between 2008 and Oct 2010 were accepted for publication.

Geographic coverage by papers published in TCS
An overview of the geographic regions covered by published papers in TCS between 2008 and 2010 shows that almost 50% of the papers reported on conservation issues in the Neotropics. Importantly, studies in Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 22% and those in Asia and SE Asia for another 17%. Studies reviewing or assessing conservation issues on a global basis contributed to 11% of the papers.

Indexing of TCS
One important achievement of TCS in 2010, and a consequence of the velocity with which it is penetrating the field of conservation science in the tropics, is its inclusion in several indexing systems. In late 2010 we were notified by SCOPUS, the largest abstract and citation database of research literature and quality web sources covering nearly 18,000 titles from more than 5,000 publishers, that after an evaluation of TCS performance it had decided to include the journal in its indexing system.

Copyediting of manuscripts published in TCS
We are particularly grateful to Mr. William Bridges, Director (Ret.), Pulliam School of Journalism at Franklin College, for copyediting each of the manuscripts written in English and accepted for publication in TCS in 2010.

Popular summaries of papers published in TCS
As was the case for earlier issues, complementary to the publication of their papers, the authors of papers in the fourth issue of TCS, also kindly prepared popular summaries of their work. These summaries were translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and French, if the paper was published in English. Summaries of each paper in each of these four languages were published on the TCS website and used also for press releases and for dissemination through various channels to the global scientific community and to the public at large. Translation of these summaries into Portuguese, French, and Spanish was accomplished with the assistance of colleagues and graduate students from Brazil, Mexico, and France, who kindly donated their time and effort to this task.

The fourth issue of TCS-2010
The current issue of Tropical Conservation Science (TCS) contains eight papers. These cover such topics as: assessing if protected areas are useful in protecting populations of an Atlantic rainforest palm in Brazil; profiling bird abundances in primary and secondary forests in Papua New Guinea; determining which features of the landscape drive complex spatial microclimate configuration of Brazilian Atlantic forest fragments; the use of hair-snares as a non-invasive method for monitoring felid populations in rainforests of southern Mexico; patterns of water body use by Asian elephants and their conservation in southern Sri Lanka; effects of climate change and conservation of subtropical forests of South America; translating boardroom philosophy into conservation action on the ground in the context of oil palm production in southeast Asia; and the use of social norms or codes of conduct that govern relations within and between communities as a natural resource governance tool in southwest Madagascar.

The eight papers of the current issue highlight an important diversity of conservation issues of concern to conservation scientists and local societies, including also issues of global and regional concern—conservation without borders.

Appendix 1. List of referees who reviewed manuscripts for TCS during 2010.


Mahbubul Alam	D. Vieira	Jean Noël Poda	Mike Shanahan	Romain Pirard
Gonzalo Halffter	Dan Auerbach	Jean-Laurentpfund	Mulugeta Lemenih	Romulo Alves
M. K. Pandit	Daniel Brito	Jeannicq Randrianarisoa	Naiara Pinto	Salvador Mandujano
Tim Caro	Danielle Perrot-Maître	Jean-Pierre Pointier	Natalie Ban	Salvador Montiel
Ajith Kumar	David Melick	Jin Chen	Nathalie Pettorelli	Samba Kumar
Alan Grainger	Domoina Rakotomalala	Jon Fjeldså	Navjot Sodhi	Sarah Boyle
Alejandro Farji-Brener,	E. Lebrija-Trejos	José Mourão	Nur Muhammed	Seif Madoffe
Alexandre Bonesso Sampaio	Edna Naranjo	Juan Manuel Dupuy	Ñeimgruber P.	Shiiwua MANU
Alexandre Fadigas De Souza	Edward Andama	Jules.Bayala	Octavio Monroy Vilchis	Soumya Prasad
Alfonso Díaz	Elias Bizuru	Julieta Ramos-Elorduy	Okia Clement	Susana Ochoa
Anderson Sevilha	Emmanuel Torquebiau	Julieta Benitez Malvido	P. M. Forget	Thadeo Tarimo
Andre Sorio	Eraldo Costa-Neto	K Shumpei	Prithiviraj Fernando,	Thomas Mcshane
Andrew Cooke	Essam Yassin Mohammed	Kim Mcconkey	Quentin Ponnette	Thomas O. Mcshane
Andrew P Jennings	Federico Bolaños	Lian Pin Koh	R. Ganesan	Tuli S Msuya
Aparajita Datta	Federico Escobar	Luc Made	R Jagadeeswaran	V Sundaresan
Arlyne Johnson	Gabriel Ramos	Lucas N. Joppa	Rainer Bussmann	Victor Arroyo Rodriguez
Arnaud Desbiez	Gary Paoli	Lucrecia.Arellano	Rboone	Victor Sánchez Cordero
B. Adhikari	George Holmes	Luis Aguirre	Reena Mathur	Vijayalaxmi Kinhal
Beth Kaplin	Gustavo J. Martínez	Luiz Mestre	Reuben Clements	William Duckworth
Bette Loiselle	Guy Apollinaire	Mahamadi Dianda	Rhett Butler	Woody Turner
Bill Laurance	Hans Van Der Wal	Mahbubul Alam	Ricardo M. Holdo	Yasmine Antonini
Brian Belcher	Hassan Sachedina	Marcelo Tognelli	Rita Portela	Yusof Basiron
Charles Decannière	Helen Newing	Maria Luisa Castillo	Riziki Shemdoe	Zapfack Louis
Cristina Banks-Leite	Hugo Jachmann	Martha Bakker	Robin.Reid	Zhu Jianguo
Cristina Martinez	Jacob Phelps	Martha Patricia Ramirez	Roger Orellana

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