Those of us who write for and produce Central Valley Birds hope that our papers will have an impact. This impact could be simply informing others in the Bird Club of something interesting that’s been observed, documenting a recent range expansion, or providing a valuable long-term dataset that adds to a better understanding of population biology. It’s the desire of every author that their article will contribute to our overall knowledge base in one way or another. Many articles in Central Valley Birds, however, also have a conservation focus, and many studies focus on species with populations that are in decline. Current and back issues contain many conservation-related articles.
To name just a few:
- Continuing Impacts of West Nile Virus on Birds of California’s Central Valley
- Recent Status of Wintering Swainson’s Hawks in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta Region, California
- Tricolored Blackbird Breeding Status in 2015 in the Foothill Grasslands of the Sierra Nevada, California
- Current Breeding Season Status of the Least Bell’s Vireo in California’s Central Valley and Surrounding Foothills
But do these articles have a direct impact on conservation and management? We’ve always known that they do, but now that influence has been more widely recognized.
Last week we heard from Phil Unitt, editor of Western Birds. He’d just read a recent (2024) article published in the journal Conservation Biology by Jonathan Choi and others. They compared “high impact factor” (HIF) journals with regional “low impact factor” journals (which would include CVB and Western Birds) and found there was a mis-match between the needs of conservation implementation and the needs of academic researchers who must often publish in what are considered high impact journals. The impact factor of a journal is determined almost entirely by the number of their papers that are subsequently cited by others. The journals Ornithology and Ornithological Applications published by the American Ornithological Society, for example, fall into this category. Articles in those journals often lean more towards evolution, systematic relations, genetics, and theoretical topics, rather than conservation. But do these HIF journals have a large impact on conservation, especially of endangered species? Choi et al., were curious so they reviewed over 13,000 sources and 785 journals. Surprisingly (or perhaps not so surprising), they found that regional or low impact, peer-reviewed journals contributed more relevant articles that were cited in federal endangered species listings than did articles from the other journals.
In other words, the types of studies we publish on local and regional populations and species may have a greater impact on the conservation of endangered or threatened birds than articles from top tier journals. Clearly, a variety of scientific journals with different aims is valuable. We should feel a sense of accomplishment, however, that the science we publish in Central Valley Birds has a direct effect on bird conservation in our region, and that this benefit is now more recognized!
Additionally, over the past year we’ve made major changes to further the impact of our journal. During the publishing process each article is now assigned a DOI number. This permanent number facilitates finding an article if web addresses change in the future. All articles are now posted on a linked web site operated by Open Journal Systems. Partnering with OJS makes our articles searchable on Google Scholar, which greatly extends our reach into the scientific universe. Finally, we’re going back into our journal archives to prepare abstracts and key words for all articles that did not have them. All of this is a lot of work, but in the long run is well worth it, as it will further increase our contributions to both science and conservation.
Thanks to Phil for sending us this article on conservation impacts and to the editorial committee for continuing to improve the quality of our journal!
