DOI: 10.5061/dryad.73n5tb366
title: From parachuting to partnership: Fostering collaborative research in protected areas

description: Research in protected areas (PAs) is often dominated by scientists from
 outside the conservation agencies managing them. This can potentially lead
 to misalignment with local needs, insensitivity to the local context, and
 a lack of investment in and use of local expertise. These issues often
 arise when international researchers work in another country without local
 engagement (known as “parachute science”). Despite PAs being key end-users
 of actionable science, there is limited understanding of the prevalence
 and impact of parachute science in these areas. Here, we investigate
 parachute versus collaborative research in two national parks in the
 Global South (Kruger National Park, South Africa; Nahuel Huapi National
 Park, Argentina), and one park from a developed economy (Kakadu National
 Park, Australia). To explore the prevalence, risks, benefits, and
 complexities of research practices, we analyse patterns of authorship,
 funding, and acknowledgment in a random sample of peer-reviewed papers
 from research conducted in these parks. Our findings show a higher
 incidence of potential parachute science in Kruger National Park (18% of
 papers with only out-of-country authors) compared to Nahuel Huapi (4%) and
 Kakadu (2%) National Parks. However, the occurrence of internationally
 collaborative research (national and international authors) was double in
 Global South parks (35-38%) than in the Australian park (18%). The study
 illustrates the potential benefits of international collaboration for PAs,
 including increased research productivity, expanded funding sources, and
 possibly higher impact and visibility of published studies. PAs in
 developed countries may have fewer opportunities to obtain those benefits.
 Most papers, even those with in-country authors, lacked authors affiliated
 with the agency managing the PA, and often failed to even acknowledge
 these agencies. This suggests the potential for a different form of
 parachute science (which we term “park parachuting”) in which lack of
 local involvement may hamper integration of research with management.
 Synthesis and applications: Establishing conditions that foster
 collaboration between national and international researchers, and between
 PA agency staff and external researchers (regardless of their
 nationality), would enable parks to better serve as catalysts for research
 collaboration. This collaborative approach can facilitate access to
 additional funding, enhance research capacity, increase research
 productivity, and amplify research impact.
description: <strong>Literature search strategy and inclusion
 criteria</strong> Literature searches were
 conducted via the Clarivate Web of Science search facility using the “all
 databases” (which includes the Web of Science Core Collection, SciELO,
 BIOSIS Previews and others) and “all editions” options. The search strings
 consisted of the name of the park [(“Kruger National Park”); (“Nahuel
 Huapi National Park” OR “Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi” OR “Lake Nahuel
 Huapi” OR “Lago Nahuel Huapi”); (“Kakadu National Park”)] and we selected
 the “topic” as search field. According to Clarivate, the “topic” field
 searches for the specified search terms in the title, abstract, or
 keywords, and therefore will miss papers using the park name in the main
 text only. We restricted the search to journal articles published between
 2010 and 2020. Each article was assigned a random number. We then assessed
 the relevant papers in ascending order until we reached a maximum of 100
 relevant papers. Although parachute science practices appear to be more
 prevalent in publications in English than in those in other languages
 (Miller et al., 2023), there is a growing awareness of the detrimental
 effects of ignoring non-English publications (Amano et al., 2021).
 Therefore, we included papers for Nahuel Huapi published in Spanish (13%
 of our random sample). To be included, studies needed
 to be based on research within the park, have made use of data or
 specimens collected from the park, or have used the park as a case study
 in descriptive studies. Articles were also included if the park formed a
 central component in social-ecological studies (e.g., community
 relationships, human-wildlife conflict or livestock/wildlife diseases
 around parks). Articles making a passing reference to a park, or
 referencing research or other papers from a park, were
 excluded.  <strong>Data extraction and
 analysis</strong> Metadata for all authors was
 extracted, including author rank (primary or co-author) and their primary
 institutional affiliation. Author affiliations were coded based on (i)
 nationality<em> </em>(country of all authors’ primary
 affiliation) and (ii) managing agency (whether or not an author was
 affiliated with the respective national park agency).
 In addition, the funding sources for the research were extracted;
 funding sources were most commonly listed within the acknowledgements
 section (Cronin, 2001; Mejia, & Kajikawa, 2018), or as a separate
 funding statement. We classified the funding as originating from the
 country where the national park was located (“national funding”), or from
 another country (“international funding”). References to non-financial
 contributions to the research by the park agency, such as logistical
 support or field assistance, mentioned in the acknowledgements section
 were also extracted. We did not consider a mention of a park-issued permit
 as reflecting genuine acknowledgement of engagement, but rather as an
 acknowledgement of compliance with conditions required to gain access to
 the parks. To estimate the academic ranking of the
 journal where research was published and thus the potential academic
 visibility and reach of a study, we used the Clarivate journal impact
 factor (2021). In cases where no impact factor was assigned, we recorded a
 zero. We also calculated the average number of citations per year as a
 metric of the paper’s uptake and impact in the literature. We calculated
 this by dividing the total number of citations recorded in Clarivate Web
 of Science by the number of years since publication up to 2023.
 <strong>References</strong> 
 Amano, T., Rios Rojas, C., Boum II, Y., Calvo, M., &
 Misra, B.B. (2021). Ten tips for overcoming language barriers in science.
 <em>Nature Human Behaviour</em>, <em>5</em>(9),
 1119-1122. Cronin, B. (2001). Acknowledgement trends
 in the research literature of information science. <em>Journal of
 Documentation</em>, <em>57(3), </em>427–433.
 Mejia, C. & Kajikawa, Y. (2018). Using acknowledgement
 data to characterize funding organizations by the types of research
 sponsored: The case of robotics research. <em>Scientometrics, 114
 (3), </em>883–904.
description: # From Parachuting to Partnership: Fostering Collaborative Research in
 Protected Areas
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.73n5tb366](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.73n5tb366) ## Description of the data and file structure A random sample of up to 100 relevant articles from Clarivate Web of Science were selected for Kruger National Park (South Africa), Nahuel Huapi National Park (Argentina) and Kakadu National Park (Australia). For each paper we extracted the authorship affiliations and funding information. In addition, we also calculated the annual number of citations (up to 2023) and looked up the Clarivate 2-year Impact Factor for 2021. More details in the article associated with this study (Smit et al., 2024 - Journal of Applied Ecology).      ### Files and variables #### File: Dryad\_Smit\_et\_al\_Journal\_of\_Applied\_Ecology\_Parachute\_Science2024.xlsx **Description:** Excel dataset, with each sheet representing data form one of the three national park case studies, as indicated by sheet name.   ##### Variables * ID: Unique identity number assigned to each article * Language: The language in which the paper was published. For Nahuel Huapi NP we considered and indicated whether each paper was published in English or Spanish. For Kruger and Kakadu National Parks all papers were in English, and hence this variable/column was omitted for these parks.      * Total authors: Total number of authors for the article * National authors: Total number of authors from country in which national park is located * International authors: Total number of authors from countries other than the country in which the national park is located * National, International or Both National and International Authors: "Nat" indicates all authors are from country in which national parks is located; "Int" indicates all authors are from another country than the country in which the national park is located; "Both" indicates that both national and international authors included in the paper *  For papers with both National and International authors, location of first author (National or International): Indicates for papers with both national and international authors (i.e. indicated as "Both" in previous variable), whether the first author is from the country where the national parks is located (national) or not (international) * Management authority involvement (PA = Priniciple author from Mngt authority; CA = Co-author from mngt authority; No = no author from mngt authority): Indicates whether the park management authority is a first author of the paper (PA), a co-author of the paper (CA) or whether no author is affiliated with the national park management authority (No) *  Funding (No, Nat, Int, Both): Funding extracted from acknowledgement section of article, indicating whether no funding was declared (No), only funding from a national source (Nat), only funding from an international source (Int) or whether funding was listed from both national and international sources (Both), or "unsure" if not clear. *  Acknowledge Park Authority (Yes, No): Extracted from the acknowledgement section of the article whether the park management authority was acknowledged (Yes) or not (No), or "unsure" if not clear. If only acknowledging park for access, then it was considered "No"    * Impact Factor (2021) Clarivate: Clarivate Impact Factor as listed for 2021 * Citations per year: Average annual citations measured between publication of article and when this study was conducted ## Code/software Data file is in Excel ## Access information Other publicly accessible locations of the data: * None Data was derived from the following sources: * Clarivate Web of Science