Best Practices to Promote Field Science Safety.

Interventions are necessary to address the ongoing epidemic of sexual harassment and assault in field settings. An evidence-based approach to identifying specific interventions will be most effective at promoting the safety of scientists. We present the results of a workshop conducted by experts in field biology and the study of sexual harassment and assault that identified a comprehensive set of best practices for individuals and organizations. These recommendations are grounded in peer-reviewed scholarship and are separated into four topics: culture change, accountability, policy development, and reporting. The resulting report of the workshop recommends 44 practices, categorized by the resources required for implementation, the time frame of implementation, and the level of organization responsible for implementation. The best practices that we present are designed to support individuals and organizations in the development of field safety plans.

Ten simple rules for creating a scientific web application.

The use of scientific web applications (SWApps) across biological and environmental sciences has grown exponentially over the past decade or so. Although quantitative evidence for such increased use in practice is scant, collectively, we have observed that these tools become more commonplace in teaching, outreach, and in science coproduction (e.g., as decision support tools). Despite the increased popularity of SWApps, researchers often receive little or no training in creating such tools. Although rolling out SWApps can be a relatively simple and quick process using modern, popular platforms like R shiny apps or Tableau dashboards, making them useful, usable, and sustainable is not. These 10 simple rules for creating a SWApp provide a foundation upon which researchers with little to no experience in web application design and development can consider, plan, and carry out SWApp projects.

Science maps for exploration, navigation, and reflection-A graphic approach to strategic thinking.

The world of science is growing at an unprecedented speed with more and more scholarly papers produced each year. The scientific landscape is constantly changing as research specialties evolve, merge or become obsolete. It is difficult for researchers, research managers and the public alike to keep abreast with these changes and maintain a true and fair overview of the world of science. Such an overview is necessary to stimulate scientific progress, to maintain flexible and responsive research organizations, and to secure collaboration and knowledge exchange between different research specialties and the wider community. Although science mapping is applied to a wide range of scientific areas, examples of their practical use are sparse. This paper demonstrates how to use a topical, scientific reference maps to understand and navigate in dynamic research landscapes and how to utilize science maps to facilitate strategic thinking. In this study, the research domain of biology at Aarhus University serves as an example. All scientific papers authored by the current, permanent staff were extracted (6,830 in total). These papers were used to create a semantic cognitive map of the research field using a co-word analysis based on keywords and keyword phrases. A workflow was written in Python for easy and fast retrieval of information for topic maps (including tokens from keywords section and title) to generate intelligible research maps, and to visualize the distribution of topics (keywords), papers, journal categories, individual researchers and research groups on any scale. The resulting projections revealed new insights into the structure of the research community and made it possible to compare researchers or research groups to describe differences and similarities, to find scientific overlaps or gaps, and to understand how they relate and connect. Science mapping can be used for intended (top-down) as well as emergent (bottom-up) strategy development. The paper concludes that science maps provide alternative views of the intricate structures of science to supplement traditional bibliometric information. These insights may help strengthen strategic thinking and boost creativity and thus contribute to the progress of science.

Who are we now? A demographic assessment of three evolution societies.

Scientific societies have the potential to catalyze support for communities that have been historically excluded from science. Many of these societies have formed committees to propose and administer initiatives to promote the career and well-being of their members, with a special emphasis on racial and ethnic minorities. Yet, these societies are rarely armed with data to inform their proposals. Three of the evolution societies (American Society of Naturalists, "ASN"; Society of Systematic Biologists, "SSB"; Society for the Study of Evolution, "SSE") have also formed Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committees in the last few years. As a first step in determining the needs of the societies, these committees collected data on the demographic characteristics of the societies' constituents by surveying the attendants of the Evolution 2019 meeting. Here, we report the proportions for different demographic groups in attendance at the meeting and compare these proportions to the demographics of recipients of Ph.D. degrees either in evolutionary biology or in the broader life sciences, as well as population demographics of the USA. Our results indicate that historically excluded groups are still underrepresented across US-based evolutionary biology professional societies. We explore whether demographic composition differs at different professional stages and find that representation for women and LGBTQ+ members decreases as the career stage progresses. We also find some evidence for heterogeneity across societies in terms of racial composition. Finally, we discuss the caveats and limitations of our procedures. Our results will serve to inform future efforts to collect demographic data at the society levels, which should in turn be used to design and implement evidence-based initiatives for inclusion and equity. This report should be a starting point for systematic efforts to characterize the ever-changing representation in evolutionary biology and to work toward the inclusion of all groups.

Subversive affinities: Embracing soviet science in late 1940s Romania.

This article discusses the appropriation of Soviet science in Romania during the late 1940s. To achieve this, I discuss various publications on biology, anthropology, heredity and genetics. In a climate of major political change, following the end of the Second World War, all scientific fields in Romania were gradually subjected to political pressures to adapt and change according to a new ideological context. Yet the adoption of Soviet science during the late 1940s was not a straightforward process of scientific acculturation. Whilst the deference to Soviet authors remained consistent through most of Romanian scientific literature at the time, what is perhaps less visible is the attempt to refashion Romanian science itself in order to serve the country's new political imaginary and social transformation. Some Romanian biologists and physicians embraced Soviet scientific theories as a demonstration of their loyalty to the newly established regime. Others, however, were remained committed to local and Western scientific traditions they deemed essential to the survival of their discipline. A critical reassessment of the late 1940s is essential to an understanding of these dissensions as well as of the overall political and institutional constraints shaping the development of a new politics of science in communist Romania.

The Snail's Charm.

In 2017, The American Naturalist celebrated its 150th anniversary. It was founded as a journal of natural history, yet it developed into an important vehicle of the evolutionary synthesis. During the early years of the journal and through much of the twentieth century, evolutionary theory was developed to explain the history of nature before humankind existed to alter it-when time was expansive and uncommon events, though rare, were frequent enough to effect evolutionary change. Today, with the influence of human activity, dispersal patterns are fundamentally altered, genetic variation is locally limiting in small and fragmented populations, and environments are changing so rapidly that time itself seems limited. How can we use this theory, which was built to explain the past and which depends on an excess of chances and time, to address the challenges of the present and the future when chances are fewer and time seems so short? And does the habit of naturalists to observe, describe, and cultivate a fascination with nature have a place in contemporary science?