This is an international project in which about 60 researchers from all over the world, including Associate Professor Munemitsu Akasaka of Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology Graduate School of Agriculture and Dr. Tatsuya Amano of Queen's Land University in Australia, participated and presented in 16 non-English languages including Japanese. Evaluation of the papers revealed that the findings on biodiversity conservation that had been summarized in English so far expanded dramatically.
According to the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, the international project evaluated 42 papers selected from about 1,234 papers published in non-English, and investigated how much knowledge about biodiversity conservation would spread.
As a result, knowledge on biodiversity conservation was obtained only in English papers in North America and Europe, but when non-English papers were included, the acquisition area expanded by 25%.
Among the species recognized by the International Conservation Union, 191 amphibians, 677 birds, and 727 mammals were found to be conservative, but non-English, based solely on the information in the English papers. Adding the findings from the paper, it has spread to 200 amphibians, 894 birds, and 791 mammals.
Most of the findings obtained from non-English papers are related to East Asia and Latin America, which are rich in biodiversity and require the most conservation, and are considered to play an extremely important role in future conservation activities.
Until now, biodiversity conservation has not placed much emphasis on papers published in non-English as important scientific findings available in English."If you continue to stick to English papers, you will lose a huge amount of scientific knowledge," the research team of the international project warned.
Paper information:[Plos Biology] Tapping into non-English-language science for the conservation of global biodiversity
