Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Correspondence
  • Published:

Naturalists

Hail local fieldwork, not just global models

Nature volume 534, page 326 (2016)Cite this article

Subjects

Access through your institution
Buy or subscribe

We contend that science's 'publish-or-perish' culture, which selects for rapid publication in high-ranking journals, has contributed to the demise of field-based studies (see K.-D. Dijkstra Nature 533, 172–174; 2016).

Top-tier journals tend to favour large-scale analyses that answer big, general questions (see J. M. Fitzsimmons and J. H. Skevington Nature 466, 179; 2010), presumably because they help to boost journal impact factors. Unlike basic ecological and observational studies, such analyses seldom involve the collection of new, local field data. Instead, they depend mainly on modelling of published information, often over scales that would be logistically and economically challenging for conventional field investigations.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Access through your institution

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Trent University, Peterborough, Canada

    Catarina Ferreira

  2. BioCórima, Arteaga, Mexico

    C. Antonio Ríos-Saldaña

  3. Institute for Advanced Social Studies (IESA-CSIC), Córdoba, Spain

    Miguel Delibes-Mateos

Authors
  1. Catarina Ferreira
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  2. C. Antonio Ríos-Saldaña
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Miguel Delibes-Mateos
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Catarina Ferreira.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Ferreira, C., Ríos-Saldaña, C. & Delibes-Mateos, M. Hail local fieldwork, not just global models. Nature 534, 326 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/534326b

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/534326b

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing Anthropocene

Sign up for the Nature Briefing: Anthropocene newsletter — what matters in anthropocene research, free to your inbox weekly.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing: Anthropocene