Category: Post 2: Sources of Scientific Information

A. The source of scientific information is a book entitled Practical Field Ecology: A Project Guide.

Wheater. C , Bell. James, Cook. Penny. (2011). Practical Field Ecology: A Project Guide. Wiley-Blackwell. West Sussex, UK.

B. The source is academic, non-peer reviewed material.

C. Following the tutorial for this module: ‘How to Evaluate Sources of Scientific Information’,  The first step is determining if the material is academic. To determine this, the tutorial has 3 criteria, all must be true. 1) the source must be written by experts in their field. 2) the source must have in text citations. And 3) The source must have a reference or bibliography section.

It is written by 3 authors who are each experts in their respective fields. At the time the book was published, Wheater worked in the department of Environmental and Geographical Sciences at Manchester Metropolitan University; Bell specialized in Plant and Invertebrate Ecology with Rothamsted Research in the UK; and Cook worked in the Faculty of Health and Applied Sciences at Liverpool John Moores University.  The book contains in text citations throughout and has a references section at the back. These three qualities make the book an academic source.

The next question to ask according to the tutorial is: was the material peer reviewed?

The acknowledgements section references many people who assisted in the writing of the book or participated in the required research in some way. However, there is no indication that it was peer reviewed with the possibility of being rejected prior to publication. The publisher does not claim that the book is peer reviewed either. The above points indicate the book is non-peer reviewed.

If the material were peer-reviewed, then the type of peer-reviewed material – research or review could be determined. As the source was not peer-reviewed, it cannot be research or review material.

The jumping point for establishing a novel insect biodiversity case-study analysis of potential impacts from contaminated soils in an urban community garden ecosystem at 16 Oaks Community Garden comes from a research article published in the Journal of Soil Sciences and Plant Nutrition.

The article in question titled “Soil assessment for urban agriculture: a Vancouver case study” was written by G.A. Oka, a Masters of Science student at the University of British Columbia Soil Science program, coauthored by L. Thomas, and Dr. L.M. Lavkulich, faculty members of the same university in 2014.

Using the assessment matrix, “Tutorial: How to Evaluate Sources of Scientific Information” included in the course materials, the article is considered academic in nature due to field expertise of its main author. This process is further supported by the research articles successful submission for publication in an academic journal. Using in-text citations to establish sources of external information, the article supports its academic purview using a listed reference section at the end of the article publication. However, the article is not refereed and therefore is classified as academic non-peer reviewed article.

G.A. Oka, L. Thomas, L.M. Lavkulich. (2014). Soil assessment for urban agriculture: a Vancouver case study. Journal of Soil Science and Plant Nutrition. 2014, 14 (3), 657-669. http://dx.doi.org/10.4067/S0718-95162014005000052

For this Blog post I chose to use TRU’s online library database to search for an article. The article I chose is called Succession after reclamation: Identifying and assessing ecological indicators of forest recovery on reclaimed oil and natural gas well pads.

a) The source is from the journal ‘Ecological Indicators’ through the publisher Elsevier. Click here for link

b) I determined that the category of information source for this article is Academic Peer Reviewed Research Material.

c)I determined it is academic because it was written by experts in the field from the University of Alberta and the Alberta Environment and Parks, contains in-text citations, and a bibliography. It is academic research material as it contains a ‘Methods’ and ‘Results’ section.

I concluded that it is peer-reviewed not because the author(s) directly stated it in their ‘Acknowledgement’ section but because the publishing company Elsevier by which this article was published states on their website that they are the “leading platform for peer reviewed literature” (Elsevier, 2020). The authors did however thank, by name, the multiple people involved in the project.

Sources:

Elsevier. Retrieved from: elsevier.com/solutions/sciencedirect/content

The source of ecological information that I have chosen is a journal article titled “Cross-scale dynamics in community and disease ecology: relative timescales shape the community ecology of pathogens” and it is available at the following link: https://esajournals-onlinelibrary-wiley-com.ezproxy.tru.ca/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecy.2836. The journal article can be classified as “academic, peer-reviewed, research material” (as defined in Module 1).

The article is “academic” because it is written by experts (given that the study is associated with the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior at the University of Minnesota), in text citations are present, and a “Literature Cited” section is included.

The article is peer-reviewed. No acknowledgment of referees is included in the article. However, a reference to the corresponding editor (in addition to received, revised, and accepted dates of Feb-8-19, May-15-19, Jun-25-19, respectively) is included. Furthermore, the official website for the journal, Ecology, indicates that it conducts peer review and provides instructions for manuscript submissions.

The article can be considered research material because it includes “Methods” and “Results” sections. In addition, while the article’s authors use existing models to derive their methods, they run their own, novel simulations to acquire data. Therefore, the work related to this article could be described as experimental.

Reference List:

Read full aims and scope [Internet]. c2020. Washington, DC: Ecological Society of America; [accessed 2020 Jun 9]. https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/hub/journal/19399170/aims-and-scope/read-full-aims-and-scope.

Strauss A, Shoemaker L, Seabloom E, Borer E. 2019. Cross-scale dynamics in community and disease ecology: relative timescales shape the community ecology of pathogens. Eco [Internet]. [2020 Jun 9]; 100(11):e02836. Available from: https://esajournals-onlinelibrary-wiley-com.ezproxy.tru.ca/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecy.2836 DOI: 10.1002/ecy.2836.