Oliveira, B. F. | Search bioRxiv

bioRxiv2025

Strategic citations for a fairer academic landscape

Scientific publishing is increasingly dominated by for-profit journals, which attract prestige and submissions through high impact factors (IF). While some of these partly reinvest in research and dissemination and can be considered academia-friendly, non-profit journals - those that fully reinvest revenue into the academic community - often struggle for visibility despite promoting more equitable publishing models. Using citation data from over 70,000 publications in ecology and evolution, we show that citation practices are siloed: for-profit journals disproportionately cite other for-profit journals, academia-friendly journals preferentially cite other academia-friendly journals, and non-profit journals likewise favor citations to non-profit sources. This asymmetry structurally reinforces the IF advantage of for-profit journals simply because they are dominant in the publishing system. To address this inequity, we propose a soft-power, low-risk approach of "strategic citation". By deliberately choosing to cite relevant articles from non-profit journals when multiple references would be equally valid, researchers can contribute to increasing those journals visibility and IF. This approach preserves scientific rigor and does not restrict publishing choices, but adds a layer of ethical intentionality to citation practices. Strategic citation offers a practical, actionable lever for researchers to promote a more balanced and ethical publishing system that complements broader structural reforms.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2019

Mechanistic macroecology: exploring the drivers of latitudinal variation in terrestrial body size in a General Ecosystem Model

Many mechanisms have been hypothesized to explain Bergmanns rule - the correlation of body size with latitude. However, it is not feasible to assess the contribution of hypothesised mechanisms by experimental manipulation or statistical correlation. Here, we evaluate two of the principal hypothesised mechanisms, related to thermoregulation and resource availability, using structured experiments in a mechanistic global ecosystem model. We simulated the broad structure of assemblages and ecosystems using the Madingley model, a mechanistic General Ecosystem Model (GEM). We compared emergent modelled biogeographic patterns in body mass to empirical patterns for mammals and birds. We then explored the relative contribution of thermoregulation and resource availability to body mass clines by manipulating the models environmental gradients. Madingley produces body size gradients that are in broad agreement with empirical estimates. Thermoregulation and resource availability were both important controls on body mass for endotherms, but only temperature for ectotherms. Our results suggest that seasonality explains animal body mass patterns through a complex set of mechanisms. Process-based GEMs generate broadly realistic biogeographic body mass patterns. Ecologists can use them in novel ways: to explore causality, or for generating and testing hypotheses for large-scale, emergent ecological patterns. At the same time, macroecological patterns are useful for evaluating mechanistic models. Iteratively developing GEMs, and evaluating them against macroecological patterns, could generate new insights into the complex causes of such patterns.

ecology↗