Archive for December, 2018

How Do Professionals Find the Science They Need?

The Society of American Foresters held seven small group dialogues throughout the United States.  One of the questions discussed was how natural resources professionals—resource managers and policy-makers—find the science they need to do their jobs.  66 people attended the dialogues.  Over half represented non-governmental organizations and public agencies.  Elected officials, university faculty and industry practitioners were also represented.

Six Key Findings Emerged

Figure 1. Word cloud of the 68 coded and indexed major points that emerged from all seven dialogues.

On-line searches are the most popular approach.  Google Scholar and ResearchGate are the favored applications.  Google Scholar is a web-crawler, indexing content across most peer-reviewed on-line academic journals and many other technical documents.  ResearchGate is a networking site for researchers, who upload publications to share, seek and provide answers to questions, and search for potential collaborators. Read more…

IUFRO - The International Union of Forest Research Organizations