Policy for science: The changing ecology research agenda, 1970-2006

Science is one important input into decision making processes, bringing to the fore questions about what science should be done. There is no single ‘optimal' research agenda and there are no central planning processes to guide the field of ecology; rather, the research agenda is constituted mutually by independent researchers, program managers, occasional planning boards, and others based on a variety considerations, scientific and otherwise. The knowledge generated by the ecology research effort contributes to policy problem framing through identification of both the problems to be addressed as well as the solutions considered. Different research agendas would lead to differently framed policy problems. As part of my ongoing research into the recent history of the field of ecology, I present a bibliometric study of the changing focus and methods of ecology since 1970 using a comprehensive database of nearly 170,000 research articles published in ecology journals. Trends in both the subjects and methods of ecology will be discussed, as will potential implications for science-policy linkages.