Literature Positioning (conbio-literature-positioning)
Conservation Biology rewards novelty and transferability, and reviewers screen hard for whether a
paper actually advances the field. Positioning is therefore not throat-clearing — it places the work
where a conservation audience spanning ecology, the social sciences, and practice can see the gap
and the advance.
When to trigger
- Drafting or revising the introduction and the "contribution" paragraph
- A reviewer said you "missed key work" or "don't engage the relevant literature"
- Your taxon/system literature is solid but the paper doesn't connect to broader conservation science
- You need to distinguish your contribution from the closest prior papers
How Conservation Biology wants the literature engaged
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Engage the conservation debate, not a citation pile. Identify the live problem, disagreement, or
evidence gap your paper speaks to, and cite the works that define it — including foundational
conservation-biology theory where relevant.
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Two audiences at once. Satisfy system specialists (you know the frontier) and the general
conservation reader (why it matters for biodiversity). An ecologist and a practitioner should both
see the stakes.
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Name the gap precisely. Not "little is known" — say what is contested, unmeasured, untested, or
not yet translated into practice, and why resolving it matters for conservation.
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Position as an advance. "Prior work assumes/shows X; we show it fails / is conditional on C /
generalizes / translates into decision D."
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Pre-empt the obvious objection. Reviewers are expert; name the strongest alternative explanation
and say how your design adjudicates it (hand off to
conbio-study-design).
Cross-disciplinary engagement (a distinctive demand)
| If your paper is… |
also engage… |
| an ecological field study |
the conservation-decision or management literature it informs |
| a method/SDM/modeling advance |
the substantive conservation problems that will use it |
| a human-dimensions / social study |
the ecological stakes and the policy literature |
| a policy / practice analysis |
the underlying evidence base on what works |
Anti-patterns
- A "literature dump" with no organizing conservation problem
- Engaging only your taxon/system and ignoring conservation science broadly
- Strawmanning prior work, or hiding the closest competitor paper
- Self-citation that breaks anonymity (the journal is double-blind — see
conbio-submission)
- Claiming "first to study" when the contribution is incremental
Positioning pass for Conservation Biology
Treat this skill as an executable review pass, not a prose hint. First lock the species/system threat, conservation decision, and uncertainty relevant to action; then judge whether the current manuscript answers the venue's real reader: conservation-science reviewers who ask whether evidence changes biodiversity, management, or policy action.
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Do the pass: Build a three-column map: incumbent conversation, unresolved tension, and this manuscript's delta; include one sibling-venue omission that would make a referee doubt the fit.
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Return a ledger: give
claim / evidence / risk / manuscript location rows, so the next agent can edit rather than rediscover the issue.
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Sibling guard: compare against Biological Conservation for applied conservation breadth, Global Change Biology for climate/ecosystem process, Ecology Letters for theory-forward ecology; if a sibling owns the contribution, recommend re-routing before polishing format.
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Submission-ready gate: do not give final advice until the pack's
resources/official-source-map.md has been checked for upload-week rules and the manuscript has one concrete fix for the largest venue-specific risk.
Output format
【Problem】the live conservation gap / disagreement
【Key works】the 3-6 that define it (incl. cross-disciplinary)
【Gap】what is contested / unmeasured / untranslated
【Advance】how this paper moves the field
【Strongest rival】and how the design will adjudicate it
【Next】conbio-study-design
Supplementary resources
