Abstract:

The research in conservation biology started in 1990 and is currently in a stage of rapid development in China. To understand the status quo of conservation biology in China, we used the term “conservation biology” as the keyword to search and collect Chinese and English literatures in conservation biology which were written by Chinese researchers in ISI Web of Knowledge and Chinese Journals Full-Text Database. These publications were analyzed with methods of bibliometrics, on the distribution of the publication year, the author and organization distribution, the journal distribution, the research funds, the research regions and the objects. The results indicate that core research groups working in the field of conservation biology in China have been already formed, although the distribution of research groups was scattered over institutions and universities. Dispersion and concentration coexisted in the journal distribution of Chinese and English publications—a majority of publications was clumped in a small number of journals, while a minority was scattered in a large number of journals. In China, there is only one professional journal publishing papers on conservation biology— Biodiversity Science. Thus it is reasonable to launch an English conservation biology journal in the country. Research funds for conservation biology have a wide array of sources. An important part of the papers in Chinese was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and provincial foundations, while those in English were supported either by National Natural Science Foundation of China or international funds. Field studies in conservation biology were mainly conducted in the regions of high biodiversities in south and southwest China. Plants, mammals and birds were the main objects of those studies. In the studies on single species, 90% were studies on endangered species. Studies on bio-inventory and genetic diversity represented a significant proportion of publications, while little was published about the strategies and practices of conservation.

Key words: conservation biology, bibliometrics, biodiversity