Characteristics of the top-cited papers in species distributionpredictive models
Abstract
In this study, we analyzed the characteristics of the most cited papers regarding species distributionpredictive models (SDPMs). We found 173 papers on SDPMs that received at least 100 citations until2013, according to the Thomson Reuters Web of Science database. These papers were published between1991 and 2012, with the majority published between 2002 and 2012, indicating the rapid developmentof this field of research. The papers were published mainly in journals listed in the ecology category onthe Web of Science. Almost half of the top-cited papers were methodological, introducing novel modelingmethods and software. Applied papers on species conservation and biodiversity management, climatechange, phylogeography, and biosecurity also figured out among the top-cited papers. Researchers from174 institutions in 27 countries, with 51% of the papers being internationally collaborative and 69%inter-institutionally collaborative, published the papers. Among all 173 papers, seven papers stood outas having a great impact on the field, receiving more than 1000 citations each. Finally, the results found byanalyzing the top-cited SDPMs papers support the view of a growing interest and rapid development ofthis research field over the past two decades. The top-cited papers primarily focused on the developmentand evaluation of novel methods to improve the performance of the models, and thus, to better predictthe environmental suitability for species in applied studies.
