Box 1 Principles for the production of evidence-based guidance
(taken from Downey et al. , 2022)
Collating evidence
1. Scientific evidence should be reviewed and where available incorporated when formulating recommendations.
Review the available scientific evidence on conservation actions (either from peer-reviewed studies, databases, grey literature or expert consultation) and extract key messages to inform the development of recommendations. There are now many databases available that synthesise relevant evidence, such as conservationevidence.com, environmentalevidence.org, and databases that collate grey literature such as Applied Ecology Resources (www.britishecologicalsociety.org/applied-ecology-resources). These can drastically reduce search, reading and interpreting time as well as overcoming access barriers. The evidence should be considered by stakeholders to judge its strength and relevance (Salafsky et al ., 2019) and assessed alongside the experience and knowledge of stakeholder groups, which must include relevant experts. The date, search terms, and databases used for searching for evidence should be stated (Haddaway et al ., 2015). Non- English language papers should also be considered in the search to avoid bias (Konno et al ., 2020).
2. Conduct repeated searches of the literature regularly and update guidance to include new studies when required.
To ensure that guidance is based on the most up-to-date information, guidance should state when the evidence was searched and set review dates. We suggest reviewing the evidence every five years. When critical new information is available, guidance should be updated. Out-of-date guidance should be updated and then archived, with clear links to the updated version provided. If the original evidence synthesis clearly specifies its references and justification for recommendations, then updating the guidance will be easier and faster.
3. Presentation and interpretation of evidence should be neutral.
The information should be presented factually and objectively and those engaged in collating and synthesising the evidence should operate as neutral brokers. This can be difficult for some authors or organisations involved in the production of guidance, particularly where there is an advocacy objective or when they have been involved in producing the relevant evidence. It may therefore be beneficial to have guidance peer-reviewed or produced collaboratively across communities of practice, to avoid bias affecting the presentation of the evidence. Some organisations may find it hard to remove all advocacy of their agenda from guidance. Such conflicts of interest should be stated explicitly.
4. Bias and limitations of the reviewed literature should be stated explicitly.
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