Abstract Social science methods are increasingly applied in conservation research. However, the conservation sector has received criticism for inadequate ethical rigor when research involves people, particularly when investigating socially sensitive or illegal behaviors. We conducted a systematic review to investigate conservation journals’ ethical policies when research involves human participants, and to assess the types of ethical safeguards documented in conservation articles. We restricted our review to articles that used social science methods to gather data from local people about a potentially sensitive behavior: hunting. Searches were conducted in the Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar for research articles in English published from January 2000 to May 2018. Only studies conducted in countries in south and Southeast Asia, Africa, and Central and South America were considered. In total, 4456 titles and 626 abstracts were scanned, with 185 studies published in 57 journals accepted for full review. For each article, any information regarding ethical safeguards implemented to protect human participants was extracted. We identified an upward trend in the documentation of provisions to protect human participants. Overall, 55% of articles documented at least one ethical safeguard. However, often safeguards were poorly described. In total, 37% of journals provided ethics guidelines and required authors to report ethical safeguards in manuscripts, but a significant mismatch between journal policies and publication practice was identified. Nearly, half the articles published in journals that should have included ethics information did not. We encourage authors to rigorously report ethical safeguards in publications and urge journal editors to make ethics statements mandatory, to provide explicit guidelines to authors that outline journal ethical reporting standards, and to ensure compliance throughout the peer‐review process.

中文翻译：

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保护出版物及其保护研究参与者的规定

摘要 社会科学方法越来越多地应用于保护研究。然而，当研究涉及人时，特别是在调查社会敏感或非法行为时，保护部门因道德严谨性不足而受到批评。当研究涉及人类参与者时，我们进行了系统审查，以调查保护期刊的道德政策，并评估保护文章中记录的道德保障类型。我们将审查限制在使用社会科学方法从当地人那里收集有关潜在敏感行为的数据的文章：狩猎。在 Web of Science、Scopus 和 Google Scholar 中搜索了 2000 年 1 月至 2018 年 5 月发表的英文研究文章。仅在南亚和东南亚、非洲、考虑了中美洲和南美洲。总共扫描了 4456 篇标题和 626 篇摘要，其中 185 篇研究发表在 57 种期刊上接受全面审查。对于每篇文章，都提取了有关为保护人类参与者而实施的道德保障措施的任何信息。我们发现保护人类参与者的规定文件呈上升趋势。总体而言，55% 的文章记录了至少一项道德保障。然而，保护措施的描述往往很差。总共有 37% 的期刊提供了道德准则，并要求作者在稿件中报告道德保障，但发现期刊政策和出版实践之间存在严重的不匹配。在本应包含伦理信息的期刊上发表的文章中，几乎有一半没有。