Protected areas (PAs) aim to safeguard biodiversity and ecosystem services in the long term.
Despite remarkable growth in the area covered by PAs in recent years, biodiversity trends still show
worrisome outcomes. Here, we conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) of scientific articles
focusing on the ecological effectiveness of PAs that were published in the 2010–2019 decade using
Scopus in order to show the latest publication trends in that research field. After three consecutive
screenings, we analyzed a final census sample of 76 articles that used semiexperimental research
designs. We assessed 3 thematic variables (i.e., related to ecological effectiveness) and 13 bibliometric
variables through descriptive statistics, Spearman correlation tests, and Kruskal–Wallis difference
tests. Our results demonstrate the growing size of research teams working on this topic, broader
international collaboration, and greater length of the articles published on this subject. During that
decade, the number of normalized citations (+28%) and the mean field-weighted citation impact
(FWCI) of the set of reviewed articles (33% higher than expected) increased. We also observed an
increase in open access publications (+13%). However, this mode of publication did not ensure more
citations. Finally, we observed a positive correlation between the number of normalized citations and
the inclusion of Supplementary Data in the articles.
