Context This dataset was used to produce the worldl and the graphs in the editorial to the research topic Ecology, impact and management of squirrel invasions (La Morgia et al. 2023). Contents of the dataset The dataset contains the keywords of papers since 2000 harvested with a Web of Science search (performed on 29/05/2023) using the advanced search string TS=(invasive squirrel) OR TI=(invasive squirrel) OR AB=(invasive squirrel). We screened the search results, excluding papers irrelevant to alien squirrels, for example, papers on computer science or physiology, medical or other aspects without any bearing to conservation science. To do this, we checked the abstract and keywords of the papers. Out of the 401 initial papers, after this first screening, we kept 217 in this dataset. The keywords of these papers were manually assigned to alien squirrel research topics by the authors of this dataset (using an own categorisation) and then mapped to the seven broad themes of invasive alien species research of Stevenson et al. (2023): Ecosystems: topics which discuss a specific region, or biome, or focused on a particular species strongly associated with one ecosystem type; Monitoring: topics regarding all aspects of monitoring, including detection, identification, and distributional mapping; Management and decision-making: topics discussing the management and socio-political aspects of invasion science, such as prevention, control, and policy; Interactions: topics discussing the interactions with native species, or the effects of those interactions Assessing change: topics focused on studying and analysing temporal and ecological change; Traits: topics that explored the characteristics of alien squirrels; Invasion mechanisms: topics discussing dispersal pathways and drivers of spread. Dataset description Every row (N = 1275) in the comma-separated .csv represents one original keyword with reference to the paper in which that keyword appears and mapped to the research topics on invasive squirrels and the broad themes in invasion biology research. The .csv contains the following fields: ID: a unique ID assigned to the combination of an original keyword and the corresponding paper harvested from the WoS search original_keyword: the original keywords associated with the paper (WoS search) keyword_topic: categorization of original keywords into topics related to invasive squirrel research by La Morgia et al. (2023) mapped_category: mapping to one of the seven broad themes of invasive alien species research of Stevenson et al. (2023) as listed and described above authors: author(s) of the paper (WoS search) year: publication year of paper (WoS search) title: title of the paper (WoS search) journal: full journal name (WoS search) doi: full doi of the paper (WoS search) Potential applications of the dataset This dataset can be used to reproduce the graphs in La Morgia et al. (2023) or to perform more in-depth review or analysis of the literature on alien squirrel invasions. For more information and graph code, we refer to this GitHub repository.

{"references": ["Stevenson, E.A., Robertson, P., Hickinbotham, E. et al. Synthesising 35 years of invasive non-native species research. Biol Invasions (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-023-03067-7"]}