Most researchers think that their work is the best thing going. And why not? They are dedicating part of their professional careers to their research and who would choose to work on pedestrian topics? When I hear the term hot topics or hot button topics, I usually think these are the topics The Journal of Wildlife Management (JWM) should be addressing. How does the scientific community view hot issues (i.e., hot button topics) in management and conservation? To address the question, I used keyword clouds provided by Wiley (J. Wood, Wiley, personal communication) for JWM and related journals from 2018 to 2022 that contain the most common keywords for articles published in the journals. The keywords are generated using deep learning (from Wiley, derived from articles indexed in Web of Science, under licence) and do not necessarily include author-designated keywords. The keywords provide an overview of the most popular themes being published in our subject area in recent years. At best, the deep learning keywords provide a supplementary tool based on specialist knowledge of the field to provide an overview of hot button topics. It will not provide a list of ready-made hot button topics, but themes may become apparent in conjunction with the keyword clouds. Although hot button topics sound like they are the most important topics in the scientific literature, it is important to understand what exactly is meant by the term. Publishers examine articles just as authors do but have different criteria to look at a broad array of journals and articles to see what is hot and what is not. In the data collection for this editorial, hot button topics published in the past 2 years are those that have achieved enough citations, according to the Web of Science, in September and October 2022 to place a manuscript in the top 0.1% of papers in its academic field (H. Dasari, Wiley, personal communication). Highly cited papers are not necessarily hot button topics; they must also be recently published manuscripts. Older manuscripts could have numerous citations but would not be included as a hot button topic because they were not recently published (H. Dasari, personal communication). The Merriam-Webster dictionary (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hot%20button) defines a hot button topic as “an emotional and usually controversial issue or concern that triggers immediate intense reaction.” Wow! Just the things that science uses data to avoid. The definition from the Web of Science can be summarized as popular themes that have enough recent citations to be paced in the top 0.01% of articles in the field. And, The Wildlife Society avoids the hot button term altogether and instead talks about hot (i.e., important) topics to be addressed. So, with those definitions in mind, I examined >4,000 articles from approximately 30 publishers of 133 journals from 2019–2022 ranging from ACTA Ornithologica to the Wildlife Society Bulletin and everything in between that published papers related to wildlife (there is a lot of competition out there for wildlife papers). I then grouped the articles into broad categories. To determine the most popular themes, I only categorized individual articles that had >10 citations and categorized groups of articles that had >100 citations (n = 610 articles). Categories that met this criterion included climate change (332 citations), model selection (318 citations), conservation (264 citations), anthropogenic influences on wildlife (260 citations), single species articles from beavers to ungulates (229 citations), wildlife disease (226 citations), drone use in monitoring (226 citations), feral swine (212 citations), quantitative analysis (212 citations), monitoring with DNA (163 citations), monitoring (159 citations), the influence of lead on wildlife (156 citations), migrations (144 citations), habitat (137 citations), bat conservation (124 citations), fire (101 citations), and raptors (101 citations). Over 3,000 manuscripts had <10 citations each and >1,000 did not have any citations at all. Many of those manuscripts that had <10 citations covered topics similar to those with >10 citations. Because these topics came from an array of journals, I also looked at 340 articles from 34 publishers from 2019–2022 and approximately 114 journals that specifically included the main competitors for JWM according to Wiley (Conservation Biology, European Journal of Wildlife Research, Journal of Animal Ecology, Journal of Fish and Wildlife Management, Journal of Mammalogy, Wildlife Biology, Wildlife Research). Categories that were listed as hot button topics according to the Web of Science included conditions and contaminants of the atmosphere, lakes, oceans, and lands; Covid; climate change; food webs used in management; hunting quotas; reforestation; quantitative studies; thermal sensitivity of forests; overfishing; dominance interactions; mortality; declines of sharks and rays; and plant genome sequencing. These hot button topics were published in Nature (n = 7), Science (n = 3), 2 each from Climate Research, Earth System Science Data, and Global Change Biology and 1 each from Applied Sciences- Basel, Current Biology, Nature Plants, Nature Reviews Microbiology, New England Journal of Medicine, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Science, and Remote Sensing of the Environment. Six manuscripts from the Journal of Animal Ecology, 1 manuscript published in Conservation Biology, and 1 in the European Journal of Wildlife Research were highly cited but none of the hot button topics were published in any of our competitor's journals. The JWM had 1 highly cited manuscript but no hot button topics. It is not surprising that the main wildlife journals did not have any hot button topics as identified by the Web of Science. The hot button topics generally involved studies from large areas (e.g., multi states, continents, globally), over long periods (i.e., decades), that influence large groups of animals and humans (e.g., climate change, disease), and contribute to or distract from human well-being (e.g., air and water quality). While each of these are important, most research on wildlife relates to single species in local or regional areas, over short time periods, that test 1 or 2 hypothesis, and are often inconclusive. For example, the November 2022 issue of the JWM (86[8]) included 16 research articles. The study area sizes for 14 studies averaged 63,605 km2 (range = 5–430,000 km2; 2 researchers simply listed a state as their study area) and the average time period for studies ranged from 1–50 years. The 50-year study was a modeling study and if that manuscript was deleted, the average time of study was about 6 years. Most of the studies were of single species examining a single aspect of population dynamics and researchers called for additional research, better parameters than they used, or both for making inferences. The components of animal ecology are also important, especially for managers of wildlife in specific areas. They will just not be considered hot button topics by the scientific community overall. It is not surprising because many of the hot button topics relate to the condition of the earth (e.g., atmosphere, land, lakes, oceans) and topics the JWM does not address (e.g., overfishing, declines of fisheries, forest ecology) unless they have a direct application to wildlife (other than fisheries). The Wildlife Society regularly updates their hot issues (i.e., Policy Engagement Principles) and lists 10 categories (wildlife.org/hot-issues/, accessed 2 Mar 2023). Three are not directly related to wildlife (i.e., federal employee participation in professional societies, funding for conservation and management, strategic conservation planning), but the other 7 are (e.g., climate change and adaption, endangered species recovery, energy development and wildlife, invasive species prevention and management, the North American Model and Public Trust Doctrine, wetlands conservation, wildlife health). Just because the hot issues listed by the Web of Science or The Wildlife Society do not specifically identify population dynamics of wildlife populations as hot issues does not mean that they are not important; of course they are. Those are the data needed for conservation and management, which are the heart and soul of what many wildlifers strive to obtain. Any definition I would come up with for hot button topics would definitely include the population dynamics of animals from which management and conservation depend. The JWM welcomes all scientific topics that add to the wildlife literature and can benefit wildlife and their habitats. We welcome your submissions. J. Wood and H. Dasari provided the data for this editorial, which was enhanced by reviews of earlier drafts by both of them, A. S. Cox, and J. A. Bissonette. Many thanks to all of you.