Specimen Citations

[JEAN MICHEL MAES]

Perhaps a good solution is first working on a specimen list, as most of us
do. Then publish a short version of the work (without the specimen lists)
and in parallel web publishing a complete version, basically the same but
including specimens lists and other items expensive to paper publishing, as
colour pictures of specimens, distribution maps, etc...

Jean-Michel Maes.

At 06:13 PM 15/11/99 +0100, you wrote:
>Dear Diana,
>
>in some "modern" (whatever it means) branches of organismic biology (like
>ecology) it has became quite normal to withhold any raw data. That makes most
>of their evaluations and interpretations irreproducible. Obviously, saving
>printing space is considered more important that one of the fundamentals of
>science: reproducibility.
>Do not let degenerate taxonomy in the same way! You will certainly find some
>journals where you are allowed to include your specimen data. These may
not be
>the impact factor journals, but we should judge scientific quality of a paper
>higher than the impact factor of the journal. I suggest to annex a gazetteer
>rather than giving all locality specifications with every specimen.
>I hope that the internet may lead to a revival or raw data accessibility.
>Journals can (and some do) publish raw data as electronic supplements via the
>net, saving printing costs and improving scientific quality).
>Cheers
>
>Frank
>
>--
>Dr. Frank-Thorsten Krell
>Zoologisches Forschunginstitut und
>Museum Alexander Koenig
>Adenauerallee 160
>D-53113 Bonn
>Germany
>Tel. (inst.) ++49-(0)228-9122276
>Tel. (priv.) ++49-(0)228-6440230
>Tel. (mobile) ++49-(0)170-3437940
>Fax ++49-(0)228-216979
>e-mail: ft.krell.zfmk at uni-bonn.de
>
>Diana Horton schrieb:
>
>> I am struggling with the problem of specimen citations.  As was noted
>> recently, specimens are the data on which taxonomic research is based, so
>> citations of those specimens are critically important.  However, it is a
>> time-consuming process to enter specimen data into a spreadsheet/database.
>> Recently, it took about six hours to enter data on just over 100 specimens
>> (most were fairly quick, but about a third of them were from Europe and I
>> had to spend some time trying to decipher foreign languages to determine
>> locality).  -- I could annotate a lot of specimens in the time it took me
>> to enter those data (and I have a lot waiting to be annotated!), and no
>> editor is going to allow publication of all those citations (however, I
>> realize a copy could be placed in some library to make them available).
>>
>> I would be interested to know whether people think that one should keep
>> records of *every* specimen one examines.  If not all, how many and how
>> does one decide which specimens to record?  As an alternative, would it be
>> acceptable just to cite a herbarium/repository acronym and the number of
>> specimens annotated, at least for some specimens (obviously, one will have
>> to record distributional data in some way even if a detailed specimen
>> citation is not kept)?
>>
>> The info. I include in my specimen citations includes as much as possible
>> of the following:
>>
>> Determination (mine)
>> Date Determined
>> Country
>> Province/State
>> County
>> lat/long
>> Sec/Township/range
>> Specific Locality, incl. ecol.
>> Collector
>> Collection #/Date
>> Notes (mine, on the specimen)
>> Original determination
>> Herbarium Acronym
>>
>> Diana Horton
>> Herbarium and Biological Sciences
>> 312 CB
>> University of Iowa
>> Iowa City, IA  52242-1297
>> U.S.A.
>
>
Jean-Michel MAES
Museo Entomologico
Asociacion Nicaraguense de Entomologia
AP 527 - Leon
NICARAGUA

tel 505-0-3116586

FAX 505-0-3115700

jmmaes at ibw.com.ni

httm://www.sdnnic.org.ni/museo_entomologico.htm