Zoological Record coverage

[Joan Thorne]

Various messages referring to Zoological Record's coverage, and
possible role as name register, have appeared in the past few days.
As those most closely involved in producing ZR here is our response.
There is nothing new in the explanations which follow, but there is
nothing new in the criticism either.

ZR makes every effort to provide fully comprehensive coverage of new
and changed names in zoology.  In this we believe, and studies using
new molluscan names confirm, that we are over 90% successful.
However, what is certain, is that we are the most complete source of
animal names of published since 1864.

Most of the material indexed is obtained from the holdings of the
British Library Document Supply Centre, and the Natural History
Museum in London, though a growing number of publishers send us
complimentary copies of their material.  The generous assistance of
all these sources is gratefully acknowledged and usually enables us
review the content of some 4,500 serial publications, and over 1,000
books each year.  These generate about 72,000 relevant citations, and
contain some 20,000 new names, and a further 8,000 changes in name or
synonymy.  This is no small task and requires the activities of some
40 members of staff.

To improve on these numbers, and gather 100% of new names, is
difficult with our present limited resources - our work is already
heavily subsidized by our parent company BIOSIS.  Unlike researchers,
we do not have the resources to visit foreign institutions, or set up
exchanges with colleagues working in all the myriad of animal groups
covered in ZR.  It is difficult to learn about, and obtain copies of,
more obscure publications which are not held in our source libraries.


As a result ZR is perhaps only 90% complete.  However, with the help
of the community, we could approach 100%.  What we need are reprints
of publications containing new names which appear in titles not
normally covered in ZR, or which we have omitted.  We admit that we
occasionally omit names; ZR is compiled by human beings and they
sometimes make mistakes.

We have appealed for help on various other occasions but received
little or no response, and have difficulty in understanding the
apparent reluctance of the community to help seal the gaps in ZR.
The effort required is small, but the benefits are great.  If the
community has a viable alternative for producing a more comprehensive
record of new names we would be very interested to learn about it.

Judy Howcroft (Special Projects Manager BIOSIS UK)

Joan Thorne (Editor Zoological Record)



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Joan Thorne
Editor
Zoological Record
BIOSIS, U.K.
54 Micklegate, York, North Yorkshire, Y01 6WF, U.K.
Telephone +44 (0)1904 642816  Fax +44 (0)1904 612793