Outlets for alpha taxonomy

[Jim Croft]

> > I find this somewhat incongruent with the large amount of attention being
> > given to laments about how little we know of the contents of biological
> > world.
>
>The three word explanation for this is almost certainly "Citation Impact
>Factor" - most species descriptions do not accrue a high number of
>citations, and therefore dilute a journal's citation impact factor.

No literature is more self-citing or more self-referential than that of
biological taxonomy.  Just look at any nomenclature/synonymy block in a
taxonomic monograph or flora - every relevant taxonomic work written since
the mid 16th century is in there.

The problem is not with the citations themselves, but with the citation
indexers skipping over this bread and butter of the taxonomic
literature...  If they didn't, Linneaus would still be way up there in the
contemporay citation stakes...  :)

jim

~ Jim Croft ~ jrc at anbg.gov.au ~ 02-62465500 ~ www.anbg.gov.au/jrc/ ~