NATURE to save taxonomy!

[Geoff Read]

Richard Pyle wrote:

> Wouldn't it be a LOT cleaner, easier, better, more reliable for Nature to
> have stepped up to the plate themselves and announced that *they* would send
> a REprint of all descriptions to some repository? (I would have suggested
> BIOSIS, but the Linnaean Society is reasonable.)

Indeed it would, and as I've already pointed out days ago they are already
under an obligation to do so for Zoological Record under the ICZN. Although it
only has the status of a recommendation, people are 'urged' to follow it.  The
fact that they don't know that (it seemingly hasn't strongly registered with you
either) is troubling.

Zoo Rec has been going for a very long time. It hardly makes sense to not
support it. Having said that the other question is how Zoo Rec could be
improved to be more useful. I don't have much experience with the online
zoo rec but the print version has seemingly remained unchanged for
decades when perhaps it should be looking at better ways to enable it to be
used as a tool for tracking taxonomy easily.  For example (I'm looking at the
latest Annelida volume) you've got to know a genus name  to find new
species, synonymies, etc. Can't do it by family. It would also be vastly more
useful (and easier to continue justifying buying for the library) if abstracts
were printed.


--
  Geoff Read <g.read at niwa.cri.nz>
  http://www.annelida.net/