[Taxacom] ZooBank

[Roderic Page]

Perhaps somebody should ask why ZooBank is in bed with ISI? Is it  
because Zoological Record is so wonderful?

Well, I'm not sure ZR is a great as we might think. For example, I  
searched ZR for the ant Atta mexicana, and got 12 papers back. The same  
search in Google Scholar  
(http://scholar.google.com/scholar? 
q=%22Atta+mexicana%22&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&safe=off&start=0&sa=N)  
returned 80 hits. Now, some GS results are duplicates, and some mention  
Atta mexicana only tangentially, but I find this interesting.

Both searches miss papers (6 ZR records don't seem to be in GS), but GS  
finds relevant papers not in ZR (including the top hit  
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02223555 ). Indeed, only two of the top ten  
GS hits are in ZR. This includes a paper on beetle larvae  
(http://dx.doi.org/10.1603/0013-8746(2000)093[0795:NLDFTS]2.0.CO;2)  
associated with Atta ants that mentions a beetle (Euphoria lineoligera)  
not mentioned at all in ZR or ZooBank (but is found in, see  uBio  
http://names.ubio.org/browser/details2.php? 
names=on&authors=on&sci=on&vern=on&conceptID=&expand=&namebankID=2913895 
  , or http://lsidres.org/urn:lsid:ubio.org:namebank:2913895 ).

Google Scholar has some problems, but when compared against ISI's Web  
of Science it does rather well (e.g.,  
http://www.int-res.com/articles/esep/2005/E65.pdf ).

My point is that ZooBank demonstrably has limitations with respect to  
both taxonomic names and literature, which makes me wonder whether this  
is truly the way forward. Or, put another way, if the ISI link is being  
promoted based on names and literature, neither argument seems terribly  
compelling to me.

Regards

Rod

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
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Professor Roderic D. M. Page
Editor, Systematic Biology
DEEB, IBLS
Graham Kerr Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QP
United Kingdom

Phone:    +44 141 330 4778
Fax:      +44 141 330 2792
email:    r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
web:      http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html
iChat:    aim://rodpage1962
reprints: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/pubs.html

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Rod's rants on phyloinformatics: http://iphylo.blogspot.com
Rod's rants on ants: http://semant.blogspot.com