[Taxacom] ZooBank

[Donat Agosti]

Rod makes a good point. So, all these colleagues around the world do have
access to the Internet
http://clustrmaps.com/counter/maps.php?url=http://antbase.org
, we know now for sure, since they looked at antbase during the last 8 days.

So, Rod makes the point, that he has a more restricted access to ZR than
Frank. What about all those outside a Northern University System?

It is almost obscene that we want to keep up the barriers to scientific
information we finally can torn down. It is like building up a zoological
garden with a glass wall, where the have-all watch the have-much-less.
Google frees for us a tremendous amount of data - see especially google
earth and google scholar. At the same time, the barrier to the access to our
digital journals (we are aware because of free google scholar) is raising
because subscription rates raise far above inflation rate, and thus more and
more of us loose journals at their universities. 

And then there are all our colleagues in the developing world where most of
us get (or got) their specimens, who are living at our merci to get those
publications via email. Publications they will never be able to access
otherwise.

But Rod's point has also to do with scientific integrity. If I know, there
is so much data out which need to go into my scientific analysis, but need
to omit it, because I can not get access, then it is bad. And that is, what
selective access to scientific information is.

Donat






Now, never one to let an ugly fact get in the way of a good story,  
observe how I turn this embarrassing cock up into yet another stick  
with which to beat the poor folks at ZooBank. So, my access to search  
results (never mind the actual literature) is limited by whatever  
subscription my institution has! Imagine if Google did this, so that  
results from a search while you are in a coffee shop are different from  
those you get at work, or at home. To me, the notion of search results  
varying based on subscription is a recipe for disaster.

Regards

Rod


------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
----------------------------------------
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

Subscribe to Systematic Biology through the Society of Systematic
Biologists Website:  http://systematicbiology.org
Search for taxon names: http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/portal/
Find out what we know about a species: http://ispecies.org
Rod's rants on phyloinformatics: http://iphylo.blogspot.com
Rod's rants on ants: http://semant.blogspot.com


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