[Taxacom] Periodical and book list
Roderic Page
r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
Mon Jan 22 13:55:16 CST 2007
I think this is a good idea (although I still think if we were truly
serious we'd look at serving DOIs, they will be picked up by
publishers, LSIDs probably won't be), but that's another issue.
The complication here is deciding whether two references are the same
or not. In other words, if say I merge ant literature from two
different sources (such as FORMIS and Hymenoptera Name Server), can I
avoid giving two different identifiers for the same reference? We
would need reasonable means of deciding whether two alternative ways
of writing the same reference (or variations on journal names, or
author names) were just that, alternatives.
I also think for this project to be actually useful, it should
provide a web service where somebody could see whether a given paper
exists in the database (i.e., has a GUID). OpenURL provides an
obvious model for a query interface, namely a URL with a standard
list of parameters. This is how I discover whether ant papers already
have a DOI (see http://semant.blogspot.com/
2006_08_01_semant_archive.html).
So, what I propose is this:
1. A database of taxonomic literature is created, seed with files
from anybody willing to contribute.
2. For all references in that database, existing GUIDs are searched
for (e.g., DOIs and Handles)
3. A OpenURL service is created whereby a user can submit
bibliographic details and the service returns a match (with some
indication of how good the match is), and a GUID (either existing
DOI, or whatever type of GUID the database supports.
This would require some work on recognising matching references (see
http://del.icio.us/rdmpage/bibliographic-references for some pointers).
I always thought this would be the quickest, easiest way of providing
a useful service and demonstrating the utility of GUIDs and metadata
to the broader community.
Regards
Rod
On 22 Jan 2007, at 03:21, Robert K. Peet wrote:
>
> Hi Roger,
>
> What we really need is a set of GUIDs for individual references,
> not just
> journals/books. At present we have a set of DOI's used by Crossref,
> endnote-based standards imbedded in EML and VegBank, a simple stub
> in TCS
> (for lack of a standard) and ABCD, and any number of standards if
> you look
> around. The only way to be able to communciate efficiently is with
> some
> GUID system for individual references. My take on the GUID meeting
> last
> February at NESCent is that we as a community have pretty much
> converged
> on LSIDs, and you seemed to agree. Why don't we just establish an
> LSID-based reference repository and let folks start contributing their
> critical references? I would be happy to submit a few thousand,
> were you
> to set it up :-) .
>
> Cheers,
> Bob
>
>
> ======================================================================
> Robert K. Peet, Professor & Chair Phone: 919-962-6942
> Curriculum in Ecology, CB#3275 Fax: 919-962-6930
> University of North Carolina Cell: 919-368-4971
> Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3275 USA Email: peet at unc.edu
> http://www.unc.edu/depts/ecology/
> http://www.bio.unc.edu/faculty/peet/
>
> ======================================================================
>
>
> On Wed, 17 Jan 2007, Roger Hyam wrote:
>
>> I am interested in conducting a social experiment.
>>
>> It would be very useful when combining taxonomic data from multiple
>> databases if there were globally unique identifiers for major
>> taxonomic publications (periodicals/serials and books). One could
>> then supplement a reference citation like
>>
>> Edinb.J. Bot. 47(2): 89-200 (1990)
>>
>> with an LSID and/or a URL that will tell the user that
>>
>> Edinb. J. Bot. is the Edinburgh Journal of Botany published by HMSO
>> in Edinburgh. It may also give other alias' it is known by and a note
>> might say that it is a continuation of Notes from the Royal Botanic
>> Garden Edinburgh.
>>
>> It would enable the user to merge the data with people who have used
>> other abbreviations for the same publication title - possibly without
>> human interaction.
>>
>> Lookup services could be created that went from abbreviation to full
>> journal title.
>>
>> The trouble is that the major lists of publications (e.g. BPH, TL2
>> etc) are either:
>>
>> - are not available electronically.
>> - are available on a subscription basis.
>> - are hopelessly out of date.
>> - can not be added to instantly (if the one you want to use isn't
>> cited).
>> - are not freely distributable (i.e. you can't download the whole
>> lot and use them as a lookup table in your database or re-distribute
>> them as part of a product or archive them to keep you data safe)
>>
>> I am thinking that this is an ideal test case to see if the
>> 'community' could build a freely distributable list that helps us
>> all. The list would:
>>
>> - only include 'top level' publications i.e. periodicals, books,
>> multi volume works. It is assumed that it is relatively easy to
>> unambiguously identify a location within such publications via
>> volume, part, and page/plate numbers.
>> - contain a simple set of fields for each publication.
>> - would be entirely freely distributable. i.e. a complete copy could
>> be downloaded under a LGPL or creative commons type license.
>> - contributors would be acknowledged in a contributors list, but
>> nothing more.
>> - users could comment on entries and submit new entries in real time.
>> - would be a key into/integrate with current and future digitization
>> efforts.
>>
>> I have three questions:
>>
>> 1) Has it already been done?
>>
>> 2) If this system were available now and populated with the majority
>> of publications would you use it? Would it be useful?
>>
>> 3) Do you (or some one you know) have a database containing details
>> of titles of periodicals or books that you could export data from as
>> a contribution to seed the list? If so how many records would there
>> be and what subject areas (within biodiversity studies) would they
>> cover?
>>
>> You can mail me off list if you don't want to commit to anything in
>> front of everyone.
>>
>> This is still a thought experiment at the moment. I'll mail a high
>> level summary of replies I get back to the list.
>>
>> All the best,
>>
>> Roger Hyam
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>
> ====================================================================
> Robert K. Peet, Professor Phone: 919-962-6942
> Department of Biology, CB#3280 Fax: 919-962-6930
> University of North Carolina Cell: 919-368-4971
> Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3280 USA Email: peet at unc.edu
> http://www.bio.unc.edu/faculty/peet/
> ====================================================================
>
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----------------------------------------
Professor Roderic D. M. Page
Editor, Systematic Biology
DEEB, IBLS
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