[Taxacom] Open review as a wiki

[Bjarte Henry Jordal]

(2) If all taxonomy is published in a single
> source, then it will level the playing field for taxonomists AND give 
> the field more prominence; instead of dinosaur taxonomy being 
> published in journals with an IF of 40, while most other taxonomic 
> journals are no higher than a 2, everyone would suddenly be 
> publishing in an online journal with an IF of 20-30 (because anyone 
> citing ANY taxonomic work would boost the rating for this one 
> resource; that's how IF works). That would *increase* the perception 
> of the value of taxonomy to science. 

This is something most people have not considered, myself included. The 
high IF is actually a quite likely outcome!

> Do you honestly believe it is better for them to learn that 
> AFTER spending a year of their life on it, when they could have been 
> told BEFORE they did so? Which is more embarrassing: being told you 
> made a mistake on day 1, or being told after months of labor? 
> Wouldn't you feel better as a reviewer *preventing* someone from an 
> embarrassing and time-consuming mistake rather than correcting them 
> long after the fact? Right now, a substantial number of new names 
> make it into print that are synonyms - how do 
> authors/reviewers/everyone else NOT benefit if, in the future, 
> would-be synonyms never make it past the first draft stage?
> 
yes, I agree that many reviewers at the early stage would be a good 
thing to avoid new synonymous taxa described, etc. But I still think 
that this kind of 'review' is better placed in a scrathpad environment 
that include all registered experts within e..g Curculionoideae, instead 
of combining the scrathpad stage with the actual taxonomy journal. 
Surely it is good for the author to save time, BUT, should the burden 
for lousy taxonomists be carried by the the good taxonomists, even 
though it may save time for the taxonomic community overall?

One other related issue:  mistakes are much less of a problem when 
publishing on-line. Instead of the traditional papers we are producing, 
in a real cybertaxonomy context we can revise group by group by adding 
new species, rewriting keys, changing status etc several times.

Bjarte


-- 
Bjarte H. Jordal, PhD

Associate Professor in Systematic Entomology
Museum of Natural History, University of Bergen
Musèplass 3
NO-5007 Bergen

Phone:  55582233
http://www.bio.uib.no/pages/forsker.php?pid=1481&lang=E