[Taxacom] Open review as a wiki

Wed Apr 2 20:14:27 CDT 2008

I find Stephen's thoughtful comments pretty compelling. It sounds very nice, to have an area populated only (or mostly) by taxonomists, but I believe very strongly that there are dangers of the kind envisaged by Stephen. That led me, years ago, to argue (successfully) against removing the Australian National Insect Collection, and associated staff, away from the CSIRO Division of Entomology. It's not only good for other specialists to rub against taxonomists - the reverse is equally true.

Donald H. Colless
CSIRO Div of Entomology
GPO Box 1700
Canberra 2601
don.colless at csiro.au
tuz li munz est miens envirun

-----Original Message-----
From:	taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu on behalf of Stephen Gaimari
Sent:	Wed 02-Apr-08 3:15 AM
To:	TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU
Cc:	
Subject:	Re: [Taxacom] Open review as a wiki

A couple of issues I'd like to address. I'll start with a random thought, then a couple of specific points. 

1) With the 1000's of scientific journals out there, publishing all kinds of scientific research on a variety of topics, wouldn't it potentially hurt taxonomy to distance itself from mainstream science? A typical reader of one of these scientific journals would potentially NEVER read a taxonomic paper, and would NEVER gain an appreciation for the science of taxonomy. It seems to me that sequestering taxonomy would only serve to further isolate taxonomists, further make taxonomy appear as non-science, and further promote the idea that we are providing a simple service to real science. The perception will be that taxonomy can't be published in "highly ranked" journals. Yes, open access is a terrific thing (and should be for all kinds of science). Yes, good review is critical to good papers (that is true in all fields, but I don't see any other disciplines sequestering themselves). But it seems to me that the only people who would (only potentially) benefit from such isolation from the scientific community would be the taxonomists themselves. It certainly would not put taxonomy at the forefront of science where it belongs, but would further relegate it deeper into obscurity. It certainly would not promote the importance of taxonomy and the need for more taxonomists to be educated and hired in faculty positions. We should be actively promoting the idea that taxonomy is the foundation for ALL of biological science, not some pseudoscience tucked away in their own little world.

2) "bear in mind that  traditional reviews such as these only see a manuscript when the author(s) believe it is absolutely ready to publish!"

I've reviewed enough papers to know that even when the author(s) believe something is ready to publish that it may not be so. In my opinion, a reviewer should devote his precious time to a manuscript, aimed at assessing and improving it, when it is ready. Too much time is wasted on manuscripts that are clearly not ready for this stage in the publication process.

3) "Imagine an author who takes 4 years to get a manuscript ready for submission - if it takes another 4 months for it to get reviewed, revised, and printed, then that's great. Now, imagine that same author puts the first draft online for review right at the start .... etc."

I'm sorry - this made no sense to me. First, how many times do you expect an expert to review and rereview a manuscript? Does each specialist want to take the time to continually massage someone else's research? When does this constant improvement give authorship to the reviewer? And for this draft submission to act as a de facto specimen request? I don't think so. If someone is tackling a revision, they better know the community of experts in a group from whom they should request specimens, and which collections house important materials.

4) "many of the *nastiest* problems facing the taxonomic community can be traced to the lack of a universal standard of review"

Having such an open-review system would not create a universal standard of review in any way that I can see. Rather, it would promote more of a free-for-all, completely unstandardized. The review process, no matter whether it starts from the rough draft stage or after a manuscript is finished, will still be A) dependent upon the community interested enough in that group to work with the manuscript, B) dependent upon the individual personalities and opinions of those reviewers, and C) dependent upon the subjective opinion of the assigned "impartial referee" as to whether criticisms were adequately addressed.  

5) "Each incoming manuscript would have an impartial referee assigned to it, basically making sure the discussion stayed civil, that as many of the registered interested parties had made comments as seemed practical, and there would be a checklist of criteria that determined when something was ready to be accepted; most of these would be objectively-defined content (type deposition, etymology, non-homonymy, diagnoses, images/illustrations, etc.) that are BUILT INTO the template (so anything left blank would be glaringly obvious), but the crucial subjective decision would be "Are there any criticisms which have not been adequately addressed or refuted?". Ultimately, in such a system, I believe that the only manuscripts that would "languish" are those for which the author(s) failed to fill out the template completely in a timely manner, or could not (or would not) deal with criticisms adequately - remember, again, that the manuscripts would be online for a long, long time. If an author tries to conceal ongoing projects and refuses to submit them for review until they are "ready", then *those* authors may find the resulting review phase to be onerous, but only because they did not utilize the system in the manner it was intended."

Sorry - taxonomy is not a template science. Yes, there are certain elements that are critical such as those listed above, but an acceptable manuscript is not one that simply fits into the template. What a boring science this would be if it was a matter of filling in a template! Maybe we could all just fill in the blanks on a web-form, and that will be the paper submitted for review? (sorry - yes - that was sarcasm...). 

As for addressing reviewer criticisms - isn't this impartial referee the same thing as a journal editor, who weighs the criticisms and the authors responses when deciding on publication? It seems that this impartial referee will make the final decision of publication or rejection, based upon their subjective opinion of whether criticisms were adequately addressed. Back to this universal standard - the only standard thing is the template, which is governed anyway by the Codes of Nomenclature (i.e., requirements to become available).

Just a couple of cents worth.
Cheers,
Steve 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Stephen D. Gaimari
Program Supervisor (Entomology) &
Co-Curator, California State Collection of Arthropods

Plant Pest Diagnostics Lab
California Department of Food and Agriculture
3294 Meadowview Road
Sacramento, CA 95832-1448, USA

916-262-1131 (tel.)
916-262-1190 (fax)
sgaimari at cdfa.ca.gov 
http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/phpps/ppd/staff/sgaimari.html  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

>