[Taxacom] Open review as a wiki

Thu Apr 3 11:46:26 CDT 2008

Actually, according to the ICZN (Art. 51), the author does not form part
of the name of a taxon. I haven't checked how the botanists deal with
that. In zoology, author and year are nothing more than a
bibliographical reference. It is convenience, but unjust to authors and
negatively effecting their citation counts, that citations of original
descriptions are not included in "Literature Cited".
Would it be such a pain to check original descriptions before
uncritically adopt some information on author and date from secondary
sources? Probably it would as long as the Biodiversity Heritage Library
is incomplete, but it would bring nomenclature into much better shape.

By the way, citing papers without having read them is VERY common in
science. You consider it fraudulent. I do, too. However, analyses on
citation errors and handing down these errors from author to author
indicate that a significant portion of citations has never been looked
at by the citing authors. Check the following papers: 
Simkin, M.V. & Roychowdhury, V.P. 2003. Read before you cite! Complex
Systems 14, 269-274.
They assume that only 20% of papers cited were actually read.
KRISTOF, C. 1997. Accuracy of Reference Citations in Five Entomology
Journals. American Entomologist 43: 248-251.
30% of all citations contain errors. Sloppiness of authors or secondary
citations??
same for biomedicine
Aronsky, D., Ransom, J. & Robinson, K. 2005. Accuracy of reference in
five biomedical journals. Journal of the American Medical Informatics
Association 12: 225-228.
311 errors in 225 references.

Let's hope taxonomists do better than this. However, errors in authors
and dates of taxa are not uncommon in the literature. Treating these
citations as proper references and convincing authors to consult
references they cite would help to avoid these errors - and would help
taxonomists in the current audit society.

Frank

Dr Frank T. Krell 
Curator of Entomology 
Editor, Systematic Entomology 
Commissioner, International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature 
Department of Zoology 
Denver Museum of Nature & Science 
2001 Colorado Boulevard 
Denver, CO 80205-5798 USA 
Frank.Krell at dmns.org 
Phone: (+1) (303) 370-8244 
Fax: (+1) (303) 331-6492 
http://www.dmns.org/main/en/General/Science/ScientificExperts/Biographie
s/krellFrank.htm 

-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Mary Barkworth
Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2008 8:27 AM
To: Richard Pyle; Donat Agosti; TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Open review as a wiki

Include full citations in the bibliography? I wish that I thought you
were joking. How many times have we cited the authors of a name in a
paper because that is editorial policy without ever reading the original
article, let alone examining the type? At least now we do not include
the article in the literature cited. Doing so without at least reading
the article could be considered fraudulent. Please, let's keep
literature cited for items that we have actually read. Scientific names
are supposed to be meaningful. Yes, their interpretation can change -
but that is not necessarily resolved by citing the place where they were
originally published; it may require citation of a more recent work
(identified using .., as interpreted by ..). There are a lot of things
that I would like ecologists and others to do (deposit vouchers being
number one) before I would ask them to give complete citations for
articles that they have not read particularly when their reading of the
article would add nothing to their research, just to the length of the
paper.  I would agree with those that argue that unless we are
discussing alternative interpretations of a name, adding the authors
usually does nothing but increase the amount of paper or number of
electrons used by a publication. 

I write as a botanist. We are blessed with TROPICOS, IPNI, and ING for
information on who published what, where. Although not complete, these
are phenomenal resources that are getting better and better (more
rapidly than ITIS). TROPICOS is even linking names to images of the
original publication and types. Again, this is not something happening
overnight, but it is happening. It began not because of some huge
international initiative but because it helped the Missouri Botanical
Garden in curating their collection. Perhaps a path to follow? 

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