[Taxacom] Open review as a wiki

[Doug Yanega]

Frank Krell wrote:

>The question is whether Thomson decides to consider the Unified 
>Cybertaxonomic Webjournal as source journal for its Impact Factor. 
>Zootaxa is a good model. It has an impact factor, it is a somehow 
>central journal for taxonomy - and the impact factor is 0.612.
>The IF doesn't work for taxonomy even if there is one central 
>journal. First, we don't have the critical mass of authors citing, 
>and second only the citations in the first and second year after a 
>publication count for the IF. Have a look at any taxonomical 
>monograph and count how many citations were from the two years 
>preceding publication. This pattern won't change significantly with 
>a centralized web-journal.

Actually, yes, it would, and it would be MUCH higher than 0.612 - 
right now, all those new fossils and other charismatic taxa published 
in Nature and Science get huge numbers of citations, which only help 
boost Nature and Science's IFs (the rich get richer). Until Zootaxa 
becomes the place where descriptions of ALL the new birds and 
dinosaurs and orchids and monkeys and such are published, it's going 
to continue to have a low IF. It's called a "vicious circle".

I also very much suspect that we are not far from the point where 
online manuscripts will all start having their "impact" measured by 
how many links are made to them; if links are made to taxonomic 
descriptions every time that taxon's name is cited somewhere else, 
then that WOULD change the impact of taxonomy (again, thinking of 
spelling them out in a bibliography is, as others here have noted, 
utterly impractical - but a hyperlink to a name that appears in text 
is NOT impractical, even for a giant faunistic/floristic listing) - 
though, obviously, most of the links will STILL be to charismatic 
taxa. The kinds of descriptions that would see the most dramatic 
change in perceived impact would probably be new descriptions of 
organisms that are either pests, biocontrol agents, biochemically 
interesting, or endangered; these are things which can have many 
papers written ABOUT them shortly after they are described, but those 
papers ordinarily might *not* include a citation to the OD, or be 
indexed by Thomson.

>There will remain lots of private society journals anyway besides 
>the professional UCW.

But there's no good reason that those journals should be the place 
where new taxa are first described. That puts quality control in the 
hands of the private society journal editors, who may not even be 
taxonomists, or send papers to taxonomists for review. Just because 
the majority of them are good publication venues (with good editorial 
practices) doesn't mean they ALL are.

Along these lines, Donat Agosti wrote:

>If all the new taxa and articles are as well registered at institutions like
>Zoobank or IPNI/Tropicos then we might not need just one journal, because
>the 1,000 or so are virtually one.

They are NOT virtually one, because each of those journals has its 
own editorial policy, and editors, and reviewers (if any!), and a 
number of them do NOT adhere to standards that the taxonomic 
community considers essential, like Code-compliance. If all 
"registration" is to you is a "rubber stamp" that can be used to 
condone *bad science* simply because it made it into print, that 
would do *nothing* to help ensure standards that we, as a community, 
wish to have in place, some of which even the Codes do not require 
(because the Codes are about nomenclature only, and not ethics). The 
only way that review can be standardized is if every manuscript is 
submitted to the same reviewers: namely, every taxonomist in the 
world, simultaneously (open review, in the most literal conceivable 
sense).

Sincerely,
-- 

Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314        skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
              http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82