[Taxacom] Open review as a wiki

[kevin zelnio]

Hello,

"Unfortunately, while citing the original description for each taxon
mentioned in a paper is doable, and would lead to great emphasis on
making sure we have the right names, in many cases it will lead to immense
literature citations. "

Why not have an online supplemental bibliography then? With open access and
online publishing, this would not be a problem. For instance, PLoS has a
"Find this article online" search tool that will search PubMed and Google
Scholar, thus linking references full circle.  Such a online OA journal
could develop an agreement with Biodiversity Heritage library, and other
online resources caching taxonomic works, to link the original papers.

I understand that a thousand references is undesirable and bulky, but if
print is moving online, why not have a complete trail of references attached
to your paper? I think in order to save the field of taxonomy, we must adapt
to new practices that increase the value of the taxonomist, increasing
publishing higher cited worked. OA publishing will make the work more
accessible and searchable using various search engines. But actually citing
taxonomic papers will increase the various metrics that administrators use
to assess an individuals scientific impact.

As a community, we should strive to increase the visibility of our work and
the relevance of it to other fields, such as medicine (are we sure that
parasite is the really nasty life threatenings species or the more benign
one??), biodiversity and ecology, among other. Some may disagree, but I feel
a species name carries many ideas with it, some subjective and some
objective, some controversial and some more mainstream. The hard work and
dedication of the describer should not escape without the merit it deserves.
By not citing the original description you are saying that author's work was
not important enough to be recognized, its in effect a negligible study,
when in fact it is vital for understanding the rest of that organism's
biology, ecology, medicinal importance and status as unit in biodiversity
studies.

While my view is young and somewhat idealistic, it is the young and upcoming
taxonomists and systematicists that are being hurt by business as usual.

Best regards, Kevin
-- 
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Kevin Zelnio
Dept. of Biology
Pennsylvania State University
208 Mueller Lab
University Park, PA 16802
kaz146 at psu.edu
814-863-8360
CV: http://www.personal.psu.edu/kaz146/ZelnioCV.html
Deep Sea News: http://scienceblogs.com/deepseanews
The Other 95%: http://other95.blogspot.com
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