[Taxacom] Open review as a wiki

[alberto ballerio]

Dear All,
I would like to call your attention to the following
paper, which seems quite pertinent to the topic of
citation counts for authors of taxa:
Werner, Y.L. 2006. The case of impact factor versus
taxonomy: a proposal. Journal of natural History
40(21–22): 1285–1286.
Best wishes,
               Alberto

--- Frank.Krell at dmns.org ha scritto:

> 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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