[Taxacom] motivating data publication

[Doug Yanega]

By coincidence, someone over on the entomo-l listserv just asked - 
essentially - about the merits of publishing a very tiny data set (in 
his case, a description of a single bee nest, presumably for a 
species whose nests are presently undescribed). This ties in 
logically with the topic of Mark's paper (allow me to paraphrase my 
pertinent comments from that other listserv):

What would be nice to know is whether there is any journal (print or 
electronic) that publishes natural history data that has no page 
charges and handles submissions and reviews electronically and with 
fast turnaround; having a streamlined venue for publication of such 
data could potentially be a major boost to the field (assuming, of 
course, that people are getting trustworthy expert species 
identifications), since not many potential contributors are going to 
want to incur significant expense to publish a two- or three-page 
note.

To expand the concept: how many insect host plant records, or 
host-parasite associations, do you think are in print compared to the 
actual available knowledge base? It's got to be the proverbial tip of 
the iceberg. Wouldn't it be nice if there were a place one could 
simply submit such observations to make them more widely known?

The bottom line: we need a way to give *authorship* (with citation 
and DOI) for submission of natural history data. Then if one has a 
single bee nest, or a single reared larva, or whatever, one can get 
credit for the contribution, no matter how small. That would mobilize 
a lot of tiny data sets. Yes, there are lots of initiatives in place 
now to mobilize georeferenced distributional data of use to 
taxonomists, but there are other types of data that don't seem to be 
getting much attention.

Mark's conclusion (that it is mostly about giving credit to the 
person submitting data) is certainly true here: it's the overwhelming 
factor discouraging people from making natural history data 
available. BUT: there is something more fundamental at work here that 
I don't think is really made explicit in Mark's analysis, and that is 
basically about HOW does one publish (this is more than the matter of 
page charges). If a potential author/contributor does not KNOW any 
venue that would accept their submission, then that alone will 
prevent them from even considering making any effort, regardless of 
whether or not they would receive credit.

Few people seem to be willing to overcome that hurdle - and some are 
novel and exemplary in how they do so (e.g., the VAST amount of 
natural history data, all tied to vouchers, supplied by Dan Janzen's 
*amazing* caterpillar rearing database at 
http://janzen.sas.upenn.edu/caterpillars/database.lasso). That's 
something that no journal COULD have ever published.

What *are* the prospects for those folks who have natural history 
data, but are at the opposite end of the spectrum from Dan Janzen? Is 
there or will there ever be a place for them to submit their data AND 
where those data will be effectively integrated into the community's 
knowledge base?

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