[Taxacom] motivating data publication

[Bob Mesibov]

Hi, Mark.

Excellent article, very clearly written. Two questions (not major ones) come to mind:

(1) What kinds of data acquired/used by taxonomists don't get published already in the normal course of print and/or online taxonomic publication, and should therefore go to data centres? I'm not wondering here about data-in-hand delayed for years before publication, that's a different issue.

(2) If the discovery and documentation of life becomes more and more a grabbing and uploading of data willy-nilly from the natural world, will taxonomists need to spend more and more of their time wandering through data centres, asking the simple question, 'Is this new?' If so, does taxonomic procedure need to change to allow formalisation of answers to that question?

I'm inspired to ask no. 2 because I'm a millipede specialist, and Flickr and other image sites have become for me a rich source of 'OMG wot the hell is THAT?' moments. Geotagging, reference-sizing and dating such images in a data centre would be great, as would adding private contact details for the image-grabber.
-- 
Dr Robert Mesibov
Honorary Research Associate
Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, and
School of Zoology, University of Tasmania
Home contact: PO Box 101, Penguin, Tasmania, Australia 7316
(03) 64371195; 61 3 64371195
Website: http://www.qvmag.tas.gov.au/mesibov.html