[Taxacom] PHYTOTAXA, a new international journal for plant taxonomy

[Roderic Page]

My first reaction on seeing this is that it represents a missed  
opportunity. Replicating Zootaxa for plants may seem attractive  
(Zootaxa has had a tremendous impact on animal taxonomy), but to  
launch a new taxonomy journal in 2009 without any visible attempt to  
do the following seems crazy:

1. No full HTML text of XML, so data mining requires extracting from PDF

2. No identifiers for names. Why not link all plant names in the text  
to IPNI?

3. Why not register new names with IPNI (in the same way that  Zookeys  
registers names with Zoobank)?

4. Reference lists are not linked electronically (e.g., using DOIs).

5. No DOIs for the Phytotaxa papers themselves.

6. No RSS feed for the journal

It is disheartening that pumping PDFs out is seen as the best that we  
can do. Is this really the case? If it is then biodiversity  
informatics has failed, in which case is the failure one of:

1. producing tools publishers find useful

2. making people aware of the availability of those tools

3. convincing people of the utility of the kinds of things I've listed  
above

or some combination of all three?

In any event, I think this represents a spectacular example of a  
missed opportunity, and perhaps a sign that for all the glitz of e- 
Biosphere 09, we've made virtually no progress in the eight years  
since Zootaxa was launched.

Regards

Rod


On 23 Oct 2009, at 11:44, Maarten Christenhusz wrote:

> Dear colleagues,
>
>
>
> I am glad to announce that the first issue of Phytotaxa has been
> successfully launched. Phytotaxa is a new rapid international journal
> for accelerating the publication of botanical taxonomy. Articles are
> peer reviewed and publication is free for all authors. Open Access is
> available.
>
> We like to create a platform for plant taxonomists to publish their  
> new
> species, nomenclature, typification, monographs, revisions, floras and
> other taxonomy related articles, and hope for the support of the
> community to make this a success. We aim to publish accepted papers
> within a month after acceptance, making new names rapidly available  
> for
> use.
>
>
>
> You can read articles and find instructions for authors at:
> http://www.mapress.com/phytotaxa/
>
> We are presently looking for new manuscripts, and we are looking  
> forward
> to your contributions!
>
>
>
> Best wishes,
>
>
>
> Dr Maarten Christenhusz
>
> Flora Mesoamericana project
>
> Chief Editor Phytotaxa: http://www.mapress.com/phytotaxa
>
>
>
> Department of Botany
>
> The Natural History Museum
>
> Cromwell Road
>
> London SW7 5BD
>
> United Kingdom
>
>
>
> tel: [44] (0) 207 942 5108
>
>
>
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>
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>
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>

---------------------------------------------------------
Roderic Page
Professor of Taxonomy
DEEB, FBLS
Graham Kerr Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK

Email: r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
Tel: +44 141 330 4778
Fax: +44 141 330 2792
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