[Taxacom] Fwd: Taxonomic revision, citations

Wed Oct 28 16:44:50 CDT 2009

This is particularly obvious when you look at average date of last
revision.  Assuming that someone using a revision to identify things in
their papers should cite it (too often not done, but for the sake of
argument...), very seldom would that paper be recent enough to be counted.

In our 2003 review of the literature on North American beetle species,
hardly an abandoned group, we found that for 8 major subfamilies,
representing 5 of the 10 largest beetle families -- taxa with an aggregate
of 280 genera -- the mean most recent published keys were
1943/1943/1944/1945/1947/1948/1976/1978, with a last-best-key range of
1876 - 1999.  In 2003, not one revision would have made it into that 3
year cut off.

Unfortunately, 95 of the 208 have never had a key published at all.

The useful half-life of revisions is very long.

Michael Ivie

Marske, K. A., and M. A. Ivie. 2003. Beetle Fauna of the United States and
Canada. Coleopterists Bulletin 57:  495-503.

> The third and also very significant factor that distorts (downwards) the
> actual citation of taxonomic works is the practice of the citation
> compilers
> of only looking at citations for, say, 3 years after the publication of
> the
> paper.  Citations taking place after 3 years are not counted.  The
> implication is that science works fast, and any publication more than 3
> years old has had its citations asymptote to zero and all of its useful
> scientific content wrung out of it.  We all know that taxonomic literature
> has a much greater halflife.  I regularly cite books and journal articles
> from 100 years ago, and in most papers I have written the number of
> citations per decade stays pretty even from 2000-2010 back to 1950-1960.
> Some kinds of science simply work at different time scales.
>
> -- Alan
>
> Alan Weakley, Curator and Adjunct Assistant Professor
> University of North Carolina Herbarium (NCU), North Carolina Botanical
> Garden
> Department of Biology and Curriculum for the Environment and Ecology
> UNC-Chapel Hill
> Campus Box 3280, 419 Coker Hall
> Chapel Hill NC 27599-3280
> 919.962.0578
> www.herbarium.unc.edu
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of
> Frank.Krell at dmns.org
> Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 4:38 PM
> To: myrmica at hotmail.com; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Fwd: Taxonomic revision, citations
>
> Actually, taxonomic papers are more frequently cited than commonly
> assumed.
> The low citation rate in commercially available databases (Web of Science,
> Scopus) is a result of two factors:
>
> 1. the coverage of those databases. A very low portion of taxonomic
> journals
> are covered as source journals, e.g. Science Citation Index Expanded
> covers
> only 27 entomological journals that publish taxonomical content, out of
> about 900 existing entomological journals that publish taxonomically
> relevant content (Nature 415 (2002), p. 957). Comparing the coverage of
> the
> citations of my own papers in Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar
> with
> the citations I happened to spot over the last 20 years, I found that Web
> of
> Science contained 25.7%, Scopus 14.3% and Google Scholar 24.4 % of the
> citations of my papers. [Krell, FT 2009. The poverty of citation
> databases:
> data mining is crucial for fair metrical evaluation of research
> performance.
> BioScience 59(1): 6-7 - if you want a pdf, let me know] Citations of my
> taxonomic papers were particularly underrepresented.
>
> 2. the weird distinction between literature references and authorities of
> taxon names. Authors of names are frequently cited, but not contained in
> the
> literature cited. This might be caused by the misunderstanding that
> authors
> of taxa are part of the names of taxa, but they are simple references to
> the
> original description, nothing more. It is a luxury in the taxonomic
> literature that we deliberately not give credit to authors of taxonomic
> names by not including those cited references in the 'literature cited'.
> Recently some mycologists published a plead to change this practice
> (Seifert, K.A., Crous, P.W. & Frisvad, J.C. 2008: Correcting the impact
> factors of taxonomic journals by Appropriate Citation of Taxonomy (ACT).
> Persoonia 20: 105; www.persoonia.org/issue/20/08.pdf).
>
> Cheers
>
> Frank
>
> Dr Frank T. Krell
> Curator of Entomology
> Commissioner, International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature Chair,
> ICZN ZooBank Committee 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/Biographies/kr
> ellFrank.htm
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Roberto Keller
> Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 12:18 PM
> To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Subject: [Taxacom] Fwd: Taxonomic revision
>
>>
>> stupid question: is there soem nice crisp definition for a 'taxonomic
>> revision'.
>>
>
> How about "A basic and fundamental scientific work that will nevertheless
> never be cited"
>
> Here's a good one for entomologists:
> *Bolton, B.* 2007. How to conduct large-scale taxonomic revisions in
> Formicidae, pp 52-71. *In* Snelling, R. R., B. L. Fisher, and P. S. Ward
> (eds) *Advances in ant systematics (Hymenoptera: Formicidae): homage to E.
> O. Wilson - 50 years of contributions*. Memoirs of the American
> Entomological Institute, 80.
>
> PDF available here (courtesy of antbase.org) :
> http://antbase.org/ants/publications/21274/21274.pdf
>
> --
> Roberto A. Keller, PhD
> roberto at kellerperez.com
> http://roberto.kellerperez.com/
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