[Taxacom] Open Access taxonomy

Wed May 25 10:50:09 CDT 2011

"a world where increasingly
reading texts is not the modus operandi"

I wonder what world that is. How would science work without reading text as a central modus operandi? Taxonomy, as any science, is MUCH more than data. Extracting and handling data efficiently is one thing. Interpreting, discussing, falsifying and corroborating data and hypothesis should be the main focus of science. Yes, the data should be available, but they always have been, sometimes readily, sometimes needing some efforts (like walking to a library or writing a colleague).
I currently see the danger that we are getting increasingly impatient, want to invest a lot of time and effort to make data readily available (a good thing!) - for a dwindling population of taxonomists working with those data and a skyrocketing population of taxonomically uninitiated people using uninterpreted data as if they were the pure truth.

I don't know why I wrote this. It's not a productive comment. It's that sort of day.

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/science/museum-scientists/frank-krell
lab page: http://www.dmns.org/krell-lab

-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Donat Agosti
Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2011 9:35 AM
To: 'Roderic Page'; 'Taxacom'
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Open Access taxonomy

I guess, taxonomy today is pdf, email.

There is a little contrast to the world around it:

"GBIF is seeking a committed and proactive Knowledge Systems Engineer (...)

Interested candidates should have knowledge of RDF, OWL, SKOS, the OBO
Foundry, Open Ontology Repository principles, the TDWG ontologies and the
broad Life Sciences ontology landscape, as well as an understanding of other
well-known, generic vocabularies such as Dublin Core, FOAF, etc.  Knowledge
of principles of the semantic web and Linked Open Data are desirable.
Practical experience with existing KOS systems such as the OBO Foundry,
BioPortal, Collaborative Protégé, Pool Party or other systems would be
highly beneficial.   A key asset is  the capacity to identify, communicate
and facilitate the practical and pragmatic application of KOS principles
that facilitate the uptake and use of GBIF-mediated data and
infrastructure."

[tdwg mail list from 5/24/2011 by Dave Remsen]

Pretty clear, that pdfs (and with it a large part of taxonomy) do not play a
role in the big world beyond taxonomy proper, a world where increasingly
reading texts is not the modus operandi.

Donat

-----Original Message-----
From: Roderic Page [mailto:r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk] 
Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2011 7:57 PM
To: Taxacom
Cc: Donat Agosti
Subject: Open Access taxonomy

Dear All,

At the risk of channelling Donat Agosti, I find it somewhat depressing that
only two of the International Institute for Species Exploration's Top 10 new
species for 2010 (http://species.asu.edu/Top10 ) were published as Open
Access articles (see
http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2011/05/top-ten-new-species-described-in-2010.htm
l or http://tinyurl.com/3j69cw5 ).

Choice of where to publish is obviously influenced by several, sometimes
conflicting criteria, but it's a pity that so much of taxonomy's output lies
behind paywalls.

Regards

Rod

---------------------------------------------------------
Roderic Page
Professor of Taxonomy
Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine
College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences
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
AIM: rodpage1962 at aim.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1112517192
Twitter: http://twitter.com/rdmpage
Blog: http://iphylo.blogspot.com
Home page: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html

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