[Taxacom] Taxonomic journal digitisation league table

Tue Oct 8 08:25:27 CDT 2013

True, something is generally better than nothing, unless the poor-quality
copy misses key information and is thus misleading.  But it would not be
hard to do it better, and much easier to address a problem while one is
doing the scanning than having to chase down a copy again.  Also, "It's
online so the original is not needed" is often untrue.

On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 9:19 AM, Paul Kirk <P.Kirk at kew.org> wrote:

> Better scanned less than perfectly than not at all - other things being
> equal - especially for those who do not have access to the 'massive old
> volumes' you refer to.
>
> I say well done Google, in this very explicit case I might add ... ;-)
>
> Paul
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [mailto:
> taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of David Campbell
> Sent: 08 October 2013 14:14
> Cc: TAXACOM taxacom
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Taxonomic journal digitisation league table
>
> The mere fact that an article or journal is listed as being online does
> not guarantee that the quality is adequate for use.  Illustrations in
> particular are often of inadequate quality, and some large-scale
> digitization efforts seem not to have allowed time for proofreading (Google
> comes to mind).  Sometimes patchy quality strongly suggests that the
> original scan was good but later processing was unsuitable (for example, a
> search for the Iconographie complète des coquilles fossiles de l'Éocène des
> environs de Paris turns up a number of plates where some figures are good
> and some have been butchered into unrecognizable blobs).  I don't think
> I've ever encountered a fold-out page that Google actually unfolded and
> scanned properly.  I've scanned enough massive old volumes myself to know
> that it's not the most exciting task in the world, but I use my scans and
> check to make certain that they turned out well.
>
> Of course, older journals have a tendency to make things hard for the
> digitizer, especially if individual articles are being separated.  Plates
> are often stuck in random places, or all at the back of the volume, with
> specimens from multiple articles fit onto one plate.  In the old days, the
> journal Nautilus seemingly accumulated illustrations until a plate was full
> and then printed it, not necessarily in the same number as the accompanying
> article.  There's also the habit of continuing an article in several
> pieces.  Modern publishing has re-created the problem with the often
> evanescent and elusive online-only supplementary content.
>
> Thus, just as for taxonomic databases, catalogs of online journal
> availability require some sort of indication as to whether the quality has
> been checked if they are going to be useful.
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 7:39 AM, Roderic Page <r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> > I've done a quick visualisation of the digital availability of
> > taxonomic journals, based on data in BioNames (http://bionames.org).
> > There's a blog post about the table at
> >
> http://iphylo.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/which-taxonomic-journals-should-be.htmlandyou can see the complete table here:
> > http://bionames.org/labs/coverage/
> >
> > The table is colour-coded to flag major gaps in digitisation, namely
> > those journals that have little or no online presence (at least, that
> > BioNames knows about). There are some major journals (1000's of
> > articles) that are mostly inaccessible (e.g., "Bulletin de la Société
> > entomologique de France", "Revue de zoologie et de botanique
> > africaines", "The Pan-Pacific entomologist", "The Entomologist's
> > monthly magazine", "Senckenbergiana biologica" to name a few). A
> > number of major Russian and Chinese journals have limited online
> > presence (although in part this because I've not added had time to all
> the available articles from those journals).
> >
> > I'm hoping that this list will indicate the scale of what remains to
> > be done if we want to digitise all the animal taxonomic literature.
> > I'm also hoping that projects such as BHL could use this list to help
> > decide what journals to prioritise for scanning.
> >
> > If anyone is involved in the publication of a journal that is in the
> "red"
> > or "orange"  zones then I hope they would consider digitising that
> > journal and making their contents accessible to the wider community. I
> > realise that this can be a complex issue, both in terms of the
> > financial implications for a scientific society or institution, and
> > the technical difficulty of digitising a journal. In terms of
> > digitising, the Biodiversity Heritage Library seems the obvious
> > organisation to help. A number of journals have made their back
> > catalogue available to BHL for scanning, sometimes as part of a mixed
> > strategy where recent articles are published by an organisation such as
> BioOne, and BHL has the back catalogue.
> >
> > Lastly, if anyone sees a journal that I have flagged as being mostly
> > offline but it does, in fact, have a web presence, please let me know
> > so I can add the links to BioNames.
> >
> > 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
> > Skype:          rdmpage
> > Facebook:       http://www.facebook.com/rdmpage
> > LinkedIn:       http://uk.linkedin.com/in/rdmpage
> > Twitter:                http://twitter.com/rdmpage
> > Blog:           http://iphylo.blogspot.com
> > Home page:      http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html
> > Wikipedia:      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roderic_D._M._Page
> > Citations:
> > http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=4Z5WABAAAAAJ
> > ORCID:          http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7101-9767
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
> > The Taxacom Archive back to 1992 may be searched with either of these
> > methods:
> >
> > (1) by visiting http://taxacom.markmail.org
> >
> > (2) a Google search specified as:  site:
> > mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  your search terms here
> >
> > Celebrating 26 years of Taxacom in 2013.
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Dr. David Campbell
> Assistant Professor, Geology
> Department of Natural Sciences
> Gardner-Webb University
> Boiling Springs NC 28017
> _______________________________________________
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> The Taxacom Archive back to 1992 may be searched with either of these
> methods:
>
> (1) by visiting http://taxacom.markmail.org
>
> (2) a Google search specified as:  site:
> mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  your search terms here
>
> Celebrating 26 years of Taxacom in 2013.
>

-- 
Dr. David Campbell
Assistant Professor, Geology
Department of Natural Sciences
Gardner-Webb University
Boiling Springs NC 28017