[Taxacom] Bibliographical confusion between BHL and Wiley
David Campbell
pleuronaia at gmail.com
Wed Oct 23 14:25:54 CDT 2013
An advantage of having meaningful information recognizable in a DOI is that
it is easier to spot likely problems. It's immediately obvious that there
is probably something wrong with a bibliographic entry that cites Linnaeus,
1578. It's not so obvious whether *10.1073/pnas.1319679110 * should
actually be *10.1073/pnas.1316979110 *although it might be possible to
design an automated check of some sort, or automated linkage of DOI and
human-useable bibliographic information. Of course, this doesn't fix
problems of incorrect data entry; even today publishers are often careless
about giving the correct date of publishing, and online before print has
made things messier (is this the final version or the before final
corrections version and when did it actually appear...).
On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 4:12 AM, Roderic Page <r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk> wrote:
> Hi Stephen,
>
> No, it doesn't. It is an "opaque identifier", which means you ascribe
> meaning to the DOI string at your peril.
>
> You could read the DOI "10.1111/een.1837.2.issue-1" as being the journal
> for the year 1837, volume 2, issue 1, which is obviously how Wiley
> generated the string "een.1837.2.issue-1", but this doesn't mean that if we
> discover the metadata is wrong the DOI itself is "wrong". In the same way,
> I guess the string "een" refers to the journal "Ecological Entomology",
> which Wiley regards as the current name of this journal (not surprisingly
> it is struggling with the somewhat complicated history of the journal). But
> this doesn't mean the DOI is wrong.
>
> It may well be confusing, but only if you treat the DOI as informative.
> Often times this works fine, but it is not by design. If the publisher
> discovers an error in the metadata, and they've used that to create the DOI
> string, then the DOI string does not change (unlike in biological taxonomy
> where we change the identifier - the taxon name - for example, when
> moving a species to a new genus). Some publishers avoid this possible
> source of confusion by making the DOI hard to interpret (e.g., a number, a
> non-obvious string, etc.). The most extreme variant of this is something
> like a UUID, which is (almost) impossible to invest with meaning, and also
> rather ugly.
>
> There is a tradeoff between making an identifier human-friendly, and
> avoiding people investing a particular string with meaning. DOIs may look
> meaningful, and often times the inference you make may be correct, but this
> is not guaranteed.
>
> Regards
>
> Rod
>
> On 22 Oct 2013, at 08:40, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
>
> > Except that the DOI itself encodes the metadata, so there will be a
> mismatch (as opposed to an arbitrary DOI), i.e. some DOIs containing 1837
> are actually articles from the 1836 volume. This may cause confusion!
> >
> > From: Roderic Page <r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk>
> > To: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
> > Cc: Paul Kirk <P.Kirk at kew.org>; Taxa com <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
> > Sent: Tuesday, 22 October 2013 8:33 PM
> > Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Bibliographical confusion between BHL and Wiley
> >
> > Hi Stephen,
> >
> > Yes, metadata errors happen. But this is an advantage of DOIs in the
> sense that if we cite them, the link to the actual document is retained,
> regardless of errors in the metadata. In the same way, if your bank has
> your name incorrectly spelt but you can still access your bank account
> using the account number, then the thing that matters (your access to your
> money) is still there. It might hinder discoverability ("no, it's Stephen
> with a 'ph'") but the link remains intact.
> >
> > Regards
> >
> > Rod
> >
> > On 22 Oct 2013, at 07:57, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
> >
> >> It appears that Wiley has messed up its metadata, which is unfortunate
> since the registered DOIs encode the incorrect metadata! At least 2 issues
> are affected..
> >>
> >> Stephen
> >>
> >> From: Paul Kirk <P.Kirk at kew.org>
> >> To: 'Stephen Thorpe' <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>; Taxa com <
> taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
> >> Sent: Tuesday, 22 October 2013 7:40 PM
> >> Subject: RE: [Taxacom] Bibliographical confusion between BHL and Wiley
> >>
> >>
> >> If the binders of the journal at the Smithsonian got the correct title
> page (http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/13496974) associated with the
> associated parts the scanning of the object at BHL has to be correct - this
> could be confirmed if other Libraries who hold this item have the same
> title page + ToC.
> >>
> >> Cannot check what Wiley has, behind a paywall.
> >>
> >> Paul
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [mailto:
> taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Stephen Thorpe
> >> Sent: 21 October 2013 23:10
> >> To: Taxa com
> >> Subject: [Taxacom] Bibliographical confusion between BHL and Wiley
> >>
> >> What is going on here, can anyone tell me? What BHL has as Transactions
> of the Entomological Society of London vol. 1 part 1 (1836) (
> http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/13496972), Wiley has as vol. 2 part 1
> (1837) (
> http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/een.1837.2.issue-1/issuetoc)!
> Wtf!
> >>
> >> This is a good example, by the way, of a data confusion!
> >>
> >> Stephen
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >>
> >> The Taxacom Archive back to 1992 may be searched with either of these
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> >>
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> >>
> >> (2) a Google search specified as: site:
> mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom your search terms here
> >>
> >> Celebrating 26 years of Taxacom in 2013.
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Taxacom Mailing List
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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.
> >>
> >
> > ---------------------------------------------------------
> > 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
> >
> >
> >
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> 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
>
> _______________________________________________
> Taxacom Mailing List
> Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/taxacom
>
> 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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