[Taxacom] Fast track from new species discovery to publication and data sharing

[Lyubomir Penev]

The Biodiversity Data Journal published yesterday a
paper<http://biodiversitydatajournal.com/articles.php?id=1076>that is
remarkable for two reasons.

First, all data associated with a new species description (occurrences,
texts, images, tables, bibliographic information) have been automatically
exported from the article into a Darwin Core Archive, which in turn, has
been harvested and indexed by GBIF (links to the dataset
description<http://www.gbif.org/dataset/6a771467-656b-44c2-b48e-53e27681f9de>,
occurrences<http://www.gbif.org/occurrence/search?datasetKey=6a771467-656b-44c2-b48e-53e27681f9de>and
species <http://www.gbif.org/species/7348325>)  and EOL (link to species
page <http://eol.org/pages/39660477/overview>) on the day of publication.
The news here is that this new workflow opens the gates for small,
scattered and peer-reviewed datasets (such as for example a single
occurrence record of a single species). Thanks to the universal character
of this particular Darwin Core Archive format, developed as a collaborative
effort of GBIF, EOL, Plazi and Pensoft, both recently published and
historical data may be harvested and collated together automatically by any
aggregator or end user, who might be interested.

Second, the story of discovery and publication itself is interesting
enough. A group of scientists and students discovered a new species of
spider during a field course in Malaysian Borneo, supervised by the
Naturalis scientists Jeremy Miller and Menno Schilthuizen. Describing this
species became a course activity. The manuscript describing this species
was submitted to the journal through a satellite internet connection while
the course was still in the field. The manuscript was peer-reviewed and
published within two weeks of submission. So, it took less than 30 days
from first collection of the new species to its description, publication
and data sharing on GBIF and EOL. To compare, a recent study published
in Current
Biology <http://www.cell.com/current-biology/retrieve/pii/S0960982212012481>calculated
the average time from first collection to publication of new
species to be 21 years.

Here are the links to two press releases associated to this article: Despatch
from the field<http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-03/pp-dft032714.php>and
Students
on field course bag new spider
species<http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-03/pp-sof032714.php>
.

Regards,
Lyubomir

-- 
Dr. Lyubomir Penev
Managing Director
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