[Taxacom] Nature needs names: 60 new dragonflies from Africa

[Mark Costello]

The European Journal of Taxonomy is open access at no cost to authors and
other excellent taxonomy journals are OA at low cost.
On 11/12/2015 11:59 am, "Ellinor Michel" <e.michel at nhm.ac.uk> wrote:

> Hi Rod
>
> Your comments are valid, but surely directed to the authors! I posted this
> on their behalf, as I have more ready access to Taxacom posting at the
> moment. You might want to broaden the target your comments, as the story
> has been picked up by Science, and a number of other outlets. Overall, I'd
> say its terrific that some taxonomic groundwork is being celebrated.
>
> http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2015/12/explosion-new-dragonfly-species-results-animals-named-after-gorillas-pink-floyd
>
> I'm just guessing, but there are likely to be constraints on publishing
> costs from the authors' perspective so that OA was not an option. Thus the
> focus of this kind of very constructive criticism on your part should be
> the administrations of the organisations that the authors work for, the
> science funding agencies, and the publishers.
>
> In the meantime, this nice short publicity also does a nice job for
> publicising the topic, with beautiful photos
>
> http://africageographic.com/blog/60-new-species-dragonflies-discovered-africa/
>
> Cheers,
> Ellinor
>
> ________________________________
> From: Roderic Page [Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk]
> Sent: 11 December 2015 11:42
> To: Ellinor Michel
> Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Nature needs names: 60 new dragonflies from Africa
>
> Hi Ellinor,
>
> While I applaud the effort, and the dragonflies are wonderful, it’s hard
> to applaud the way this paper has been published:
>
> Does it in an open access journal? No
> Does the article have a DOI so that it can be easily cited? No
> Are the names registered with ZooBank? No
> Are the DNA sequences available in GenBank? No
> Is the data available for downloading? No*
> Has the distributional data been deposited in GBIF? No
>
> I don’t wish to take away from what has clearly been a lot of work, but
> surely we need to think about the best way to make all this hard work as
> widely accessible as possible? A PDF with wonderful pictures of dragonflies
> and low resolution maps does not represent the best that modern taxonomic
> publishing can offer.
>
> Regards
>
> Rod
>
> * The articles says "A list of collection codes and corresponding BOLD
> numbers can be down- loaded from the journal website (
> http://www.odonatologica.com)” This is not a link to the data, which I
> can’t see anywhere on the web site.
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> 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:  Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk<mailto:Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk>
> Tel:  +44 141 330 4778
> 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
> ORCID:  http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7101-9767
> Citations:  http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=4Z5WABAAAAAJ
> ResearchGate https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Roderic_Page
>
>
> On 11 Dec 2015, at 11:14, Ellinor Michel <e.michel at nhm.ac.uk<mailto:
> e.michel at nhm.ac.uk>> wrote:
>
> [posted on behalf of the primary author, Klaas-Douwe 'KD' B. Dijkstra]
>
> 'Dear colleagues,
>
> All awareness, conservation and research of nature starts with the
> question: which species is that? Names introduce species to humanity. It’s
> a biologist’s greatest importance today, but just now nature is under
> historic pressure, such research is getting less support.
>
> We aim to expose this paradox by naming 60 new dragonflies from Africa,
> increasing the number known by almost 10% at once. All are colourful and
> conspicuous, representing some of the most sensitive and beautiful of all
> biodiversity: freshwater, Earth’s most dense and threatened species
> richness — Africa, the continent that will change most in the 21st century
> — and dragonflies, the insects that may be among the best gauges of global
> change.
>
> We hope this message will be heard widely, so please share this as you
> wish, e.g. on blogs and to the local media, particularly in Africa itself.
>
> Press release: https://goo.gl/KGMsyC
> Info and images: https://goo.gl/vRoJSL
> Full publication: www.osmylus.com/index.php/downloads<
> http://www.osmylus.com/index.php/downloads><
> http://www.osmylus.com/index.php/downloads>
> Watch discovery of new species in DR Congo: youtu.be/Arr2k7dwzSU<
> http://youtu.be/Arr2k7dwzSU><http://youtu.be/Arr2k7dwzSU>
>
> Best wishes, also on behalf of my co-authors Jens and Nico, who have both
> made their exceptional contributions in their free time!
>
> Klaas-Douwe 'KD' B. Dijkstra
> Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden, The Netherlands
> Conservation Ecology and Entomology, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
> science.naturalis.nl/dijkstra<http://science.naturalis.nl/dijkstra><
> http://science.naturalis.nl/dijkstra>
>
> '
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