[Taxacom] Intellectual rights

[Stephen Thorpe]

Brian,

Certain factions within the scientific community will get away with whatever they can get away with. It would be interesting to know the specifics of the example that you allude to, but some general comments: 

(1) What would you do if they had done the same thing to a published journal article of yours? You could try reacting to any perceived plagiarism in exactly the same way;

(2) Nobody should publish a synonymy without offering supporting evidence. Did they do so? If so, then it may be fair enough for them to confirm the synonymy. They would be better not to claim the synonymy as "new", but claiming a "new synonymy" shouldn't really confer any advantage on them. It is a fairly mundane and insignificant thing;

(3) Given that the issue isn't 100% clear, perhaps they genuinely think that a synonymy requires "formalising" in a Code compliant publication in order to count? It would have been "nice" of them if they had mentioned that they were merely formalising a synonymy from your website, but not everybody is "nice".

Cheers, Stephen

--------------------------------------------
On Sun, 13/12/15, Dr Brian Taylor <dr.brian.taylor at ntlworld.com> wrote:

 Subject: [Taxacom] Intellectual rights
 To: Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
 Received: Sunday, 13 December, 2015, 11:09 PM
 
 Hello all,
 
 I wonder if any of you have any suggestions as to how to
 deal with a
 publication on Zookeys where the authors claim to have
 separated a
 previously well known ³species² into being a new junior
 synonym of two other
 species.  I ask this because, after examining fresh
 specimens, I posted that
 synonymization on my two websites, both archived by the
 British Library Web
 Archive, in 2009. The main website has been on-line in an
 evolving form
 since 1998.  The Zookeys authors make no reference of
 any sort to my works.
 They and other researchers from the organisation in
 question, headed by the
 subject editor for the present instance, have published a
 number of papers
 in Zootaxa and Zookeys over the past seven years or so but
 not once have
 they listed my sites as a source of information.  Many
 others have.  In
 2011, an author who the Zookeys writers do cite, wrote of my
 finding of the
 synonymy and had my website among his references.
 
 In the BZN Discussion on Electronic Publication, March 2009,
 I previsaged
 this situation by posing the questions ³What constitutes a
 publication? Who
 is a publisher?². I note that UK copyright law the content
 of a website is
 automatically protected and does not have to be registered
 as there is no
 register.
 
 Thanks in anticipation of your responses.
 
 Brian Taylor
 
 www.antsofafrica.org
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