[Taxacom] Intellectual rights

[John Longino]

I started posting random taxonomic info and suggestions on a website a long time ago, much like Brian Taylor’s, but I had a different attitude. I felt a personal website was a great way to capture all those little taxonomic nuggets that weren’t part of a peer-reviewed work. To me it was sort of a taxonomic “freebie bin” that people (including myself) could mine for bits of info without feeling obligated to treat it as a formal publication. No citation burden. If people wanted to thank me in the acknowledgments or something, great, but no expectation or obligation. I’m happy to keep it that way. Taxonomy needs more peer review, not less. 

Jack Longino
University of Utah


On Dec 13, 2015, at 3:09 AM, Dr Brian Taylor <dr.brian.taylor at ntlworld.com> wrote:

> 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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