[Taxacom] Citing Authors for Animals

[Stephen Thorpe]

Tony,
In the internet age, we should be directly linking author/date to the original publication (or at least a citation of the original publication, with a link to content where available).
Cheers,
Stephen

--------------------------------------------
On Mon, 19/10/15, Tony Rees <tonyrees49 at gmail.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Citing Authors for Animals
 To: "Mary Barkworth" <Mary.Barkworth at usu.edu>
 Cc: "Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
 Received: Monday, 19 October, 2015, 9:08 AM
 
 Hi Mary,
 
 You wrote:
 
 ...the scientific names in ITIS are not, in
 themselves a problem. It is
 > connecting
 them to the appropriate author and parent – which is a
 simple
 > relationship to set up once one
 has downloaded the file for one’s taxa.
 >
 
 I should
 probably point out that, as a botanist, you will be used to
 a
 "standard form" of each distinct
 author (e.g. lots of Smiths will each be
 cited differently, in their own unique way)
 which neatly solves the
 disambiguation
 problem for author names for botanists, In zoological
 usage
 this is not so, so there will be many
 authors cited e.g. simply as "Smith"
 who are in fact different (only Smiths liable
 to be confused, for example
 different Smiths
 working on the same group in a similar time period, would
 normally be distinguished via the use of
 initials). This means modelling
 such names
 as the equivalent of real persons in a database is not
 really
 possible without a lot of additional
 work (which I am sure you do not want
 to
 do...). I and (I believe) most others do not attempt to do a
 lot more
 with zoological author names in
 large scale data systems than treat them as
 a plain text extension following the scientific
 name (optionally searchable
 if desired) -
 the exceptions to this are workers in a restricted field
 (such as Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes) who
 go further, research the
 initials and
 identity for every author, and so distinguish between them
 in
 order to link to publications etc.
 
 Just mentioning this in case
 it changes what you plan to do,
 
 Best regards - Tony
 
 -- 
 Tony Rees, New South Wales,
 Australia
 https://about.me/TonyRees
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