[Taxacom] Pre-submission peer-review and online import of specimen records from BOLD

[Lyubomir Penev]

Dear Taxacommers,



I would like to point your attention to some new features and tools that might
be of prime interest to taxonomists. Feedback would be most appreciated.


1) Pre-submission peer-review: The authors preparing their manuscripts for
the Biodiversity Data Journal <http://bdj.pensoft.net>  can now invite
reviewers to look through the manuscript still during the authoring process
in the ARPHA Writing Tool <http://pwt.pensoft.net/> (the former Pensoft
Writing Tool, or PWT). After submission, in case the subject editor
respects the pre-submission reviews (s/he can also invite additional
reviews, if needed) and accepts the manuscript, the latter can be published
within just a couple of days. This feature might be especially useful for
taxonomists working in small research communities formed around taxa of
interest. In such communities it is almost a norm that all know each other
and the so called "blind" and "independent" review is usually neither of
the two, but only slows down formal publication of species descriptions,
nomenclatural acts, checklists, etc.


This feature can be used on author's choice, otherwise the manuscript will
go for the usual post-submission review.


2) Online import of specimen records in​to manuscripts from the
Barcode-of-Life data platform (BOLD <http://www.boldsystems.org/>). For
this the author needs to place either a BIN number or individual record
identifier(s) in the respective field and press a button. The records will
appear in the manuscript in seconds and the author can work on these
further, e.g. assign type status (in case the BIN clearly corresponds to a
 new species), name the species, add other necessary information
(description, diagnosis, etymology, etc.) and proceed with peer-review and
publication. In case the number of voucher specimen belonging to a BIN is
too high, one can import individual records as well. In the near future the
feature will also be available for importing specimen records from GBIF and
iDigBio.


The purpose of the tools is to streamline publication of new species
descriptions, re-descriptions of poorly-known barcoded species, other
taxonomic/nomenclatural novelties, and link publications to records  already
available from large data platforms. Ideally, this kind of published data
is expected to be of high quality, because taxonomists are used to include
in publications only those specimens they or their co-authors have studied
personally, but also because the data records will be formally
peer-reviewed in an online collaborative environment. The workflow is
expected to help also for the integration of the Linnean and DNA-based
taxonomies.


Cheers,

Lyubomir


-- 
Dr. Lyubomir Penev
Managing Director
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