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

Tue Sep 22 19:01:55 CDT 2015

Robin,

It is a tad unclear what point you are trying to make, and if you are agreeing or disagreeing with me (which, incidentally, is exactly the sort of thing that a reviewer should address for manuscripts, i.e. clarifying the point that the author is trying to make). Whatever your point, I would just like to comment that, for me, the most important thing is not to publish what I know so that others can know it as well (which is not to say that this isn't important), but rather to prevent readers from being misled by misinformation published by others, particularly if it contradicts what I might tell them, and yet the misinformation is selling itself as authoritative on the basis of "reputability" of institutions, equally carefully "groomed" reputations of authors, etc. Misinformation is worse than no information.

Cheers, Stephen

--------------------------------------------
On Wed, 23/9/15, Robin Leech <releech at telus.net> wrote:

 Subject: RE: [Taxacom] Pre-submission peer-review and online import of	specimen records from BOLD
 To: "'Stephen Thorpe'" <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>, "'Doug Yanega'" <dyanega at ucr.edu>
 Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
 Received: Wednesday, 23 September, 2015, 11:37 AM

 Stephen, 

 Shortly after I had finished
 my PhD, and the thesis had been accepted for publication,

 I had finished and had published several
 short but contributive papers in a fairly 
 short period of time in several journals. To
 me, getting the information out there was, 
 and always is to me, far more important than
 the particular journal I publish in.

 At that time, I was in Ottawa. At coffee one
 morning, an older, estblished taxonomist 
 said to me, in front of others, 

 "Robin, what are you
 doing?  Setting yourself up as an expert?  Everywhere I
 look I 
 see another new paper of
 yours." 

 I replied,
 "Not at all. I am trying to put the information out
 there so that others 
 know what I know, so
 that they do not have to ask me for IDs. They can look and
 ID 
 things for themselves."

 There was a moment while he
 and several of his buddies guffawed, then I added, 

 "But, on the other hand,
 if you don't publish much, everyone has to send material

 to you for ID.  In that case, you are seen
 as the expert."

 I
 heard no more caustic comments from him - ever.  In fact,
 he became rather pleasant
 after that.

 Robin

 -----Original Message-----
 From: Taxacom [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu]
 On Behalf Of Stephen Thorpe
 Sent:
 September-22-15 4:03 PM
 To: Doug Yanega
 Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
 Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Pre-submission
 peer-review and online import of specimen records from
 BOLD

 I wouldn't take
 too much notice of Doug's sermon about Wikipedia. It
 works OK for very simple stuff, but not for anything else.
 It isn't only vandals and/or crackpots who get blocked
 from editing. There are many "power games" going
 on behind the scenes. Everybody wants to do things their
 way, and nobody likes anyone coming in and making
 contributions on a significantly large scale. Actually very
 little taxonomy/biodiversity related stuff gets done now at
 all on Wikipedia. Doug's own contributions are really
 loittle more than a drop in an ocean of oceans! The reason
 why it comes up first in a Google search has nothing
 whatsoever to do with the quality of content. It is
 unfortunate that the very first thing a young person might
 find on a topic could well be a load of Wikipedia
 rubbish.

 Stephen

 --------------------------------------------
 On Wed, 23/9/15, Doug Yanega <dyanega at ucr.edu>
 wrote:

  Subject: Re:
 [Taxacom] Pre-submission peer-review and online import of
 specimen records from BOLD
  To: 
  Cc: "taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu"
 <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
  Received: Wednesday, 23 September, 2015, 9:38
 AM

  On 9/22/15 12:50 PM,
 Neal
  Evenhuis wrote:
  >
 No Doug, the problem is
  not the print
 journals. They do what businesses do
  >
 -- they make money.
  >

 > The problem(s) are
  academic systems
 that evaluate their professors on the
  >
 basis of the journals they publish in (the

 higher impact the better). That
  > has
  resulted in the "Big Power
 Publishers" to have
  academics by
 the
  > short-and-curlies

 (actually more like racketeering) and can thus charge
  > oodles of money to subscribe and
 authors
  are forced to shy away from
  > online
  only/low impact
 journals in order to get high ranking,

 rewards,
  > evals, etc.

 >
  > Once the evaluation
  system for taxonomists changes, taxonomists
 can feel
  > free to publish elsewhere
 than high impact
  print journals because
 they are
  > no
  longer
 being held hostage by the current academic evaluation
  system.
  I'm not trying to
 be overly
  contentious, as I do see your
 point, but: 
  can anyone offer any
 statistics to back this
  up? Specifically,
 if you 
  ignore fossil taxa

 entirely, just for the moment, what percentage of all 
  cumulative taxonomic works, worldwide,
 appear
  in legitimately "high 
  impact"
  journals? My
 impression is that it is a very small

 percentage; 
  in fact, for many of the
  taxonomists I know (mostly working on 
  arthropods), if they stopped publishing in
  their present journals of 

 choice and
  switched to, say, Zootaxa or
 ZooKeys, their impact factor

  would probably go UP rather than down. I
  honestly don't think I've ever 
  heard of a taxonomist (who did not work on
  fossils) whose job was 

 imperiled by the low
  impact factor of their
 publications, as opposed to 
  how much grant
 money they brought in, or some
  other less
 arbitrary 
  criteria. As such,
  while I have little doubt it exists, I have to
 wonder 
  just how serious a force this is
 behind our
  present predicament.

  Peter
  Rauch
 wrote:
  > How does the

 "peer", as in "peer review", play in
  this
  >
 still-vaguely-described "open

 access" process ?
  >
  > What mechanism(s) would be needed /
 useful
  to deal with the presumably huge
  > number
  of
 "reviews" of also-presumably

 still-not-published draft documents ?

 >
  > It's easy enough
  to say that poor quality reviews can simply be
 ignored,
  or
  > can be
 put to rest handily by other,
  more
 competent reviewers. But, that
  >
  itself implies that there will be such more
 competent
  reviewers who will
  > indeed have the time
  and
 patience to read, think about, and comment on
  > those incompetent reviews.
  >
  > I understand --I
  think!?!-- the notion of removing physical
 paper from the
  > final production
 process, and I understand
  --I think-- the
 notion of "open
  >

 access" to information.
  >
  > What I am asking about is what will be
 the
  mechanisms to address the
  > then-open
  floodgates to
 gratuitous(?) commentary on draft works such
  that a
  > "fair"
 (and
  authoritative / professional) handling
 of all that input
  is
  >
 possible ?

  Open resources
 like Wikipedia deal with this
  easily, and
 admirably, and 
  routinely. Any
  Wikipedia article has one visible
 manifestation, open to 
  editing, while
 commentary goes on a linked
  "talk
 page". The editing 
  history
  is timestamped, and visible, and subject to
 reversion to 
  previous versions if
 necessary - as is the talk
  page. There are
 many 
  rules in place

 regarding proper editing procedures and especially 
  etiquette, and editors who cannot abide by
  those rules (e.g., vandalism) 
  have their
  edits reverted, or
 if they are persistent and disruptive,

  they can be banned (short-term or
  long-term), as has happened to many 
  trolls
  and crackpots who have
 tried to set up shop on Wikipedia.
  That 
  kind of behavior is spotted and weeded
  out very quickly, because there 
  are lots of
  eyes watching.
 The floodgates on Wikipedia are already open

  - to the entire world, in
 fact - and yet it
  functions quite well, 
  because it is
  self-policing,
 based on explicit policies. Transparency 

 and inclusivity go a long way, and synergize
  well. Articles on WP 

 increase in quality,
  ratchet-like, over
 time, and setbacks are always 
  only
 temporary. If you had a single public

 review forum that included 
  all of the
  world's taxonomists, then it would
 function wonderfully
  well, 
  because nothing would slip through
  the proverbial cracks, and if we 
  followed
  the example of
 Wikipedia for editing policies, your worst

 fears 
  about gratuitous commentary would
 not
  be realized.

  I suggest this
  challenge for
 those of you who are skeptical: take a 

 moment right now to enter the name of a

 higher-level taxon you know very 
  well
  (family or higher) into Google. The odds are
 very good that
  a 

 Wikipedia entry will be the top hit, or
  at
 least one of the top 5. Open 
  the
  Wikipedia article, and see how much of it is
 legitimately
  inaccurate 

 (not incomplete - that is
  unavoidable - or
 slightly out-of-date, I mean 
  actual
 factual errors as in "this is not
  true
 now and never has been 
  true"). It
  should be pretty rare to find such errors, and
 it would be

  even rarer if
 more taxonomists spent more
  time on
 Wikipedia. 
  Self-policing is an
  approach that can and does work, and works
 better 
  and better with increasing
 community buy-in. I
  maintain that the same

  would apply to
  online
 review of scientific works.

  Sincerely,

 --

  Doug Yanega     
 Dept. of Entomology 
       Entomology
 Research Museum
  Univ. of California,
 Riverside, CA 92521-0314 
     skype:
 dyanega
  phone: (951)

 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
                http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
     "There are some enterprises
  in which a careful disorderliness

     is the true
 method" - Herman Melville,
  Moby Dick,
 Chap. 82

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 _______________________________________________
 Taxacom Mailing List
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 The Taxacom Archive back to 1992 may be
 searched at: http://taxacom.markmail.org

 Celebrating 28 years of
 Taxacom in 2015.