[Taxacom] Paywall our taxonomic tidbit

[Scott Thomson]

Personally I do not think this discussion is a waste of time. I have
actually enjoyed it. I also think it is an important discussion to have. I
say that with no judgement on any view put forth so far. On important
topics all views are worth hearing.

One thing that I think is important and particular to our field is how we
do our science. I am just looking at the literature side of our science
here, not types or anything they are another topic. Ok in much of science
we utilise the latest information, can often use reviews of original
articles that have been condensed into books etc. In taxonomy we cannot
just do that. We need the original descriptions to properly do the work we
do. Now whether that is some scrap of a paper from a now defunct journal
from over a century ago or some recent edition now stuck behind a paywall,
if its relevant to our study group we need that paper.

With older material copywrite is not usually an issue, its just finding
them. However the newer material is a problem at times. Yes I said earlier
that peer to peer is one means and for a lot of papers this works but as
was pointed out its not ideal, which I agree with. I mean I think if all
things were easy, which they are not, make every paper with a new taxon
that is on ZooBank be a link to the pdf. But that at present is not
realistic. So what I think we do need to figure out is how we ensure that
every new name paper is available for necessary revision if required.

That is where I would like to see us head.

Cheers, Scott

On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 5:59 PM, Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
wrote:

> Absolutely! I agree 100%. But it still poses a problem for taxonomy.
>
> Stephen
>
> --------------------------------------------
> On Tue, 19/1/16, Fred Schueler <bckcdb at istar.ca> wrote:
>
>  Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Paywall our taxonomic tidbit
>  To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
>  Received: Tuesday, 19 January, 2016, 8:40 AM
>
>  On 1/18/2016 2:32 PM,
>  Stephen Thorpe wrote:
>
>  >  Taxonomic publications fare badly by
>  recently developed metrics by which employers judge
>  employees.
>
>  * well,
>  that's a judgment against the metrics and the employers,
>  not
>  against taxonomy.
>
>  fred.
>  ------------------------------------------------------------
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>  & Aleta Karstad
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-- 
Scott Thomson
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