[Taxacom] iSpecies

[Roderic Page]

Hi Tony,

Why did I do it?

1. Because I could, and because it’s fun.

2. Because I’m interested in how much information we can get with minimum effort, partly as a bench mark for more sophisticated efforts. For example, iSpecies is simply lists of stuff, or dots on a map. What would a more sophisticated approach look like, and how would it provide more information for the user? These are things I’d like to explore.

3. I think there are big gaps in current tools (e.g., GBIF and EOL) in that they rarely link to the primary literature (i.e., properly with DOIs not some dumb string of text), and they ignore phylogenetics. So I’m interested in how easy it is to get that information.

4. I’m interested in exploring what minimum set of information for a species would be useful. The new iSpecies lacks genomics, barcodes, and links to original descriptions, so these are obvious things that could be added. Likewise a BHL/BioStor search is an obvious addition, and might be the next thing I add.

5. I’m not particularly having a go at EOL, although I think it’s still a project in search of a clear direction.

Regards

Rod

---------------------------------------------------------
Roderic Page
Professor of Taxonomy
Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine
College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences
Graham Kerr Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK

Email:  Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk<mailto:Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk>
Tel:  +44 141 330 4778
Skype:  rdmpage
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Blog:  http://iphylo.blogspot.com
ORCID:  http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7101-9767
Citations:  http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=4Z5WABAAAAAJ
ResearchGate https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Roderic_Page


On 26 Jan 2016, at 00:46, Tony Rees <tonyrees49 at gmail.com<mailto:tonyrees49 at gmail.com>> wrote:

Hi Rod,

Obviously there is a conceptual link from your original iSpecies to the
birth and continued development of EOL which is arguably the original
iSpecies concept extended a lot further, with links to multiple taxonomies,
wikipedia articles, maps from many sources, BHL etc. etc. So I'm not clear
why you would reactivate iSpecies unless it is to prototype some aspects
you feel EOL is not currently covering (or could not, with a few well
placed suggestions). So I guess I am more interested in the philosophy of
what you are doing than the current realization as per the web site (which
is easy to criticise versus e.g. the equivalent pages on EOL). More info,
please! (and yes, I did see the iPhylo blog post).

Regards - Tony

Tony Rees, New South Wales, Australia
https://about.me/TonyRees
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