[Taxacom] Taxonomist Appreciation Day

Fri Mar 23 02:08:21 CDT 2018

> • All such citations must also appear in the Literature 
>Cited section of the paper (this is the important part).
> 
> • Also, authors must specify how every species in their 
>study was identified and cite any taxonomic work used to 
>do so.  This is not so different from citing the software 
>you used for your phylogenetic analysis, which everyone 
>already does.

We can be happy if they cite even vouchers or try to 
identifiy the collections (instead of simply taking the 
label name), but I agree with you. This has been claimed 
before, e.g., by my collaegue, F. Luebert and me (doi: 
10.1038/548158d). Something similar for databases, but 
effenctively the same, Walter Berendson already proposed 
in 1995: doi: 10.2307/1222443.

Best,
NH

> 
> This would represent very little cost or effort from 
>authors or publishers.  Yet imagine the effect on the 
>h-index of publishing taxonomists. For better or worse, 
>this is the metric used in job searches and in tenure 
>committees. Carolus Linnaeus would become the most cited 
>scientist in history very quickly, but it would be good 
>for those of us less prolific & still kicking, as well. 
>Suddenly, specimen collections would become citation 
>factories.
> 
> One could argue that GenBank (and the other INSDC 
>repositories) only became a thing because journals 
>required authors to deposit their nucleotide sequences in 
>them. Collectively, the science publishing industry could 
>save taxonomic science and natural history collections by 
>enforcing this simple practice.
> 
> What’s wrong with this idea? Also, let me know who first 
>proposed something like this, if someone has.
> 
> ~ John Sullivan
> 
> 
>> On 2018-03-22, at 4:56 PM, Roderic Page 
>><Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk> wrote:
>> 
>> I think the quickest way to make progress is to focus on 
>>authors of papers first, and perhaps linking papers to 
>>publishers. Authors are probably easier to identify than 
>>collectors. Could focus on journals published by museums 
>>and herbaria which then gives something for then to make 
>>use of (these are the people publishing in our journals).
>> 
>> There are databases of collectors, couple these with 
>>authors of taxonomic papers, and lists of taxa in those 
>>papers and one could likely have simple probabilistic 
>>matching algorithms to suggest likely matches (S.Knapp 
>>collecting Solanum is likely the Sandy Knapp who authored 
>>a paper on that species).
>> 
>> I completely agree that identifying the drivers that 
>>matter is key to this, as interesting as identifying and 
>>crediting collectors is, I’m not sure this will be 
>>compelling enough. Underlying ORCID is the driver to 
>>quantify and rank contributions of authors and their host 
>>institutions, and there is big money associated with the 
>>outcome of such exercises, hence there is also money 
>>involved in generating those metrics. If it is a vanity 
>>or intellectual exercise only we may struggle to get 
>>engagement.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> 
>> Rod
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Get Outlook for iOS<https://aka.ms/o0ukef>
>> _____________________________
>> From: Shorthouse, David <davidpshorthouse at gmail.com>
>> Sent: Friday, March 23, 2018 01:00
>> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Taxonomist Appreciation Day
>> To: Roderic Page <roderic.page at glasgow.ac.uk>
>> Cc: Taxacom <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
>> 
>> 
>> Rod -
>> 
>> I like your approach & I can see how it would help bump 
>>up the current
>> number of taxonomists with ORCID accounts quite a bit. 
>>Before we
>> embark on this, we best have compelling reasons for 
>>doing it. Why
>> should we do this? It's one thing to have a list, quite 
>>another to
>> actually make something happen because it exists. 
>>There's the
>> socio-political angle (i.e. use it to remark on 
>>dwindling numbers of
>> taxonomists & then encourage lobbying for new academic 
>>and museum
>> positions), but I'm more in favour of the short term, 
>>practical
>> approach such that we can capitalize on the potential 
>>for network
>> effects. Give me the ORCID (or other unique identifier) 
>>if I give you
>> someone's name (alive or dead) and a namestring for a 
>>taxon is the
>> kind of service I'd like to see built. But, such a 
>>service would be
>> disappointing until we made other things happen.
>> 
>> I've long been mulling an extension to Darwin Core for 
>>occurrence data
>> providers to better share the unequivocal identity of 
>>people engaged
>> in or have engaged in identifying, collecting, and 
>>describing species.
>> The existing terms identifiedBy, recordedBy, and indeed
>> scientificNameAuthorship all need to be rethought & 
>>parsed for this
>> purpose. It wouldn't take much to develop such an 
>>extension. However,
>> the real work in sharing more granular data would fall 
>>on museums who
>> haven't got many places to bulk search for people names 
>>as expressed
>> on their specimen labels, sensitive to all the 
>>abbreviations and
>> cultural variants that that requires, and obtain likely 
>>results with
>> unique identifiers like ORCIDs. No sense having a nicely 
>>formed
>> extension to Darwin Core if folks haven't got the tools 
>>to reconcile
>> people names across all disciplines nor recommendations 
>>on how to
>> appropriately store these at their end in their 
>>databases. That said,
>> ORCID has been engaged in providing services that 
>>capture alternative
>> measures of an individual's and an institution's impact 
>>such as the
>> use of facilities. See
>> https://orcid.org/content/user-facilities-and-publications-working-group.
>> There's room here I suspect for occurrence data to play 
>>a role in
>> guiding the discussion. The act of depositing specimens 
>>in museums
>> ought to give some credit to both the museum and the 
>>people recorded
>> on those specimen labels.
>> 
>> What I need is (a) endorsement by the taxonomic 
>>community and their
>> societies that this desirable, (b) endorsement by 
>>entities like GBIF
>> that this is desirable (failure to capitalize on 
>>#iamataxonomist is
>> discouraging), and (c) somewhere to apply for funding to 
>>offset
>> salaries, development costs & hosting service fees to 
>>make it happen.
>> We have day jobs with full-time duties peripherally 
>>related to this.
>> But, I'm convinced that the wider taxonomic and museum 
>>communities
>> across all disciplines need this service.
>> 
>> David P. Shorthouse
>> 
>> On Thu, Mar 22, 2018 at 5:08 AM, Roderic Page
>> <Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk> wrote:
>>> Hi David,
>>> 
>>> Very cool! I pitched a similar idea to GBIF with a 
>>>hashtag #iamataxonomist
>>> but got nowhere. The idea was you could log in with an 
>>>ORCID and discover
>>> who was a taxonomist, or whether somebody had published 
>>>with a taxonomist
>>> coauthor. I was going to populate it via my work on 
>>>http://bionames.org for
>>> animal names, and unreleased work on plant and fungal 
>>>names. For many of
>>> these names I have DOIs for the publications which are 
>>>in turn sometimes
>>> linked to ORCIDs, so you could capture people who don’t 
>>>necessary identity
>>> themselves in https:///orcid.org as taxonomists, or 
>>>whose papers don’t
>>> mention “taxonomy”.
>>> 
>>> I’m notionally on holiday for the next three weeks, but 
>>>when I’m back I
>>> could look at generating a list of ORCIDs from taxonomic 
>>>papers if that
>>> would help your project.
>>> 
>>> 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
>>> Tel: +44 141 330 4778
>>> Skype: rdmpage
>>> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/rdmpage
>>> LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/rdmpage
>>> Twitter: http://twitter.com/rdmpage
>>> 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 21 Mar 2018, at 03:16, Shorthouse, David 
>>><davidpshorthouse at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> All -
>>> 
>>> Yesterday was World Taxonomist Appreciation Day so 
>>>naturally I asked,
>>> "How many active taxonomists are there"? And 
>>>secondarily, "Where are
>>> they & what do they work on?"
>>> 
>>> Here's the barebones result: 
>>>http://taxonomists.shorthouse.net/
>>> 
>>> Not there? Get yourself an ORCID at https://orcid.org, 
>>>add a keyword
>>> "taxonomist" or "taxonomy" and then link your works. 
>>>Once a day I poll
>>> ORCID and fire the titles of your publications through 
>>>the Global
>>> Names Recognition and Discovery service, 
>>>http://gnrd.globalnames.org/
>>> to glean your taxa of expertise.
>>> 
>>> Perhaps by next March 19 we can give this a more 
>>>professional home,
>>> have a collective celebration, and use it for something 
>>>bigger.
>>> 
>>> David P. Shorthouse
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> Nurturing Nuance while Assaulting Ambiguity for 31 Some 
>>>Years, 1987-2018.
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
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>> Nurturing Nuance while Assaulting Ambiguity for 31 Some 
>>Years, 1987-2018.
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> Nurturing Nuance while Assaulting Ambiguity for 31 Some 
>Years, 1987-2018.

---
Dr.rer.nat. Norbert Holstein
Nees-Institut f. Biodiversität d. Pflanzen
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53115 Bonn
Germany
Phone: +49-228-73-6530
http://www.nees.uni-bonn.de/staff/pages/Dr.%20Norbert%20Holstein