[Taxacom] Neticon zoologicon: a network analysis of the ICZN

[Evangelos Vlachos]

Dear Taxacomers,

I would like to bring to your attention my latest project, which after lots
of turns has been finally published in PeerJ
https://peerj.com/articles/8127/

Briefly, I present a new approach to the Code, by transforming the text of
the Code into a network [if you want to know more about it you absolutely
need to check the supplementary information for more details].

Then, the network of the Code is used to understand the structure of the
Code and its features. It can also be used to predict the effect of
upcoming changes and editions. Also, it could be used to learn, teach, and
navigate the Code itself.

I maintain also an institutional page with all the relevant information
http://staff.mef.org.ar/en/researchers/evangelos-vlachos/iczn-network which
I plan to update regularly with updated versions of the networks, video
tutorials, answers to FAQs and more. For the moment, the page contains the
version 1.0 of the network, in an online interactive webpage version [
http://mef.org.ar/Neticon/version-1/network/ ] and the original editable
version of the network as well.

Everything is open access and free to edit/use. But keep me posted for
major changes, bugs or other issues.

I think that this methodology opens a new line of research for
nomenclature. This is a methodology that allows studying texts in a new
way, with (I believe) a great potential.

I would love to continue on that.

I am interested to expand this methodology to other Codes of Nomenclature,
to previous versions of the Codes (i.e., to study the "evolution" of the
Codes through history), experiments to study the effects of changes, etc,
and experiments to have a Unified Code (among others).

This method is time-consuming but quite fun. Unfortunately, this is only a
side-project for me, done mostly during my free time.

But maybe some of you will be interested to contribute. Or some of your
students. In any case, I would be delighted to collaborate in any way.

I sincerely hope that some of you will find it interesting. So far,
people's reactions to that have been quite polarized: they either said that
this is remarkable or that it is useless. Time will tell.

May the Code be with you,

Evan Vlachos