[Zoobank-list] Alternate Scenarios

[Doug Yanega]

Rich Pyle summarized my earlier message (pretty accurately) and 
Carlos Sarmiento responded:

>I may see a problem with Yanega´s third scenario, when should we 
>stop the iterative review process? We have seen endless taxonomic 
>and nomenclatural discussions by way of years of "reply" 
>publications, and we have seen the same phenomena in web based 
>discusion lists. Who is it going to decide when a position prevail 
>over others? in a paper publication process this judgement is 
>partially taken by a referee but how are we going to regulate this 
>in a web system?

This is a procedural detail which I didn't go into in my initial 
posting; my original idea was that when a paper arrived, it would be 
assigned to an impartial "referee" - someone whose speciality is 
*outside* the particular taxon involved, so as not to allow for a 
conflict of interest, and someone who is also fully versed in the 
Code. That person would have the task of observing the debate over a 
manuscript, and act as moderator and arbitrator for any such debates; 
they would be the one to set conditions, deadlines, and so forth. 
While most papers would fly through quickly, sometimes the referee 
would increase the interval - but for beneficial reasons. For 
example, if Author X submits a revision and Reviewer Y points out 
that X has not examined a particularly crucial type specimen, the 
referee could declare that the manuscript be held in abeyance until X 
has been able to examine that type and revise the work accordingly 
(e.g., to include a photo of said type). Or if a particular authority 
whose review would be helpful is in the field in Borneo for two 
months, the referee might hold a work until said authority is able to 
review it. Conversely, if there is one particularly obnoxious 
reviewer who seems to be trying to block a work, when all other 
reviewers have already expressed satisfaction, the referee could 
simply terminate the process and go ahead with the publication, at 
their discretion.

I would argue strongly that making the review period *arbitrary* in 
length would be a mistake; after all, one of the main benefits of 
such a system would be negated by having a fixed interval for review: 
that is, the benefit of allowing a person who finds a new taxon to 
alert the scientific community of their discovery WITHOUT the fear of 
someone else "stealing" the credit for it, whether by accident or 
deliberate theft. I believe that we, as a community, are capable of 
far more cooperation than we engage in presently, and part of the 
problem is this fear of being "scooped". The reason that this ties in 
to the arbitrary deadline idea can be best explained by example: 
let's say that a student finds a single female of an unquestionably 
new species (e.g., a second member of a genus having only one 
species), but they don't yet have a male, and/or their academic 
responsibilities are such that it will be a few years before they can 
write up their description. The existence of an arbitrary deadline 
would mean they'd have to delay putting this taxon into the queue 
until they were nearly ready to publish. In the intervening time, 
they could be scooped, especially if one of the people they contact 
to borrow material turns out to be less than ethical (one might hope 
this sort of thing doesn't happen, but it does, sadly). Conversely, 
if the deadline was flexible, they could get the taxon into the queue 
immediately, and simply inform the referee and potential reviewers 
that they expect the full description will take some time, or is 
awaiting the discovery of the missing sex. In the intervening time, 
then, the entire scientific community will be alerted to the 
existence of this new taxon, and this would VASTLY increase the pool 
of institutions from which potential type material would come - at no 
point jeopardizing the student's prerogative to be the one to name 
the taxon (should they wish to exercise it). Of course, another 
benefit is that such wide exposure would also increase the odds of 
someone recognizing when a putative new taxon already *has* a name, 
thus helping to prevent new synonymies.

I freely admit that a large part of how I envision such a system 
working stems from the nature of my own position; as a collection 
manager, I frequently discover new taxa, and for me, the ideal system 
would be if I could take a photo or two, write up a brief diagnosis, 
and post it to the web to get the attention of all the *other* 
collection managers out there, as well as the experts in the group in 
question. It isn't even a matter of desiring authorship - in *most* 
cases, I would gladly relinquish any such claims in favor of whomever 
happened to be a genuine authority - I simply wish to accelerate the 
process of getting all these taxa named, and to maximize the sizes of 
type series (the more types in the more museums, the better off we 
are in the long run, especially when so many institutions are at risk 
from politics, war, and natural disasters). To me, the best way to do 
that is in an interactive, collaborative community forum that 
promotes cooperation (if only because it *prohibits* exploitation and 
usurpation, and thus eliminates the incentive for "cheaters" in the 
system).

Sincerely,
-- 

Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California - Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521-0314
phone: (951) 827-4315 (standard 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