[Zoobank-list] registration=publication

[Igor]

Dear Frank,
Dear  All,
I fully agree with Dr Frank-T. Krell. A few more notes.
I have read some part of the discussion in addition to start papers. I
think it is the endless discussion about 'how to make the world
better'. Everybody who prepares a revolution thinks about democracy,
but bureaucracy always wins. Only bureaucrats are interested in as
much complicated registration as possible. They devise new and new
unnecessary rules and try to shift their duties on applicants.

I think ICZN should not set a goal to accomplish taxonomical
revolution in 2007. Let's change articles step by step, gradually.
Registration of known species names will be finished after compilation of
the global database. But validation of species will never be finished.
This is a research work. Do not mix different fields. Some taxa are
waiting taxonomists for 50 and more years, some others have two or
more irreconcilable taxonomists. It is impossible to identify by
majority voting of taxonomical community, is it a good or bad research
and to reject registration of new names. Do not create a parallel
register of unregistered names.         

There is one more danger of too complicated rules. A new profession
may be born, a registrator, who will add his name to thousands of
species names, because he has a good digital camera or he is able to
translate original description into English, etc.

Finally, I would suggest discussing problems of (self)registration of
taxonomists. It is much easier than registration of species names (the
authors of a new revolution seems to have in mind its automatic
proceduring), but there is practically no global experience in this
work. Neal Evenhuis has compiled a list of all(?) dipterists since
Linnaeus. But what about all other zoologists? And how many are active
taxonomists? And can they vote directly for or against new rules?
[http://hbs.bishopmuseum.org/dipterists/worlddipt.html]

Best wishes,
Igor.

Tuesday, September 27, 2005, 6:01:49 PM, you wrote:

FK> Dear All,

FK> we had some internal discussion about the registration=publication proposal when we prepared the Nature paper and the technical paper on the ICZN's webpage. The following statement is from one of
FK> my mails of that time:

FK> "I am very sceptical about the registration=publication idea for the following reasons:
FK> 1. It would mean that the ICZN deals with the science itself, not only with nomenclature. We would then have the same muddle as in the PhyloCode.
FK> 2. Descriptions are scientific interpretations requiring some quality control. If ZooBank will be transformed into the unitary publication organ for zoological names, we can either sanction
FK> non-peer reviewed science (as the standard adopted by the ICZN) or introduce a peer review system for 20000 zoological names per year which then requires good editors assessing the referees'
FK> reports. This is way beyond the capabilities of ZooBank, the ICZN or Thompson or Google or all together. Moreover, refereeing original descriptions is somewhat boring and I doubt that it will be
FK> easy to get enough referees willing to do this job [and editors, because the editorial work, if not paid, is not generally rewarded by employers - and editing purely descriptive work lacks any
FK> intellectual challenge either; I would dare to predict that it is rather difficult to find GOOD editors, or in Doug's szenario, 20,000 'impartial referees' per year dealing with the peer review
FK> process]. In our Nature paper we explicitely rejected any form of peer review to avoid the impression to introduce scientific censorship, and no peer review system is required for publication
FK> sensu Rich. There are already enough dissatisfying descriptions published, and we can't avoid them, but it won't be an advantage if we remove any requirement for peer review from descriptive
FK> taxonomy at all.
FK> 3. Scientists are still assessed by their list of publications, and I see no signs that this will change very soon. If we strip taxonomists of their descriptive papers because everything has to
FK> be published in ZooBank, they will get even worse assessments. If only an insufficient diagnosis is published in ZooBank requiring a extensive description elsewhere, those papers will be less
FK> attractive for publishers if these descriptions do not describe 'new taxa', because they have already been published elsewhere (in ZooBank).
FK> I have the impression that the registration=publication idea bases on the impression that original descriptions are formal, objective, correct texts which can be treated in a formal way. This is
FK> not the case. Descriptions can be and often are insufficient, wrong, full of misinterpretation, too long (describing individuals rather than taxa), commercially intended, badly researched, etc.,
FK> etc. We should not allow all taxonomy to avoid peer review by publishing new taxa with ICZN. At the same time, ICZN cannot (and should not!) provide peer review and editing for 20000 zoological
FK> names per year. ICZN rules nomenclature, not science."

FK> Non-journal-based taxonomy is yet to be the common working practice and not rewarded in CVs, and people still like to put sp.n. behind their new species in the proper paper. I think, there is a
FK> good chance that registration=publication will reduce the acceptance of mandatory registration and will eventually kill our initiative. Let's start with registration, let's get this accepted by
FK> the taxonomic community (probably difficult enough), and then have an open mind (particularly in writing the next edition of the code) to allow web-taxonomy to progress within the framework of
FK> the Code.

FK> Cheers

FK> Frank

FK> Dr Frank-T. Krell

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