[Zoobank-list] original descriptions

Wed Sep 28 23:06:33 BST 2005

Just one point: In an ideal world, a single journal 'Zootaxa' (if they were prepared to expand ten to fifty times) mandatory for new zoological names and nomenclatural acts would be great. However, let's say there were three ant taxonomists left in the world, and they don't like each other (very hypothetical), where would new ant species be published? Do you think, rejects are always objective or based on quality? I like to have alternatives with different editors.
Frank

Dr Frank-T. Krell
Head, Coleoptera Division
Head, Scarab Research Group
Editor, Systematic Entomology
Department of Entomology
The Natural History Museum
Cromwell Road
London SW7 5BD, U.K.
Tel. +44 (0) 20 7942 5886
Fax +44 (0) 20 7942 5229
f.krell at nhm.ac.uk

	-----Original Message----- 
	From: Doug Yanega [mailto:dyanega at ucr.edu] 
	Sent: Wed 28/09/2005 22:31 
	To: Zoobank Discussion List (ICZN) 
	Cc: 
	Subject: Re: [Zoobank-list] original descriptions

	Frank Krell wrote:

	>Copyright laws will prevent us from just uploading pdfs of papers
	>containing descriptions into the online database. (Moreover, even
	>without copyright problems this would require massive additional
	>funding). However, we would like to pursue this idea as far as
	>ZooBank is allowed to. Blackwell Publishing agreed to let us put
	>online the original descriptions (not the complete paper) from their
	>journals (as long as the scientific societies involved agree; the
	>Royal Entomological Society did already). There are thousands of
	>copyright owners around the globe. Copyright is a massive legal
	>problem for making publicly available all original descriptions
	>which will arrive in the office of ICZN. We have to discuss this
	>problem very carefully and would need international legal advice if
	>we want to find a solution without setting the professional
	>publishing world against ZooBank.

	and, in writing this, Frank has succinctly presented another VERY
	strong point in favor of the "publication = registration" approach I
	proposed: no concerns over copyright, ever, since no outside journals
	would be involved. The "professional publishing world" would never
	again interfere with our science.

	While I'm here, I'd like to briefly respond to a few other points
	that Frank made in an earlier posting (Rich Pyle has already
	responded to one such point)

	>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.

	The "muddle" in Phylocode is not because they decided to include peer
	review as a criterion, but that they included it in a manner that is
	inefficient. We would not have to follow in their footsteps. The idea
	is called "building a better mousetrap".

	>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 be
	>published in ZooBank, they will get even worse assessments.

	This conjecture is, I think, quite short-sighted: (1) please recall
	that what I proposed is NOT that descriptive papers won't be
	published (so no one will get "stripped" of anything), but rather
	that they will all be published in one place, under our collective
	editorial control (2) if a new online/print hybrid journal appears
	which gets more visits and citations than any other online journal
	besides "Science" and "Nature", it will have MORE prestige than any
	other conventional taxonomic journal in history. Zootaxa is *already*
	showing signs of having such stature - for that matter, why couldn't
	we simply team up *explicitly* with Zootaxa? Again, the proposal is
	that EVERY taxonomist in the world will have to publish ALL of their
	descriptions via that one venue. A single journal that contains each
	and every one of the 20,000 new zoological revisions coming out each
	year will quickly earn a high "impact rating" and do just as much, if
	not more, to advance the careers of the taxonomists publishing in it
	as any journal they could publish in today. The ONLY taxonomists who
	might suffer a loss of prestige would be the vertebrate
	palaeontologists, because Science and Nature would no longer be open
	to them. But how many new taxa are described in those two journals
	every year, after all? Fewer than 50 out of over 20K taxa? Since over
	99% of the biodiversity that remains to be described is composed of
	*living* taxa, I don't see why worries over whether paleontologists
	can continue to publish in Science and Nature should be an issue when
	we're discussing the fate of _all taxonomy_.

	>Non-journal-based taxonomy is yet to be the common working practice
	>and not rewarded in CVs

	I am not and never have been talking about "non-journal-based"
	taxonomy; Zootaxa *is* a journal. Why not make it the ONLY journal?
	Basically all we'd have to do to go from the status quo to the
	dreaded "Yanega Scenario" is make the review process for Zootaxa open
	and web-based (with automated reviewer alerts), and make publication
	in Zootaxa the _sine qua non_ for name availability AND registration.
	Teaming with Zootaxa would spare us having to reinvent the wheel.

	On similar lines, it's nice that Scott Federhen is here, so I can
	raise another issue which I have explicitly suggested in the past:
	what are the possibilities that the ZooBank registry of names could
	link *directly* to GenBank? I don't mean just in terms of data
	linkage, but actual infrastructure. One of THE main arguments we've
	all heard, repeatedly, from those who reject the idea of a registry
	of names and/or online publishing of taxonomy is that they won't
	support the venture because they're convinced that the website will
	crash, shut down, become obsolete, etc., and/or that the electronic
	archives will vanish like the infamous "reel-to-reel tape data
	stores" (i.e., we won't have the resources to move the data to newer
	storage media). GenBank, on the other hand, occupies an almost
	unprecendented position in the history of scientific data archives
	because - by its very nature (being an effectively centralized
	repository for the collective work of thousands of scientists, and
	essential to future of the scientific community, while simultaneously
	mirrored in many places) - it is the closest thing one can conceive
	of to a digital archive with *guaranteed* perpetuity (basically,
	until and unless Human Civilization Itself collapses into ruin,
	GenBank will be maintained, because too much has already been
	invested in it, and depends upon it).
	GenBank cannot and will not be allowed to become obsolete, or crash,
	or suffer any of these horrific fates that the naysayers feel are
	*inevitable* for any fundamentally digital effort like ZooBank. Thus,
	it seems to me that if ZooBank could *literally* join with GenBank,
	we'd be able to forever silence the scare-mongers, by being able to
	promise that ZooBank would also exist in guaranteed perpetuity. I'm
	just brainstorming here, obviously, but it can't hurt to ask - I
	think that anything we can do, including potential strategic
	alliances, to help the ZooBank initiative succeed, is worth
	discussing at this stage. There are still many alternatives open to
	us.

	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
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