Taxacom: an idea on data reuse preprint for systematics

[Tony Rees]

The phycological world identified a somewhat similar gap and introduced the
e-journal "Notulae Algarum" to fill it, see https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.notulaealgarum.com%2F&data=05%7C02%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C1ba29412456e4c80dc3108dd9a2ff87a%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638836252998326603%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=4UZ28XnBdwN2ooUNdwa1GYrreF2vnPLNnfcXfst4bi8%3D&reserved=0.
You could look at this as a model, however it would be easy to
underestimate the degree of effort, level of experience (both technical and
academic), and long term commitment from both key persons and supporting
agencies required. Just my view, and not really wishing to be the
harbinger of bad news; however (having operated what has largely been a
"single person" initiative for the past nineteen years) it is not really
something that most sane persons would do without good resourcing, an
understanding family (!), and a pretty long term personal commitment (and
also an eventual exit strategy) - plus planning and implementation to avoid
"single point of failure" scenarios. Just my 2 cents' worth of course,

Regards - Tony

Tony Rees, New South Wales, Australia
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On Sat, 24 May 2025 at 01:42, Douglas Yanega via Taxacom <
taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:

> I'm not good at being brief, but I'll try:
>
> For very small contributions of acts that affect zoological
> nomenclature, *in principle* the Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature -
> the ICZN's journal - is a venue that handles several of the sorts of
> things you refer to. The reality is that the turnaround time for
> submissions to BZN is not fast, though it pains me to say it, as I am
> one of the assistant editors.
>
> Not too long ago, I asked the other Commissioners if we might want to
> set up some sort of "fast track" method of getting minor nomenclatural
> notes into circulation, like within a month of submission, and the
> response was lukewarm.
>
> I honestly think that there are a lot of taxonomists, myself included,
> who are sitting on one to many minor things, like corrections to
> spellings, unreplaced homonyms, unrecognized synonymies, gender
> agreement corrections, First Reviser actions, and other small but
> important items that need to be published, but are not part of some
> larger revisionary work. I'm not a snail taxonomist, for example, so
> what do I do if I discover a snail name that is being demonstrably
> misspelled in the literature? To my mind, these sorts of things are
> unified in that they should not require *significant* review, if any at
> all. In many cases, all it truly requires is one *qualified* reviewer.
>
> The idea of a venue to disseminate these sorts of acts is, in that
> respect, potentially very valuable if it can be implemented in such a
> way that three crucial things are part of the model:
>
> (1) there is an interface where *multiple* people can see any and all
> works submitted for publication, and *everyone* can act as a reviewer -
> the model of "only a tiny number of anonymous reviewers" is the most
> harmful self-imposed constraint on science that exists. This is why
> papers keep getting published that contain homonyms, synonyms,
> misspellings, multiple variant spellings, and other errors - NOT ENOUGH
> REVIEWERS. There is literally no reason why a paper can't have several
> dozen people review it, and catch every error before it makes it into
> print. The system is not hard to implement - everyone who subscribes
> gets auto-notified about every submission, and is free to review any of
> them. A submission could have a dozen reviews or more within 24 hours.
>
> (2) submissions are time-stamped, and assigned useful keywords. It is
> not helpful, for instance, if someone submits a new replacement name for
> a homonym, and then someone else sees this and submits their own
> suggestion for a replacement of the same name. A time stamp will ensure
> that it's "first come, first published", and mandatory keywords will
> make it easier to spot overlapping submissions. We can't have people at
> one another's proverbial throats, and there is already - absurdly enough
> - a cutthroat competition to replace homonyms. That sort of
> unprofessional behavior should be discouraged.
>
> (3) the new e-journal complies FULLY with the provisions in the Code for
> digital-only publication, so nomenclatural acts published in it are
> *available*, and not technically unpublished (a MAJOR problem with many
> existing e-journals, whose editors do not know or enforce the Code's
> strict regulations).
>
> If you can address those three issues, I'm fairly sure you'll find there
> is a real demand for that sort of venue.
>
> I might note that features #1 and #2 are both fully implemented in
> Wikipedia and Wikispecies, so they've been proven to work. What these
> venues lack is Code-compliance, and well-defined administrative oversight.
>
> Peace,
>
> --
> Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology       Entomology Research Museum
> Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314  voicemail:951-827-8704
> FaceBook: Doug Yanega (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
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>    "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
>          is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82
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