Naiveté or obstructionism in biological systematics publishing?

Taxonomists are very finicky about saving their legacy, such as publications, into the far future, certainly doubling the current shelf life of publications starting 1756. A recent publication by Ward & Fisher in one of the...[more]

The needs of taxonomic information in the European Environment Agency

One of the insights from a recent meeting between the European Environment Agency (EEA) and EU BON has been a better understanding of the needs of taxonomic data by the EEA for monitoring. With few words, large datasets that are...[more]

2016 Top 10 New Species

This year's Top 10 species have been added to Treatmentbank (TB) and Wikidata (WD).

Giant Tortoise (Chelonoidis donfaustoi), TB, WDGiant Sundew (Drosera magnifica), TB, WDHominin (Homo naledi), TB,...[more]

Incentives to properly geo-reference specimens

Visualization of data in ongoing publications is one the new tools taxonomists are getting. Though we are not there yet to have a fully automated system that finds new articles, text and data mines and visualizes included...[more]

Data Sharing Principles and Legal Interoperability for Essential Biodiversity Variables

The ambitious goal to monitor biodiversity globally is a huge challenge and requires innovative solutions. Essential Biodiversity Variables are an approach chosen by GEO BON to measure changes of biodiversity a global...[more]

5* publishing in taxonomy: Formicine phylogeny by Ward et al., 2016

Ward et al.’s recent publication on formicine taxonomy is implementing the results from their phylogenetic analyses in taxonomy, that is listing all the new combinations of names, synonymies or resurrection of old names. These...[more]

Open Access is the basis for access to our knowledge, not to single PDFs

Open Access in taxonomy is curently discussed in an unusually long thread in Taxacom which shows how little advanced the understanding of our modern science communication, better cyber space and its application to our domain in...[more]