[Tdwg-lit] Level 1 starting point

[Gregor Hagedorn]

Anna writes
> ... Perhaps the word description is confusing me.  A 'micro'citation should
> follow some standard, which is what, I think we are trying to set here for the
> community as a whole, whether it matches what one journal dictates that we put
> into a taxonomic treatment or not. 

My point is: on the lowest level of stringency, i.e. on level 1 where all 
information is tried to bundle into a single string, do we have to specify 
exactly how the information is to be written, or should we leave it at 
recommendations? I believe the latter. Why do so many journals have different 
style rules how to write references? In the end, as humans we can parse them 
all out, and I believe on level 1 this is what matters.

Making stricter rules (which would be very hard to automatically validate), 
would prevent many data sources from communicating on this level.

I am all for giving recommendations on this level, but not more. And my point 
relative to your list was, that "publication type" according to some software's 
enumerated value list should not be included at all.

BTW, I called this single string "description", but I do not mean to establish 
that, perhaps object label is better?


> When it comes to languages, a work (as we all
> realize) may contain several languages.  Even a single taxonomic treatment may
> contain several languages (if the overall language is, for example, German, a
> description or diagnosis in Latin, and localities are written in the language of
> their country of origin).  Are you suggesting that we include all languages here
> (I can see the point of that for level 3, but for level 1 and probably even for
> level 2, I can't see much point in having anything more than the overall language
> added (in the example above, German). 

No, I must have been confusing, I was not referring to multiple languages 
inside. However, if you have cited Russian or Chinese articles in your 
publications, you probably cited them transliterated or translated. I.e. with 
latin letters or even with the title translated to English. On the level of 
recommendation, I think it may be useful to make a recommendation how to 
indicate that the language of the reference-string is different from the 
language of the publication itself.

Not sure I am any clearer now, sorry!

Gregor----------------------------------------------------------
Gregor Hagedorn (G.Hagedorn at bba.de)
Institute for Plant Virology, Microbiology, and Biosafety
Federal Research Center for Agriculture and Forestry (BBA)
Königin-Luise-Str. 19           Tel: +49-30-8304-2220
14195 Berlin, Germany           Fax: +49-30-8304-2203