[tdwg-tag] Inclusion of authorship in DwC scientificName: good or bad?

Tony.Rees at csiro.au Tony.Rees at csiro.au
Thu Nov 18 04:31:48 CET 2010


Dear TDWG-persons,

I note that DwC "scientificName" as defined at http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/#scientificName  is supposed to include authorship, however this can also be supplied separately in the field "scientificNameAuthorship". Under that scenario, should authorship be also included in the scientificName field, or omitted?

I can see arguments either way for this - if the authorship is included in the same field as the rest of the scientific name, then that single value is more meaningful and better for e.g. homonym disambiguation. On the other hand, it then requires parsing to get the scientific name without the authority, which if done incorrectly could introduce errors.

Any advice from the persons designing or using this field for data exchange would be appreciated.

Regards - Tony

Tony Rees
Manager, Divisional Data Centre,
CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research,
GPO Box 1538,
Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia
Ph: 0362 325318 (Int: +61 362 325318)
Fax: 0362 325000 (Int: +61 362 325000)
e-mail: Tony.Rees at csiro.au<mailto:Tony.Rees at csiro.au>
Manager, OBIS Australia regional node, http://www.obis.org.au/
Biodiversity informatics research activities: http://www.cmar.csiro.au/datacentre/biodiversity.htm
Personal info: http://www.fishbase.org/collaborators/collaboratorsummary.cfm?id=1566


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