Good day

My colleagues and I are developing an idea that could help to keep biodiversity information current. In particular, it will allow a new determination to be added, timeously, to a specimen’s determination history. Online publishers of taxonomic articles, such as ZooKeys, are an important component of the proposed system.

Suppose you want to publish an article describing a new species. The online journal would require you to submit the traditional ‘material examined’ section of the manuscript as a spreadsheet. The publisher would upload these data to GBIF. The collection manager responsible for the specimens you examined would receive this information from GBIF. In fact, this information could even be used to update that collection manager’s database automatically (after validation by the collection manager), by adding a new determination to each of the affected collection objects, complete with the determiner’s name, date of determination, determination confidence etc.

Now that the information is updated at source (the museum specimen database), and is disseminated by GBIF, everyone can benefit from the latest determinations made by expert taxonomists.

If you’re interested in these ideas, please read our manuscript: http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AW4Pz09fjmYaZGN3bmtjOWNfNGR3azVkNmR2&hl=en

We would appreciate your feedback.

Willem Coetzer

Information Manager

South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity

Grahamstown, South Africa

Tel. +27 (0)46 603 5841

Fax +27 (0)46 622 2403