I just had a quick look at the first few thousand data records coming into OBIS for my region (Australia). Just about every supplier who includes authority as dwc:scientificNameAuthor has used dwc:scientificName "incorrectly" i.e., for the canonical name not the canonical name + author. This data then flows into GBIF, ALA, etc. and circulates in this form. So "users" are already ignoring the definition of dwc:scientificName in practice, it would seem, with no apparent ill effects (?) - not sure whether this is good or bad, hence the title of my original question which prompted this thread...
OK, so here's the question:
Is it more disruptive to re-define dwc:scientificName to explicitly exclude authorship?
Thats definitely something Id like to avoid! We really need one place to keep the most explicit form of the name.
From seeing real data coming in I would coin the definition for scientificName that it should *contain the most complete, verbatim name string*.
If you happen to have only a canonical, use the canonical. If you happen to have canonical + authorship parsed, join them if you can (its usually not a simple concatenation, beware).
Markus
Or, is it more disruptive to leave the existing (loose) definition of scientificName intact, and create more term(s) with more precise meanings, which we feel can help facilitate sharing of infomration?
Rich
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