Authorship is permissible in scientificName. The current working definition for scientificName is:
Sorry! My bad.
"The full scientific name of the currently valid (zoological) or accepted (botanical) taxon."
So, they are already consistent.
Agreed they are conceptually consistent -- but the wording of the definitions ought to be consistent as well.
The specimen record could contain all three of those fields populated with the values shown, as well as the scientificNameID, the acceptedTaxonNameID, and the originalTaxonNameID, however, the specimen record would not be required to have any of them.
OK, thanks.
No, by design and happily, DwC defers implementation to implementors. I see perfectly good use cases for passing or storing occurrence records with the full taxon information already resolved (think GBIF Index).
OK, fair enough -- but I think the definitions need to be tightended up a bit, and the terms should follow consistent patterns, to make it easier to ensure that two different providers put the same sort of information under the same terms.
I think we need better access to the spreadsheet at http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tZ3c04UGzRgalNxZMmcijcQ
&output=html
or we need to move the work to http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/wiki/Taxon until it gets fully resolved and included in the post-public review version I am eager to release.
Which do you prefer? I'm happy to spend the time and do the work, as needed.
Aloha, Rich