Dear John & DwC friends,
after finally having time to review the current dwc terms again I came across a couple of issues I'd like to see discussed or even changed. I am working for nearly 1 year now with the new terms during their development, especially with the new and modified taxonomic terms. So far they work very well in practice, but there are a few improvements I can think of, mostly related to the latest changes shortly before the public review started. I have added them as separate issues to the google code site, but list them here in one go. The number of issues is larger than I hoped for, but most of them are minor terminology issues for consistency and not touching the core meaning of the terms.
Markus
--- #47 rename basionym(ID) to originalName(ID) http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=47 The intend for this term is really to reflect where a name originally comes from in case it is a recombination. The term basionym is mostly used with botanists and covers only the cases when an epithet remains the same, i.e. not replacement names. The best matching, broader term therefore is originalName I think. Changes have to be done to both the verbatim name and the ID.
Good examples for synonyms, basionyms, replaced names etc can be found in this document: http://www.peabody.yale.edu/other/PROTEM/TAXSIG/taxonomy_synonyms_examples.p...
--- #48 remove taxonConceptID http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=48 The conceptID is intended to state that 2 name usages / potential taxa are the same, even if they use a different name. This is a special case of true concept relations and I would much prefer to see this covered in a dedicated extension treating all concept relations, especially frequent cases such as includes, overlaps, etc. I am more than willing to define such an extension
--- #49 rename scientificNameID, acceptedScientificNameID and higherTaxonNameID http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=49 no matter what the final term names are I think the 3 ones should be consistent. Originally it was intended to call them taxonID, acceptedTaxonID and higherTaxonID with a loose definition of a taxon, more based on the idea of that all terms here are taxonomic terms and therefore contain taxon in their name. The current version scientificNameID, acceptedScientificNameID and higherTaxonNameID intends to do the same I believe, but the terminology invites people to use them not referring to each other from what I have seen so far in practice. Concrete recomendations:
#49a replace scientificNameID with nameUsageID There is the need to uniquely identify a taxon concept with a given name, a name usage. A nameID suggests the name is unique which it isnt if combined with an sec reference aka taxonAccordingTo. A taxonID suggests to refer to a distinct taxon concept. A name usage seems the smallest entity and can therefore be used to act as a sort of unique key for names, taxa, taxon concepts or just usages of a name. All other taxonomic dwc ID terms can and should point to a name usage id then. This makes me think if most/all other IDs should reflect this in their names, see below.
It could make sense to keep scientificNameID as a ID to the name as defined by a nomenclator. But this ID can also be used as a name usage id, so in order to gain clarity I would prefer to have the term removed.
#49b rename acceptedScientificName(ID) to acceptedNameUsage(ID) this term should point to the name usage that reflects the "accepted" taxon in case of synonyms, no matter if they are objective or subjective. AcceptedScientificName sounds more like a nomenclatural exercise and in accordance with #3 (nameUsageID) the term acceptedNameUsage(ID) would be the best fit in my eyes.
#49c rename higherTaxonName(ID) to higherNameUsage(ID) in consistency with nameUsage & acceptedNameUsage
--- #50 remove recommendation to concatenate multiple values, especially for higherTaxonName/higherNameUsage http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=50
similar to originalName or acceptedNameUsage this term is meant to be a verbatim pointer to the higher taxon as an alternative way of using higherTaxonNameID. Therefore it should only contain a single name, the direct parent, in my eyes. There are also already the 7 mayor ranks as separate terms that can be used to express a flattened hierarchy. I am aware DwC suggests to use concatenated lists in a single term in other places, e.g. , but I believe it would be better to keep the meaning singular and use multiple instances of that term to express multiple values. Dublin Core also recommends to use multiple XML elements for multiple values, see recommendation 5 in http://dublincore.org/documents/dc-xml-guidelines/
--- #51 rename namePublicationID to namePublishedInID http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=51 for consistency with namePublishedIn
--- #52 rename (verbatim)scientificNameRank to (verbatim)rank http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=52 to avoid discussions about whether the rank belongs to the name or the taxon and also because its nice and short and there is no clash in biological terminology.