Dear All,

Some of you might be interested in my entry for the Elsevier Life Sciences Grand Challenge. The site is http://iphylo.org/~rpage/challenge/www/ , which also has some links to the Challenge web site. Basically, using Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution as a starting point, I've constructed pages for journal articles, GenBank records, specimens, taxa, etc., and provided links between them (e.g., paper x cites sequence y, which in turn has specimen z as a voucher). It's all a bit rushed (deadline for the contest is this weekend), but I hope it gives some sense of what can happen when we start to link things together (i.e., make things digitally available, give them stable identifiers, and share those identifiers).

Some useful starting links

The specimen CAS 199007, which is a voucher for one sequences, which has been cited twice http://iphylo.org/~rpage/challenge/www/uri/5042b74dea91280d85a16f9271826cc3

A paper on Gammarus, which shares data with six other studies

http://iphylo.org/~rpage/challenge/www/uri/9b5f73ba1142519b57117afb80605f5b

A paper on birds, which mistakenly lists a fish sequence

http://iphylo.org/~rpage/challenge/www/uri/9b5f73ba1142519b57117afb80605f5b

One outcome of this is that I image we could derive citation metrics for things other than scientific papers, such as specimens, sequences, etc. That is, we could quantify the "value" of these data.

Comments/brickbats welcome.

Regards

Rod

--------------------------------------------------------- Roderic Page Professor of Taxonomy DEEB, FBLS Graham Kerr Building University of Glasgow Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK

Email: r.page@bio.gla.ac.uk Tel: +44 141 330 4778 Fax: +44 141 330 2792 AIM: rodpage1962@aim.com Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1112517192 Twitter: http://twitter.com/rdmpage Blog: http://iphylo.blogspot.com Home page: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html

--------------------------------------------------------- Roderic Page Professor of Taxonomy DEEB, FBLS Graham Kerr Building University of Glasgow Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK

Email: r.page@bio.gla.ac.uk Tel: +44 141 330 4778 Fax: +44 141 330 2792 AIM: rodpage1962@aim.com Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1112517192 Twitter: http://twitter.com/rdmpage Blog: http://iphylo.blogspot.com Home page: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html