[Tdwg-lit] Level 1 starting point

[Gregor Hagedorn]

> Thanks for this.  The main question I think needs to be clarified is how
> much flexibility a data provider is to be allowed in completing the
> human-readable string.  Clearly we do not expect to be able to perform
> direct string comparisons between two provider's citations, so are these
> just recommendations of components that should be included, or is the
> intention to mandate a particular sequence of elements?  Which ones are
> considered (at least more or less) mandatory, and which are optional?  I
> guess we should provide some actual examples of "complete" and "partial"
> citations and state whether they are regarded as sufficient.

I agree and think in the contrast to the list cited by Anna a typical 
free-form source description would rather follow established printed 
publication standards (some Journal standard) and would typically NOT include a 
"type of publication" (in software like RefMan or EndNote typically an 
enumerated value, but no common language vocabulary in printed publications 
exists to my knowledge).

So reformulating it as recommendation, I suggest to recommed adding information 
if the description is in a different language than the publication itself. This 
is quite common, most English/German/French etc. publications will cite 
Russion/Greek/Japanese/Chinese etc. publications either transliterated or 
translated. Preferred way to indicate this would be welcome.

Gregor----------------------------------------------------------
Gregor Hagedorn (G.Hagedorn at bba.de)
Institute for Plant Virology, Microbiology, and Biosafety
Federal Research Center for Agriculture and Forestry (BBA)
Königin-Luise-Str. 19           Tel: +49-30-8304-2220
14195 Berlin, Germany           Fax: +49-30-8304-2203