[tdwg-content] [tdwg-tag] Inclusion of authorship in DwCscientificName: good or bad?

Markus Döring m.doering at mac.com
Wed Nov 24 13:29:55 CET 2010


>> 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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