Nigel J. Robinson - ZooBank and Zoological Record - a partnership for success
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Since its origin in 1864, ZR has had a close association with the taxonomic community, particularly with the Zoological Society of London. ZR was founded in 1864 by a group of scientists associated with the British Museum. It continued, supported by Society until 1980 when a partner was sought and BIOSIS took over production activities. In 2004, BIOSIS realised that with limited resources we could not achieve our aims and put our ideas into practice without further partnerships, so in January 2004, BIOSIS (including ZR) was acquired by the Thomson Corporation, and the new ownership is now starting to pay dividends. Over that 150 years or so, there have been difficult times, but ZR is still here and still has the same purpose it had in 1864 - to serve the community and disseminate taxonomic, biodiversity and zoological information for the benefit of scientific research. This presentation discusses ZR, and the new free Index to Organism Names service which serves to demonstrate our commitment as Thomson to this initiative. I will also discuss how the partnership between ZR and ICZN might work from the ZR perspective.
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Nigel J. Robinson - ZooBank and Zoological Record - a partnership for success
- 1. Zoological RecordTM & ZooBank: a partnership for success Nigel Robinson Director, Operations & Development Thomson Zoological Limited
- 2. Association with the community • 1864 – Scientists associated with British Museum & Zoological Society • 1880-1980 – Zoological Society support • 1980-2003 – Zoological Society/BIOSIS partnership • 2003 – BIOSIS • 2004 – Thomson Scientific • Zoological Record & data capture • Index to Organism Names project
- 3. Zoological Record • Oldest continuing life science reference database • Comprehensive coverage • Unparalleled breadth and depth of coverage of biodiversity, zoology and animal biology • Authoritative record of taxonomy & nomenclature • New names with metadata • Taxonomic & nomenclatural acts • High archival value
- 4. Zoological Record content • 32 staff in York • 5000 journals, plus conference proceedings, books, monographs from 100 countries – bring together disparate sources • 72,000 items per year • Gather 20,000 new names per year • Metadata currently gathered • Name • Authorship • Reference • Type locality (country level) • Type horizon • Type host • Page reference in journal where description appears • 1.7 million article archive to 1978…….and growing • Monthly updates
- 5. The ZR/ZooBank partnership • Partnership • Experience in working with non profit organizations • Technology • Ongoing data capture & quality checking • Most up to date – items indexed in 2-11 days of receipt • Most complete • Existing names back file • Archive digitization • Commitment to open access services • BiologyBrowser (www.biologybrowser.com) • Index to Organism Names (www.organismnames.com)
- 6. Index to Organism Names Enter a basic or advanced search Browse and search for names using the taxonomic hierarchy
- 7. Index to organism Names - Details View results list and expand to see details Links to indexing and full articles Recent articles and web sites
- 8. Zoological Record Indexing Abstract Indexing & additional nomenclatural acts Links to full text
- 9. Index to Organism Names - submission Users can submit publications or names for inclusion in ZR
- 10. Index to Organism Names - Alerts RSS alerts for new names classified to each term the hierarchy
Editor's Notes
- This is an outline of the partnership between Zoological Record and ICZN in the context of the ZooBank project. Zoological Record is produced at the Thomson Zoological offices in York, within the Academic & Government sector of Thomson Scientific, focusing on providing information for the scientific research community.
- Since its origin in 1864, ZR has had a close association with the taxonomic community, particularly with the Zoological Society of London. ZR was founded in 1864 by a group of scientists associated with the British Museum. It continued, supported by Society until 1980 when a partner was sought and BIOSIS took over production activities. In 2004, BIOSIS realised that with limited resources we could not achieve our aims and put our ideas into practice without further partnerships, so in January 2004, BIOSIS (including ZR) was acquired by the Thomson Corporation, and the new ownership is now starting to pay dividends. Over that 150 years or so, there have been difficult times, but ZR is still here and still has the same purpose it had in 1864 - to serve the community and disseminate taxonomic, biodiversity and zoological information for the benefit of scientific research. This presentation discusses ZR, and the new free Index to Organism Names service which serves to demonstrate our commitment as Thomson to this initiative. I will also discuss how the partnership between ZR and ICZN might work from the ZR perspective.
- Zoological Record is the oldest continuing life science reference database and has unparalleled coverage of published taxonomic changes, new taxa and biodiversity related information. New names are recorded individually – with associated metadata – whether fossil or extant. That coverage continues and remains core to our business; it is very much our policy to reflect those user requirements in our services. Market research shows an incredibly high level of user satisfaction in all areas other than depth of electronic online backfile. This is the first area where Thomson resources have been able to provide us with the means to digitize ZR from 1864, so from mid 2006 it will be possible to search all of ZR and all the new names previously only available in the printed ZR back to 1864 in a single search and link through to original articles where available. With the 150 year backfile, ZR has high archival value – no one else has the wealth of names – we have seen a myriad of web based systems and none have the coverage of ZR.
- Partnership : We see the way forward for ZooBank very much as a partnership and that ZooBank should be run and administered by ICZN for the community. However, given the data we already collect for ZR, the way we collect them, the resources and commitment already in place, we are in an ideal position to help move the project along and assist, particularly with the names included in published literature, which would be indexed in ZR anyway. There are a number of items which are instantly resolved at no cost if use is made of existing or slightly modified processes already in place in ZR compilation. Technology : Thomson and ZR in particular have existing technical expertise which is already being used in open access community resources like Sp2000 (websites, grant money), ION, BiologyBrowser, open access linkages to serve taxonomic information, names and bibliographic data. This is the basis for long term stability which is paramount to the project. Data capture, quality checking, correcting and archiving: ZR has over 150 years experience of doing this efficiently and a skilled, ready trained workforce. ZR has established high quality data capture which can be easily adapted to gather required data and check conformity to Code, providing standardisation and completeness. Articles are entered into our system within 2-11 days of receipt. We believe that for published literature this approach would be the most complete, accurate and reliable way to build ZooBank data. We have doubts that the 20,000 new names each year could be captured by author self registration or by other third parties. Once captured, that data would need to be checked and verified. This process is already in place and ZR is willing to share the results with ICZN – in fact the data is already there in ION. Links: ZR already links to many journals through publisher agreements and are already talking to museums and other bodies with a view to implementing links to their full text services which would include more than just open access journals. There are other opportunities as we digitize back to 1864 to link to digital archives as they are created. For Existing names, ZR is the most comprehensive source of original new name description references. Others are incomplete, lack fossil taxa, and all are looking to use ZR to fill gaps. It is likely that we will have links to Barcoding of Life project, Species 2000/ITIS, GBIF specimen data, all of whom want to fill their gaps with ZR data. We already have commitment from the Company and senior management in support of ZooBank and ION going forward. No one else has 140 years of indexed searchable taxonomy. So with that in mind, I would like to finish by discussing the new ION service which will be available soon and incorporates many of the features proposed for ZooBank.
- The names can be searched in basic or advanced mode, or via a browsable hierarchy Free service, open to all Provides basic taxonomic information on all names indexed in Zoological Record, plus names from the non animal literature, plus: Links to valuable verified and indexed Web resources provided by ZR staff through BiologyBrowser Recent article lists Full bibliographic reference for original descriptions indexed in ZR New names alerts by RSS feed Ability to submit articles and names for indexing on ZR Purpose and uses: Homonym checking not only within zoology, but also from botany and micro-organisms Check if name has been used in the published literature Identify the taxonomic group to which an organism belongs Verify that newly published animal names have been correctly reported in Zoological Record , as recommended by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, and submit articles to have names included Keep up to date with newly published names in your organism group Track changes in the actual usage of names (and their variant spellings) in the literature Check homonyms - avoid homonym creation for new names and identify existing homonyms within and between phyla or kingdoms Obtain literature references about a name View latest research carried out on a name through the recent articles list Access full text and gain access to the full literature record of a given name
- Linking to the Zoological Record indexing provides access to the additional taxonomy and nomenclatural acts indexed for the item and gives access to the abstract and full text for many articles. It opens up the full power of the Web of Knowledge for analysis of the articles retrieved.
- The publication containing the reference can be supplied as A citation for ZR to locate A PDF file (emailed as an attachment) via the submission form A web site reference Hard copy
- RSS feeds of names recorded as new are supplied as monthly alerts. Users can select the group(s) they want to monitor. There is no limit to the number of groups which can be monitored