ID: 613 / 81

Category: Symposia

Track: Pending

Proposed Symposium Title: THE NEW VALUE OF SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS IN THE DIGITAL AGE

Abstract: Scientific publications are the means by which scientific knowledge is communicated. In botany as well as all biological sciences, each new species discovered is based on at least one publication including a protologue conformant to the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants. A protologue is based on a standard vocabulary, including a material citation of the type specimen and its hosting institution, generally a figure with the diagnostic characters and a discussion of related species. Increasingly, DNA sequences are cited. The protologues are referenced in subsequent taxonomic treatments, clearly delimited sections of a publications about one particular taxon, and implicit in taxonomic names. Together, these treatments cover the history of the names of the taxon (synonymy), are a very rich source for traits, distribution, and since they are based on physical specimens, an authoritative identification of these specimens. It is assumed that the corpus of biodiversity literature includes a daily growing corpus of 500 million pages, housed in the many libraries of natural history institutions. In the digital age, these citations of implicit links allow text and datamine these publications, for example to extract the history of names, the use of a physical specimen or a gene sequence. It also allows creation of identifiers for each taxon, taxonomic treatment, figure so that they can be directly cited and reused by anybody, anytime and from anywhere. In this symposium the current status of scientific publications, and their development in botany will be exposed. This includes the semantic structure of publications and how to make them citable and accessible via dedicated research infrastructures. Efforts to annotate the data in legacy publications and new developments in the world of publishing will be discussed, with an emphasis on how the data is immediately reused by the World Flora Online or GBIF.

Speaker 1: Jonas Castro Plazi, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil castro@plazi.org Access to the data imprisoned in 500 Million pages of biodiversity publications

Speaker 2: Laurence Bénichou Muséum nationale d'Histoire naturelle, Paris and CETAF publishing group, Bruxelles, Belgium benichou@mnhn.fr Beyond the PDF: semantic publishing as gateway to the resources about biodiversity

Speaker 3: Roger Hyam Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Edniburgh, UK rhyam@rbge.org.uk Getting the data liberated from botanical literature as direct input to into the World Flora Online and other scientific digital reference resources

Topics (Up to three): Systematics

Topic 2: Conservation Biology

Topic 3: Phylogenetics and Phylogenomics

Justification: Research results are published as scholarly publications based on previous publications, part of the research data life cycle. In the digital age, the process of finding, reading and analyzing publications is dramatically shortened for anyone, anywhere, at any time. Taxonomic publishing is at the forefront of scientific publishing. Today thousands of new species discovered each year are immediately included in the GBIF and ChecklistBank/COL. Since all the proposed topics depend on and benefit from access to publications, this symposium on how to produce and reuse semantic publications, past and prospective, should both contribute and enrich all topics. 1 male / 1 female 2 Senior scientists 2 North Lecturerer 2 male / 1 female 1 junior scientist <3 years after phd / 2 senior scientists 1 South (Brazil) / 2 North