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Publication practice in Taxonomy: Global inequalities and potential bias against negative results

There is broad recognition by practicing taxonomists that the field is going through a crisis, which has been dubbed the “taxonomic impediment”. There are many aspects involved in said crisis, but publication practices in taxonomy are often neglected or relegated to the backseat. We provide an initi...

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Autores principales: Salvador, Rodrigo Brincalepe, Cavallari, Daniel Caracanhas, Rands, Douglas, Tomotani, Barbara Mizumo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9159550/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35648765
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269246
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author Salvador, Rodrigo Brincalepe
Cavallari, Daniel Caracanhas
Rands, Douglas
Tomotani, Barbara Mizumo
author_facet Salvador, Rodrigo Brincalepe
Cavallari, Daniel Caracanhas
Rands, Douglas
Tomotani, Barbara Mizumo
author_sort Salvador, Rodrigo Brincalepe
collection PubMed
description There is broad recognition by practicing taxonomists that the field is going through a crisis, which has been dubbed the “taxonomic impediment”. There are many aspects involved in said crisis, but publication practices in taxonomy are often neglected or relegated to the backseat. We provide an initial foray into this topic via a worldwide survey with taxonomists, spanning all botanical and zoological groups, and career stages. Demographically, most of the respondents identified themselves as males (70%), working in Europe or North America (68%), in universities (50%) or museums (27%). Over half of the respondents are established/late-career researchers (only about 25% of full professors were female), with a low number of early-career researchers and graduate students (i.e., taxonomists in training). Nearly 61% of the men acquired their highest title at least eleven years ago, while only 41% of the women did so. Nearly 92% of the respondents have published new species descriptions, while around 60% and 26% have synonymized, respectively, species-level or subspecies-level taxa. In general, respondents perceive the act of describing new species to be easier than synonymizing species (p = 0.05). Established/late-career researchers and male researchers, particularly in Oceania and North America, found it easier to publish nomenclatural acts such as new species descriptions, while early-career researchers had their acts contested more often. Our results reaffirm the low academic recognition of the field, the lack of funding for research and publishing charges especially in the Global South, and the difficulty in finding specialized outlets (and the low impact factor of those journals) as persistent issues in taxonomy. Other significant problems raised by respondents include ethical issues in the peer-review process, a bias against newcomers in the field coming either from established researchers or committees, and taxonomic vandalism.
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spelling pubmed-91595502022-06-02 Publication practice in Taxonomy: Global inequalities and potential bias against negative results Salvador, Rodrigo Brincalepe Cavallari, Daniel Caracanhas Rands, Douglas Tomotani, Barbara Mizumo PLoS One Research Article There is broad recognition by practicing taxonomists that the field is going through a crisis, which has been dubbed the “taxonomic impediment”. There are many aspects involved in said crisis, but publication practices in taxonomy are often neglected or relegated to the backseat. We provide an initial foray into this topic via a worldwide survey with taxonomists, spanning all botanical and zoological groups, and career stages. Demographically, most of the respondents identified themselves as males (70%), working in Europe or North America (68%), in universities (50%) or museums (27%). Over half of the respondents are established/late-career researchers (only about 25% of full professors were female), with a low number of early-career researchers and graduate students (i.e., taxonomists in training). Nearly 61% of the men acquired their highest title at least eleven years ago, while only 41% of the women did so. Nearly 92% of the respondents have published new species descriptions, while around 60% and 26% have synonymized, respectively, species-level or subspecies-level taxa. In general, respondents perceive the act of describing new species to be easier than synonymizing species (p = 0.05). Established/late-career researchers and male researchers, particularly in Oceania and North America, found it easier to publish nomenclatural acts such as new species descriptions, while early-career researchers had their acts contested more often. Our results reaffirm the low academic recognition of the field, the lack of funding for research and publishing charges especially in the Global South, and the difficulty in finding specialized outlets (and the low impact factor of those journals) as persistent issues in taxonomy. Other significant problems raised by respondents include ethical issues in the peer-review process, a bias against newcomers in the field coming either from established researchers or committees, and taxonomic vandalism. Public Library of Science 2022-06-01 /pmc/articles/PMC9159550/ /pubmed/35648765 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269246 Text en © 2022 Salvador et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Salvador, Rodrigo Brincalepe
Cavallari, Daniel Caracanhas
Rands, Douglas
Tomotani, Barbara Mizumo
Publication practice in Taxonomy: Global inequalities and potential bias against negative results
title Publication practice in Taxonomy: Global inequalities and potential bias against negative results
title_full Publication practice in Taxonomy: Global inequalities and potential bias against negative results
title_fullStr Publication practice in Taxonomy: Global inequalities and potential bias against negative results
title_full_unstemmed Publication practice in Taxonomy: Global inequalities and potential bias against negative results
title_short Publication practice in Taxonomy: Global inequalities and potential bias against negative results
title_sort publication practice in taxonomy: global inequalities and potential bias against negative results
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9159550/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35648765
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269246
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