Publication practice in Taxonomy: Global inequalities and potential bias against negative results
Permanent lenke
https://hdl.handle.net/10037/27258Dato
2022-06-01Type
Journal articleTidsskriftartikkel
Peer reviewed
Forfatter
Salvador, Rodrigo Brincalepe; Cavallari, Daniel caracanhas; Rands, Douglas; Tomotani, Barbara mizumoSammendrag
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.
Forlag
Public Library of ScienceSitering
Salvador RB, Cavallari, Rands, Tomotani. Publication practice in Taxonomy: Global inequalities and potential bias against negative results. PLOS ONE. 2022;17(6)Metadata
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