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As a frequent publisher in #Zootaxa, here is my statement of support. Taxonomy is the foundation and pillar for conservation and biodiversity. It underpins everything. You can’t protect and enact legislations for things with no names. 1/- https://twitter.com/sdbiju1/status/1279274022421716992
Taxonomy is already a depauperate field, with some taxonomic groups left with few, if any, experts. Our skills are highly specific, exceedingly nuanced, and requires years of training and proper mentoring. Not from textbooks, but from actual people willing to teach. 2/-
Yet we receive little support, our profession not employable, and our peers “dimiss” us for choosing to work on a field which they think includes “counting very small boring things”. Think about us every time you do a meta-analysis of species abundance. 3/-
People always say to me. Wow it’s so impressive that you’ve described all these species so early in your caeeer. Ask yourself why this is so? It’s because there’s practically NOBODY doing it. Young enthusiastic taxonomists are exceedingly rare, and with few avenues to publish 4/-
And now their one good publication outlet is being stripped of its impact factor. You need to sit and think about this carefully. The fact that an undergraduate student can claim authority to a whole group of animal speaks volumes. We need to support taxonomists 5/-
Not take away the only bone that’s been thrown to us. This is one of very few fields of expertise where citations continue to accumulate decades and centuries after they’ve been published. /endrant
Changed my mind./ContinueRant. If u know me, you’d probably have heard some of my rants with Zootaxa. Yes, it’s not the perfect journal. Yes, it does have some faults. But Zootaxa remains at the top in its field, for free publication costs, free color images, and quick turnaround
The decision to remove ZT’s impact factor is misconstrued, and is based off a flawed metric - that papers published by Zootaxa contains too many “self citations”. That is, zootaxa papers citing other zootaxa papers.
This is silly for two main reasons. Firstly, Taxonomists have few outlets to publish. Few journals will take monographs, or species descriptions AND offer free publication costs. This leads to a huge number of taxonomic papers being published in Zootaxa.
Secondly, taxonomic papers iften cite other taxonomic papers. This then generates a feedback loop, of a large number of taxonomists publishing and citing in a single journal. It doesn’t help that other journals IMPOSE upon NOT citing species descriptions or species authorities.
Now ./endrant for real. I feel like I been doing a lot of hot takes lately. This not good for my juju. Need an ice cream now.
