TY  - JOUR
A1  - Wägele, Heike
A1  - Klussmann-Kolb, Annette
A1  - Kuhlmann, Michael
A1  - Haszprunar, Gerhard
A1  - Lindberg, David
A1  - Koch, André
A1  - Wägele, Johann Wolfgang
T1  - The taxonomist - an endangered race : a practical proposal for its survival
T2  - Frontiers in zoology
N2  - Background: Taxonomy or biological systematics is the basic scientific discipline of biology, postulating hypotheses of identity and relationships, on which all other natural sciences dealing with organisms relies. However, the scientific contributions of taxonomists have been largely neglected when using species names in scientific publications by not citing the authority on which they are based.

Discussion: Consequences of this neglect is reduced recognition of the importance of taxonomy, which in turn results in diminished funding, lower interest from journals in publishing taxonomic research, and a reduced number of young scientists entering the field. This has lead to the so-called taxonomic impediment at a time when biodiversity studies are of critical importance.

Here we emphasize a practical and obvious solution to this dilemma. We propose that whenever a species name is used, the author(s) of the species hypothesis be included and the original literature source cited, including taxonomic revisions and identification literature - nothing more than what is done for every other hypothesis or assumption included in a scientific publication. In addition, we postulate that journals primarily publishing taxonomic studies should be indexed in ISISM.

Summary: The proposal outlined above would make visible the true contribution of taxonomists within the scientific community, and would provide a more accurate assessment for funding agencies impact and importance of taxonomy, and help in the recruitment of young scientists into the field, thus helping to alleviate the taxonomic impediment. In addition, it would also make much of the biological literature more robust by reducing or alleviating taxonomic uncertainty.

Keywords: Taxonomy crisis; taxonomic impediment; impact factor; original species description; citation index; systematics
KW  - Taxonomy crisis
KW  - taxonomic impediment
KW  - impact factor
KW  - original species description
KW  - citation index
KW  - systematics
Y1  - 2011
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/23165
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-231657
UR  - http://www.frontiersinzoology.com/content/8/1/25
SN  - 1742-9994
N1  - © 2011 Wägele et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
VL  - 8
IS  - 25
SP  - 1
EP  - 7
PB  - BioMed Central
CY  - London
ER  -