ZooBank: the open-access register for zoological taxonomy: Technical Discussion Paper

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Andrew Polaszek^1,2, Miguel Alonso-Zarazaga^3,1, Philippe Bouchet^4,1, Denis J. Brothers^5,1, Neal Evenhuis^6, Frank-Thorsten Krell^2, Christopher H.C. Lyal^2, Alessandro Minelli^7,1; Richard L. Pyle^6, Nigel J. Robinson^8, F. Christian Thompson⁹ & J. van Tol¹⁰

¹International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, London UK; ²Natural History Museum, London UK; ³Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Madrid, SPAIN; ⁴Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, FRANCE; ⁵University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, SOUTH AFRICA; ⁶Bishop Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA; ⁷University of Padua, ITALY; ⁸Thomson Zoological Ltd, York, UK; ⁹Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA; ¹⁰National Museum of Natural History, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Introduction
A proposal for the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) to establish ZooBank, an open-access, mandatory registration system for descriptions of all new taxa and nomenclatural acts in animal taxonomy was published recently (Polaszek et al., 2005). That paper is effectively an argument for the establishment of a registration system, proposed by 29 currently active zoologists from a variety of backgrounds. The purpose of the present paper is to describe the technical details and possible obstacles to implementing such a system, and to attract comments and discussion from potential contributors and users.

ZooBank - Summary
The widely dispersed nature of taxonomic publications that affect the scientific names of animals is an obstacle to progress in zoology. For example, in entomology alone, there are more than 1100 specialised journals that might contain taxonomically relevant information, and many of these are extremely difficult to access. With advances in bioinformatics answering the need for the more rapid description and cataloguing of our disappearing biodiversity, the necessity for an authoritative name registry is ever greater. Zoological Record has been the resource that until now has come closest to answering that need by its annual publication of all those new animal names and taxonomic acts in zoology that come to its attention. The producers of Zoological Record are therefore the ideal collaborators, with the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN), for the development and implementation of ZooBank. Zoological Record will act as the primary data collector with ICZN as the independent archiver of the database. The mechanism for doing this is described below.

The scope of ZooBank
It must be emphasised that assessment or judgement of the taxonomic content of a piece of published work, i.e. any form of peer-review, is not part of the function of ZooBank. ZooBank will function as an archived index of zoological names and nomenclatural acts. A statement regarding the availability or unavailability of names will be provided. The full scope of nomenclatural acts indexed by ZooBank remains to be established, but should minimally include newly proposed names, and new nomenclatural acts that affect existing names (as established in the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature).

 

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