University of Glasgow

Roderic Page

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Following on from my [earlier
grumble](http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2007/05/catalogue-of-life-openurl-and-taxonomic.html)
about how the catalogue of Life handles literature, I\'ve spent an
afternoon mapping publications in the **\"itis\".publications** table in
a copy of [ITIS](http://www.itis.gov) to external GUIDs, such as DOIs,
Handles, and SICIs in JSTOR. The mapping is not complete by any means,
but gives an idea of how many publications have GUIDs.You can view the
mapping [here](http://linnaeus.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/itis/). Many of
the publications in ITIS are books, which don\'t have DOIs. A lot of the
literature is also old (although this doesn\'t always mean it won\'t
have a DOI).  
  
Of 4296 records, 324 have DOIs (around 7.5%). Not a lot, but a still a
reasonable chunk. At least 700 of the ITIS publications are books (based
on having an ISBN), so the percentage is a little higher.  
  
The point of this exercise (following on from my comments on the [design
flaw](http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2007/05/catalogue-of-life-design-flaw.html)
in the catalogue of life), is that I think taxonomic databases need to
use GUIDs internally to maximise their stability and utility.  
  
Indeed, this is another reason to be disappointed with
[ZooBank](http://www.zoobank.org). In addition to a poor way to navigate
trees (which prompted me to explore tools such
[PygmyBrowse](http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2006/09/pygmybrowse.html)),
ZooBank does exactly what ITIS and the Catalogue of Life do when it
comes to displaying literature \-- it displays a text citation (albeit
with an invitation to view that record in Zoological Record, a
subscription-based service).  
  
For example, the copepod *Nitocrellopsis texana* was described in ITIS
publication **3072**, which I\'ve discovered has the the DOI
[doi:10.1023/A:1003892200897](http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1003892200897){target="_new"}.
Given a DOI we have a GUID for the publication, and a direct link to it.
In contrast, ZooBank merely gives us:  

> Nitocrellopsis texana n. sp. from central TX (U.S.A.) and N.
> ahaggarensis n. sp. from the central Algerian Sahara (Copepoda,
> Harpacticoida). Hydrobiologia 418 (1-3) 15 January: 82

  
and a link to Zoological Record. Interesting, even with the resources of
ISI behind it, the Zoological Record result doesn\'t have the DOI.  
  
This for me is one reason ZooBank was so disappointing, it actually
provided little of value.  
  
What next? Well, with the 300 or so references mapped to DOIs, one could
link those to the ITIS records for the corresponding taxonomic names,
and serve these up through somehting like
[iSpecies](http://ispecies.org), for example. These would be links to
the literature, in many cases original descriptions, to supplement the
other literature found by iSpecies.


Following on from my earlier grumble about how the catalogue of Life handles literature, I've spent an afternoon mapping publications in the
<b>
 "itis".publications
</b>
table in a copy of ITIS to external GUIDs, such as DOIs, Handles, and SICIs in JSTOR. The mapping is not complete by any means, but gives an idea of how many publications have GUIDs.You can view the mapping here. Many of the publications in ITIS are books, which don't have DOIs.

Messages de Rogue Scholar

ITIS and DOIs