IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0269246.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Publication practice in Taxonomy: Global inequalities and potential bias against negative results

Author

Listed:
  • Rodrigo Brincalepe Salvador
  • Daniel Caracanhas Cavallari
  • Douglas Rands
  • Barbara Mizumo Tomotani

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Rodrigo Brincalepe Salvador & Daniel Caracanhas Cavallari & Douglas Rands & Barbara Mizumo Tomotani, 2022. "Publication practice in Taxonomy: Global inequalities and potential bias against negative results," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(6), pages 1-18, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0269246
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0269246
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0269246
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0269246&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0269246?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Halekoh, Ulrich & Højsgaard, Søren, 2014. "A Kenward-Roger Approximation and Parametric Bootstrap Methods for Tests in Linear Mixed Models The R Package pbkrtest," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 59(i09).
    2. Pierre Azoulay & Christian Fons-Rosen & Joshua S. Graff Zivin, 2019. "Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(8), pages 2889-2920, August.
    3. Christine Wennerås & Agnes Wold, 1997. "Nepotism and sexism in peer-review," Nature, Nature, vol. 387(6631), pages 341-343, May.
    4. Bates, Douglas & Mächler, Martin & Bolker, Ben & Walker, Steve, 2015. "Fitting Linear Mixed-Effects Models Using lme4," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 67(i01).
    5. Daniele Fanelli, 2012. "Negative results are disappearing from most disciplines and countries," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 90(3), pages 891-904, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Patrícia Martinková & Dan Goldhaber & Elena Erosheva, 2018. "Disparities in ratings of internal and external applicants: A case for model-based inter-rater reliability," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(10), pages 1-17, October.
    2. Lenth, Russell V., 2016. "Least-Squares Means: The R Package lsmeans," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 69(i01).
    3. Sebastian Loth & Katharina Jettka & Manuel Giuliani & Stefan Kopp & Jan P de Ruiter, 2018. "Confidence in uncertainty: Error cost and commitment in early speech hypotheses," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(8), pages 1-30, August.
    4. King, K.W. & Hanrahan, B.R. & Stinner, J. & Shedekar, V.S., 2022. "Field scale discharge and water quality response, to drainage water management," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 264(C).
    5. Gesche Janzarik & Daniel Wollschläger & Michèle Wessa & Klaus Lieb, 2022. "A Group Intervention to Promote Resilience in Nursing Professionals: A Randomised Controlled Trial," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(2), pages 1-18, January.
    6. Jacob Bergstedt & Sadoune Ait Kaci Azzou & Kristin Tsuo & Anthony Jaquaniello & Alejandra Urrutia & Maxime Rotival & David T. S. Lin & Julia L. MacIsaac & Michael S. Kobor & Matthew L. Albert & Darrag, 2022. "The immune factors driving DNA methylation variation in human blood," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-20, December.
    7. Rúna Í. Magnússon & Alexandra Hamm & Sergey V. Karsanaev & Juul Limpens & David Kleijn & Andrew Frampton & Trofim C. Maximov & Monique M. P. D. Heijmans, 2022. "Extremely wet summer events enhance permafrost thaw for multiple years in Siberian tundra," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-10, December.
    8. Ivo Blohm & Moritz Schulz & Jan Marco Leimeister, 2024. "Hedonic Signals in Crowdfunding," Business & Information Systems Engineering: The International Journal of WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK, Springer;Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), vol. 66(6), pages 757-775, December.
    9. JANSSENS, Jochen & DE CORTE, Annelies & SÖRENSEN, Kenneth, 2016. "Water distribution network design optimisation with respect to reliability," Working Papers 2016007, University of Antwerp, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    10. Martin, Manon & Govaerts, Bernadette, 2019. "LiMM-PCA : combining ASCA+ and linear mixed models to analyse high dimensional designed data," LIDAM Discussion Papers ISBA 2019021, Université catholique de Louvain, Institute of Statistics, Biostatistics and Actuarial Sciences (ISBA).
    11. Teruaki Kido & Yuko Yotsumoto & Masamichi J. Hayashi, 2025. "Hierarchical representations of relative numerical magnitudes in the human frontoparietal cortex," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 16(1), pages 1-15, December.
    12. Raymond Hernandez & Elizabeth A. Pyatak & Cheryl L. P. Vigen & Haomiao Jin & Stefan Schneider & Donna Spruijt-Metz & Shawn C. Roll, 2021. "Understanding Worker Well-Being Relative to High-Workload and Recovery Activities across a Whole Day: Pilot Testing an Ecological Momentary Assessment Technique," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(19), pages 1-17, October.
    13. Christopher Hassall & Michael Nisbet & Evan Norcliffe & He Wang, 2024. "The Potential Health Benefits of Urban Tree Planting Suggested through Immersive Environments," Land, MDPI, vol. 13(3), pages 1-12, February.
    14. Jie Zhao & Ji Chen & Damien Beillouin & Hans Lambers & Yadong Yang & Pete Smith & Zhaohai Zeng & Jørgen E. Olesen & Huadong Zang, 2022. "Global systematic review with meta-analysis reveals yield advantage of legume-based rotations and its drivers," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-9, December.
    15. Elisabeth Beckmann & Lukas Olbrich & Joseph Sakshaug, 2024. "Multivariate assessment of interviewer-related errors in a cross-national economic survey (Lukas Olbrich, Elisabeth Beckmann, Joseph W. Sakshaug)," Working Papers 253, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank).
    16. Tamay Besiroglu & Nicholas Emery-Xu & Neil Thompson, 2022. "Economic impacts of AI-augmented R&D," Papers 2212.08198, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2023.
    17. F J Heather & D Z Childs & A M Darnaude & J L Blanchard, 2018. "Using an integral projection model to assess the effect of temperature on the growth of gilthead seabream Sparus aurata," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(5), pages 1-19, May.
    18. Hussinger, Katrin & Pellens, Maikel, 2019. "Guilt by association: How scientific misconduct harms prior collaborators," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 516-530.
    19. Valentina Krenz & Arjen Alink & Tobias Sommer & Benno Roozendaal & Lars Schwabe, 2023. "Time-dependent memory transformation in hippocampus and neocortex is semantic in nature," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-17, December.
    20. Morán-Ordóñez, Alejandra & Ameztegui, Aitor & De Cáceres, Miquel & de-Miguel, Sergio & Lefèvre, François & Brotons, Lluís & Coll, Lluís, 2020. "Future trade-offs and synergies among ecosystem services in Mediterranean forests under global change scenarios," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 45(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0269246. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.