COL structured citations

[mdoering]

For citing COL we have up til now provided a recommended citation string. That is not always useful when you want to cite COL in a journal article where you usually have strict and specific citation styles that differ between journals. Instead it would be better and much more flexible if COL would provide a structured citation e.g. in BibTeX that can be formatted according to a journals style guides just as any other citation. It also becomes important when we issue a DOI for a COL release and have to craft a metadata document for it. The DOI will be the main way of citing COL anyways soon.

COL should focus more on how such a structured citation looks like ,so that we can serve that to users and, instead of hand crafting a citation string, rather select a preferred citation style such as APA, CSE or others to be used in the COL portal and other communications.

With COL having a registered ISSN we could consider to treat releases as issues of a periodical with a volume per year and monthly releases as the issue number. Each GSD DOI would be an "article" in the same issue. The only conceptual problem I have is that the COL release itself would be the entire issue. Thats also why we traditionally had editors, not authors for COL. How would you cite an entire periodical issue and would this not be weird?

But how is an ISSN number used properly for digital resources when it's not considered a journal? issn.org says you can use an ISSN for electronic media, in particular for:

“Ongoing integrating resources” : websites, databases, wikis, etc. As an “ongoing integrating resource,” your website, database, wiki or blog can have an ISSN, under certain conditions.

To be identified by an ISSN, your ongoing integrating resource must:

• present editorial content (written text),
• mention the editorial responsibility, comprised generally of more than one person (name of the editor or publisher) and, as a minimum, the country of publication,
• have a title that can be easily identified and doesn’t change when updated,
• have a valid URL address,
• cover a precise subject or address a specific target audience.

The IOC Bird List is in a similar situation and issues DOIs for every release (2 per year) using a rather simple citation. E.g. https://doi.org/10.14344/IOC.ML.11.1 results in:

@misc{1,
    doi = {10.14344/ioc.ml.11.1},
    url = {https://doi.org/10.14344%2Fioc.ml.11.1},
    publisher = {World Bird Names International Ornithologists Union},
    title = {{IOC} World Bird List 11.1}
}

---

Worth reading: https://www.dcc.ac.uk/sites/default/files/documents/publications/reports/guides/How_to_Cite_Link.pdf

[mdoering]

Wikipedia provides BibTeX on their how to cite pages.

[mdoering]

Summary for reasons to drop a citation string and instead provide structured citations as metadata:

• a citation string often contradict the actual metadata which really is the citation. It contains authors, editors, the title, year, publisher etc already.
• citation strings are very inconsistent and we'll end up with many different formats.
• journals enforce various citation styles, why cant we?
• gbif also abandoned the citation string model mostly because of inconsistencies
• structured citations (aka our metadata) allow various citation styles to be applied so the user can select their preferred or journal dictated style. We can offer BibTeX and RIS citations to users

[mdoering]

Proposal to add indataset type to bibtex https://github.com/plk/biblatex/issues/1103

[mdoering]

COL citation rules layed out in an email by Peter, Ed, Tom, Olaf & Leen:

Earlier this year the decision was made to dissolve the COL Editorial Board after discussion in the COL Global Team mostly because the role and formal position of the Editorial Board was unclear. The persons listed on the Editorial Board also formed the 1st part of the COL Checklist citation, hence a new citation of the COL Checklist was proposed that included all those involved in making the COL Checklist as a product possible: GSD and checklist custodians, Secretariat members, Global Team members, members of the COL governance bodies, etc.. The broader citation demonstrates the COL Checklist is built by a large and global taxonomic community. That is good!

The suggestion to use the 'Catalogue of Life Consortium' as first author is however raising concerns. To those outside COL circles it is not directly clear whom this concerns. In practice, there are specific functions and organizations that enable the COL initiative to function as a service for a global community of biodiversity data users. Though “Catalogue of Life Consortium, et al.” is great for general visibility of our endeavour, some key players (i.e. the hosting organisations, main funders) need citable visibility of their representatives to warrant (continuation of) their organisations contributions in cash or in kind. This is of great importance since the continuity of COL is dependent on this support. Hence the citation needs some further revision and must be documented in clear rules.

To address the issue above and to speed up the process since we are about to release the COL AC 2021, Olaf, Ed,Thomas, Leen and I revisited the citation, making good use of discussions in - and suggestions by - the Team, Board and Secretariat.

Starting point: The COL Checklist is a global, community driven research infrastructure being supported by institutional hosting agreements and funding partners. The content providers must be clearly recognized for - and supported in - their taxonomic contributions to the COL Checklist. The COL governance (Board, CoLP) is legally and financially responsible for the product and services. The Global Team, supported by its advisory committees, are instrumental in asserting quality control, content planning and taxonomic guidance. The Secretariat, including the Editorial Office, is responsible for managing the compilation process and overseeing production and administration. Last but not least hosting institutions and funding partners provide the financial foundation. These layers need recognition in each and every COL publication. As before, we approach this like a (online) book publication and see Chairpersons and those in managerial positions as representatives for groups of participants.

Based on this we suggest the following rules to create the citation:

• The 1st part of the citation is made up of a group referred to as the editors of the COL Checklist, these editors include in subsequent order:
  • Editors: Executive Secretary, Executive Editor, Global Team Chair, Chair of the Taxonomy Group, Chair of the Information Systems Group, Chair of the Board of Directors, members of the COL Partnership (ITIS, GBIF representatives), representatives of Hosting Organisations (Naturalis, Illinois Natural History Survey, GBIF, CAS). Pivotal leading functions in the project structure.
• The 2nd part of the citation consists of two groups, authors and other contributors in alphabetical order:
  • Authors: all database custodians for each GSD, or interim list section of the COL.
  • Contributors: all others formally involved in the COL production process: members of each COL governance body, programmers, liaison people of the aggregators (ITIS, SpeciesFiles, Aphia/WoRMS, FLOW).
• The Publisher is: Catalogue of Life (before Species 2000, now replaced by COL as the new legal body).
• Reference: each COL Checklist release receives a unique DOI and an ISSN number that reflects the COL Checklist as an online series.

We believe this is a fair and workable (rules based) approach doing justice to all members of our community and their different roles in the COL project. Note that this is very close to the approach formulated by Frank Bisby and the Species 2000 Board in the early years 2000. We suggest we follow this approach for citation now, and check year by year if it still meets the goals of proper citation.

Yours sincerely,

Peter Schalk, Chair COL Board of Directors / representing the institutional host Naturalis Ed Dewalt, COL Board member / representing the institutional host in Illinois Thomas Orrell, Chair of the CoL Partnership / representing ITIS sponsor partner Olaf Bánki, Executive Secretary COL Secretariat Leen Vandepitte, Chair COL Global Team

[mdoering]

After discussion with @olafbanki and based on the email above we propose the following:

COL project

title=Catalogue of Life Checklist
version=working draft
publisher=Catalogue of Life
publisher-place=Leiden, NL
ISSN=2405-8858
creator=Executive Secretary, Executive Editor, Global Team Chair, Chair of the Taxonomy Group, Chair of the Information Systems Group, Chair of the Board of Directors, members of the COL Partnership (ITIS, GBIF representatives), representatives of Hosting Organisations (Naturalis, Illinois Natural History Survey, GBIF, CAS)
contributor=all others formally involved in the COL production process: members of each COL governance body, programmers, liaison people of the aggregators (ITIS, SpeciesFiles, Aphia/WoRMS, FLOW).
editor=None
contact=COL Secretariat

Bánki, O., Roskov, Y., Vandepitte, L., DeWalt, R. E., Remsen, D., Schalk, P., Orrell, T., & Miller, J. (n.d.). Catalogue of Life Checklist (working draft). Catalogue of Life. https://data.catalogueoflife.org/dataset/3

COL monthly release

same as project above, BUT:
creator={project.creator + sorted(distinct(project.contributor + source.creator + source.editor)) }
contributor=None
version={ISO Date, e.g. 2021-07-29}
DOI={newly assigned}

Bánki, O., Roskov, Y., Vandepitte, L., DeWalt, R. E., Remsen, D., Schalk, P., Orrell, T., Keping, M., Miller, J., Aalbu, R., Adlard, R., Adriaenssens, E., Aedo, C., Aescht, E., Akkari, N., Alonso-Zarazaga, M. A., Alvarez, B., Alvarez, F., Anderson, G., … von Konrat, M. (2021). Catalogue of Life Checklist (Version 2021-07-29). Catalogue of Life. https://doi.org/10.48580/d4sb

COL annual release

same as monthly release, BUT:
version=Annual Checklist 2021

Bánki, O., Roskov, Y., Vandepitte, L., DeWalt, R. E., Remsen, D., Schalk, P., Orrell, T., Keping, M., Miller, J., Aalbu, R., Adlard, R., Adriaenssens, E., Aedo, C., Aescht, E., Akkari, N., Alonso-Zarazaga, M. A., Alvarez, B., Alvarez, F., Anderson, G., … von Konrat, M. (2021). Catalogue of Life Checklist (Annual Checklist 2021). Catalogue of Life.

COL source

title={source.title}
creator={source.creator + source.editor}
editor=None
version={source.version}
publisher=Catalogue of Life
publisher-place=Leiden, NL
container-title=Catalogue of Life
container-creator={project.creator}
DOI={newly assigned if data has changed}

Hobern, D., & Gielis, C. (2021). Catalogue of the Alucitoidea of the World. In O. Bánki, Y. Roskov, L. Vandepitte, R. E. DeWalt, D. Remsen, P. Schalk, T. Orrell, & J. Miller, Catalogue of Life Checklist (1.0.21.199 (18 Jul 2021)). https://doi.org/10.1093/database/baw125

[mdoering]

Alternatively I would propose to add the Executive Editor as editor of the project and its releases. This would result in the following citation strings:

• Bánki, O., Roskov, Y., Vandepitte, L., DeWalt, R. E., Remsen, D., Schalk, P., Orrell, T., Keping, M., & Miller, J. (n.d.). Catalogue of Life Checklist (Y. Roskov, Ed.; working draft). Catalogue of Life. https://data.catalogueoflife.org/dataset/3

• Bánki, O., Roskov, Y., Vandepitte, L., DeWalt, R. E., Remsen, D., Schalk, P., Orrell, T., Keping, M., Miller, J., Aalbu, R., Adlard, R., Adriaenssens, E., Aedo, C., Aescht, E., Akkari, N., Alonso-Zarazaga, M. A., Alvarez, B., Alvarez, F., Anderson, G., … von Konrat, M. (2021). Catalogue of Life Checklist (Y. Roskov, Ed.; Version 2021-07-29). Catalogue of Life. https://doi.org/10.48580/d4sb

• Bánki, O., Roskov, Y., Vandepitte, L., DeWalt, R. E., Remsen, D., Schalk, P., Orrell, T., Keping, M., Miller, J., Aalbu, R., Adlard, R., Adriaenssens, E., Aedo, C., Aescht, E., Akkari, N., Alonso-Zarazaga, M. A., Alvarez, B., Alvarez, F., Anderson, G., … von Konrat, M. (2021). Catalogue of Life Checklist (Y. Roskov, Ed.; Annual Checklist 2021). Catalogue of Life.

[mjy]

Let me preface this by stating I appreciate all contributions, small, administrative, and large, that go into making the Catalog of Life happen.

Aren't there some critical omissions here? I could be missing something but Markus Doering and Geoff Ower are major contributors to this effort. Are you missing other technical people, other people that touch every aspect of the actual product?

[mdoering]

Thanks @mjy. The generated citation string does not list all authors as you can see by the elipsoid being applied. There are hundreds of authors, including also me, you and @gdower whom are part of the project contributors and thus get copied into the author list in alphabetical order. You can see a preliminary list of our latest release metadata here: https://gist.github.com/mdoering/110629fe83005ad560a1646590f25117#file-col-metadata-json

[mjy]

@mdoering how was authorship order determined? If the intent is to link to all authors in the citation (which the latter does not, and perhaps should) then wouldn't it be more equitable if it was simply alphabetical for the elipse versions?

[mdoering]

authors for a release are generated based on 3 things:

• first copy the projects authors exactly, this includes the first 8 or so authors called "editors" in Peters mail above.
• then append a list of authors which are merged from all contributors of the project (COL team mostly) and all authors of all sources. This list is then made distinct and sorted alphabetically before it is appended to the fist short batch of authors above

[mdoering]

see also https://github.com/CatalogueOfLife/general/issues/88#issuecomment-893274228

[mjy]

The COL governance (Board, CoLP) is legally and financially responsible for the product and services. The Global Team, supported by its advisory committees, are instrumental in asserting quality control, content planning and taxonomic guidance. The Secretariat, including the Editorial Office, is responsible for managing the compilation process and overseeing production and administration. Last but not least hosting institutions and funding partners provide the financial foundation.

Is there precidence at the University or Institutional level for CEOs, COOs, Department heads, funding agencies (NFS) being cited as authors in the scientific products they produce? Don't we have aknowledgement sections (e.g. in the webpage) for this type of thing?

[mdoering]

I mostly agree, Matt. AFAIK it is common practice to include the professor or leader of research labs as the first author. But not a full list of institutions giving support.

But this is the decision taken by COL so I will have to defer to @olafbanki and others. The principle of inclusion of all source authors was an agreement made by the entire Global Team earlier this year.