Re: [API-users] Is there a GBIF specific LSID that can be used?

Since Rod opened the can of worms, I’ll dig in to it an feast along with the others.

Here is what seven years of NOMINA (http://globalnames.org/Nomina) meetings, plus millions of conversations at TDWG, Pro-iBiosphere, ICZN, ICB, iDigBio and many other regional, national, and international conferences, plus millions of dollars of targeted funding from various sources to drive the Global Names initiative….has led us to.

First, the biodiversity informatics realm is full of name-strings. These are strings of text characters, usually encoded as UTF-8, purported to represent taxon names of organisms. They may or may not include authorships, and/or abbreviations, and/or qualifiers of various sorts. These are the things that are indexed in GNI (http://gni.globalnames.org)

I completely agree with Rod that a “taxon name” is much more than just the string of UTF-8 characters used to render it. For clarity of communication (as if that were even possible in these kinds of discussions), I refer to these as “name objects”. They are conceptual (abstract) constructs, and are uniquely represented by a rich suite of metadata (publication metadata in which the name was originally established in accordance with a nomenclatural Code, authorship metadata, type specimen or type taxon metadata, etc.). A single taxon name might be represented via different name-strings (e.g., different alternate spellings, different genus combinations, etc.), and a single name-string might be applied to different name-objects (homonyms & homographs).

And, again, I completely agree with Rod that a “taxon” (=taxon concept, = taxonomic circumscription) is something else – it is another conceptual (abstract) construct, typically represented by a broader collection of metadata, including things like included child taxa, included synonym taxa, biological characters, and possibly other stuff such as geographic distribution. A single taxon might have more than one taxon name applied to it (synonyms), and a single taxon name (in the name-object sense, not just the name-string sense) might have been used to represent different taxon concepts (e.g., sensu stricto vs. sensu lato senses of the same name-object). The most practical way to refer to a taxon is the combination of a name-object (as described above), plus usage instance, e.g. “Aus bus Linnaeus 1758 sec. Pyle 2014” (the part before the “sec.” represents the name-object, and the part after the “sec.” refers to the specific usage instance that applies the name-object to a taxon concept).

Classifications (per se) are a little bit different, but are often included in the taxon concept space, even though they are technically not (logically) part of the taxon concept. The taxon concept is really the circumscribed set of organisms included within the concept. Changing the higher classification, by itself, has no impact on the circumscribed set of organisms included within the concept. However, that’s a topic for another can-of-worms discussion.

So…. The seven years of NOMINA meetings, millions of conversations and millions of dollars has revealed that the notion of a “Taxon Name Usage” instances (TNU), as indexed in the Global Names Usage Bank (GNUB), is an extremely powerful unit that addresses taxon names (name-objects), taxon concepts, and classifications; all with a single domain of identifiers (minted for TNUs). Rob Whitton and I have functioning prototypes that demonstrate the power of TNUs for managing nomenclatural, taxonomic, and classification data; and we just last week submitted a proposal to NSF to expand these prototypes into full-function services.

The seven years and millions of conversations and dollars has also taught us that the most practical way to manage this information in biodiversity informatics-land is through two nodes: a “dirty bucket” (GNI name-strings), and a “clean bucket” (GNUB). Dima Mozzherin has new funding from NSF to begin developing the service workflows to bridge name-strings (as they exist in most biodiversity databases) to Protonyms (the subset of TNUs that represent name-objects). Starting in October, we will begin to bridge our respective prototypes (funded by NSF through the Global Names project) into a seamless tool. We hope to have something more meaningful to say about this at TDWG; but one of the key things to keep in mind is that GNA (which includes GNI & GNUB) are low-level cross-linking tools and services – NOT replacements for CoL, ITIS, EOL, GBIF, WoRMS, NCBI taxonomy, etc., etc., etc. These other initiatives provide the information that end-users actually want. The role of GNA is to provide a core infrastructure (analogous to DNS) that most people use every day without ever knowing it.

The DOI thing is a bit of a misdirection. The “identifiers” (sensu non-LOD world) for name-strings are managed by GNI, and for TNUs by GNUB. Both are UUIDs, and as such are pure identifiers (i.e., not actionable by themselves). DOI is one of many possible identifier dereferencing services (ARC is another, and there are a host of others). DOI happens to be a particularly robust and useful dereferencing services, and as such it makes perfect sense to me to represent TNU identifiers as DOIs, as long as someone has the funding to make it happen.

So… to follow on Rod’s example, the TNU representing the “name-object” for the species epithet “vilcabambae”, as originally established in the publication Lehr 2007, is:

4B913B74-E880-4EC9-B0A9-F3AB9F02288B

Alone, that UUID does even less for you than the text-string “Pristimantis vilcabambae” does. However, combining it with a dereferencing service, such as http://zoobank.org/, you can start doing some more interesting things:

http://zoobank.org/4B913B74-E880-4EC9-B0A9-F3AB9F02288B

For example, you can get to the original publication as registered in ZooBank (http://zoobank.org/37BFC245-DDD6-4AB4-B4B1-DD6826B86873), which gets you a link to the DOI and the ResearchGate page for this reference. You can also get a link to the GBIF page, ITIS page, EOL page, ION page, and a few others (you’d also get links to the ASW site, if they had continued to expose their internal identifiers; though now it seems that they don’t anymore). You also see a call to BHL’s OpenURL service to “automagically” get the page image of the original description. And you get a resultset from GNI to see links to other datasets.

And that’s all from just ONE metadata dereferencing service (ZooBank). I think it would be WONDERFUL to have this identifier represented within DOI-space as well (e.g., http://dx.doi.org/10.XXXXX/4B913B74-E880-4EC9-B0A9-F3AB9F02288B), but someone needs to step forward as the “XXXXX” domain to mint the DOI. By doing so, not only would you be plugged into the GNA infrastructure (as described above), but also the CrossRef infrastructure and all the whizbang services that it provides. PLAZI and GNA have agreed that a taxon treatment = a TNU, and hence will share the same UUIDs for them (thus opening up the PLAZI services for use with the same identifiers).

In summary, Taxon name-strings, name-objects, concepts (and also classifications) are very different things, with different implied properties, and different implied meanings. GNA is well on its way to serving robust services based on persistent identifiers that are actionable through multiple dereferencing services. Including more dereferencing services (like DOI) is a GOOD thing! Re-using identifiers is a GOOD thing. Unnecessarily re-inventing wheels is NOT a particularly good thing.

Aloha,

Rich

P.S The astute among you will have noticed that the GNA cross-links and services (including ZooBank registrations) described above did not exist before I started replying to this email. And that is the POINT. GNA is an INFRASTRUCTURE to allow *US* (we the biodiversity practitioners of the world) to cross-link content. The fact that I was able to use the EXISTING GNA infrastructure to cross-link all these resources associated with the text-string name “Pristimantis vilcabambae” in FAR LESS time than it took me to compose this email message, speaks volumes about the potential that such an infrastructure can have.

From: api-users-bounces@lists.gbif.org [mailto:api-users-bounces@lists.gbif.org] On Behalf Of Roderic Page Sent: Monday, August 18, 2014 3:53 AM To: Rob Guralnick Cc: api-users@lists.gbif.org Subject: Re: [API-users] Is there a GBIF specific LSID that can be used?

Hi Rob,

At the risk of opening the whole taxon/name/concept can of worms, I’d see this a little differently.

For me a taxon name is a name + the original publication, rather than simply a text string. A taxon is different again, being essentially a statement about a collection of things that belong to the same taxon, and a statement of what to call them.

Taxon databases (e.g., GBIF) tend use strings for names, when it would be more elegant to use identifiers for names + publications. We could go some way towards cleaning the mess we’ve accumulated if we adopted (and reused) identifiers for these things. For a start, name strings that don’t map to identifiers in nomenclators would immediately be under suspicion as being potentially erroneous. it also links names to evidence, which is something we’re spectacularly bad at doing at the moment.

For example, "Pristimantis vilcabambae” is a text string which isn’t terribly useful. But if we combine that with details on where and when it was published we get something a bit more useful:

"Pristimantis vilcabambae Lehr 2007 published in DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.3099/0027-4100(2007)159%5B145:NEFLPP%5D2.0.CO;2 “ This is the information I’m accumulating in BioNames, by combining metadata from ION LSIDs with data from CrossRef and BioStor , see http://bionames.org/names/cluster/1949681

Should this "name string + publication” get a DOI? Sure. Then I’d want GBIF (and other taxon databases) to link to this name on their taxon pages. In other words, http://www.gbif.org/species/2425396 should have an identifier for the taxon name, instead of simply using a text string.

I’m beginning to sound like Rich Pyle, and he and I would a lost certainly model these things differently, but name strings <> taxon names <> taxa

Regards

Rod

--------------------------------------------------------- Roderic Page Professor of Taxonomy Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences Graham Kerr Building University of Glasgow Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK

Email: Roderic.Page@glasgow.ac.uk Tel: +44 141 330 4778 Skype: rdmpage Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/rdmpage LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/rdmpage Twitter: http://twitter.com/rdmpage Blog: http://iphylo.blogspot.com ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7101-9767

Citations: http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=4Z5WABAAAAAJ &user=4Z5WABAAAAAJ

On 18 Aug 2014, at 14:29, Robert Guralnick Robert.Guralnick@colorado.edu wrote:

Markus --- I think the answer to the question: "Would a taxon DOI be a valuable feature for you?" really depends on some of the details. With a taxon name, you are putting a DOI on a string and one that has been dissociated from its source(s). I would think more valuable would be a DOI linked to the checklist that contained the name, and maybe a passthrough (a la suffix passthroughs in the EZID system) to the individual name. That way I can resolve that taxon name to the source from whence it came.

Best, Rob

On Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 3:44 AM, Markus Döring mdoering@gbif.org wrote:

Hello Geoff,

GBIF uses simples integers as taxon identifiers, for example 2396049 for Ecsenius bicolor. These ids are stable, but obviously not globally unique. If you need a URI right now I would recommend for now to use our restful portal URL: http://www.gbif.org/species/2396049

For the future I could imagine us assigning DOIs to taxa reusing the current integer ids, but that has to be carefully evaluated first. Would a taxon DOI be a valuable feature for you?

Cheers, Markus

-- Markus Döring Software Developer Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) mdoering@gbif.org http://www.gbif.org http://www.gbif.org/

On 05 Aug 2014, at 05:17, Geoff Shuetrim geoff@galexy.net wrote:

Working with a range of web services, I have found myself making extensive

use of the LSIDs that are specific to each data source. For example, for ITIS, I use the Ecsenius bicolor LSID: urn:lsid:itis.gov:itis_tsn:636326

For WoRMS, the LSID for Ecsenius bicolor is:

urn:lsid:marinespecies.org:taxname:277652

For Atlas of living Australia the LSID for Ecsenius bicolor is:

urn:lsid:biodiversity.org.au:afd.taxon:99c29e7c-5b04-4e57-8e6b-82aa442a801a

Is there a GBIF LSID that can similarly be used as a unique identifier for

a taxon? I have come across the various GBIF unique keys but these are not unique outside of the GBIF environment and within the Gaia Guide systems I am deciding how best to work with these, ensuring their uniqueness, alongside identifiers from other data sources.

Thanks again for your assistance.

Geoff Shuetrim Gaia Guide Association http://www.gaiaguide.info/ _______________________________________________ API-users mailing list API-users@lists.gbif.org http://lists.gbif.org/mailman/listinfo/api-users

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