We intend to use the following data sources:
- WCVP
- IPNI
- Unpaywall
- GBIF (preserved specimen occurrences, material citations, taxon treatments)
- Index Herbariorum
- (Biodiversity Heritage Library)
WCVP will be used to give a globally comprehensive taxonomy with distribution. The link from a taxon concept in WCVP to the nomenclatural event in IPNI will be used to gather two classes of additional data recorded in IPNI: (1) type citation data (recorded since 1997) and (2) article digital object identifiers (DOIs), recorded since 2012. Type citation data will be used to assess the digital availability of type specimens, using GBIF as a datasource. A more general assessment of the availability of specimens will be made using the WCVP taxonomy as a lookup to the GBIF occurrence data on preserved specimens. On a regional level (using distributions from WCVP), these will be compared to the total number of specimens available using numbers derived from metadata records in Index Herbariorum. Bibliographic data (DOIs) will be used to flag if the first publication of each name is available open access by looking up the DOI in the Unpaywall dataset, and again WCVP will be used to assess if this varies regionally. Depending on the state of the WCVP bibliographic data (cited as a reference supporting taxonomic status, ie the assertion of acceptance or synonymisation), it may be possible to make an assessment of the presence of relevant literature in the Biodiversity Heritage Library, and again, to see how this varies regionally, using WCVP distributions.
- How does the availability of the key resources necessary for botanical research (types, specimens and literature) vary geographically?
- How the distribution of resources relates to vascular plant diversity at country level?
- Use of WCVP geographic distribution data to assess regional specimen availability
- Open access assessment of literature: open access takeup has been assessed generally across scholarly communications, but not specifically in the botanical taxonomic literature.
- Being able to combine diverse datasets to assess the availability of, and gaps in, the botanical data necessary for taxonomic research to support policy.
The nature of the question and the data do not require sophisticated statistical analysis. Some of the results will consist of complete counts or ratios of all existing data. Other results will be presented as maps and rankings of countries. We might also include basic correlations of the results with other data on countries and collections, such as the gross domestic product of political countries or the number of researchers at herbaria from Index Herbariorum.
The study of vascular plants has benefitted from recent efforts in digitisation, with 83.4 million records mobilised through the GBIF network (as of 2022-01-31) and c. 2500 species newly described each year (statistics from ipni.org, 2022-01-31). Alongside the effort to mobilise these primary specimen-derived data, a complementary approach is expanding the use of literature as a data source, using text-mining approaches and the recent adoption of the "material citation" concept (a reference to a specimen in literature). As these data come onstream, work has started to improve the linkages between these data items, examples include the experimental work in the GBIF data portal to "cluster" related records: e.g. specimens gathered from a shared collecting event, specimens and their "material citation" references in literature, or specimens and observations arising from the same field research activities. Though a wealth of data is available digitally and eligible for linking, this still represents a fraction of the total available (Index Herbariorum 2021 report suggests 396 million herbarium specimens extant worldwide). The release of the WCVP taxonomy with distribution now offers a comprehensive index with which these digitally available data can be analysed. This study will use the WCVP taxonomy, its underpinning nomenclature and geographic distribution as a key integration tool to analyse the digital availability of the key resources needed to effectively research vascular plant taxonomy (types, specimens and literature, and ready availability of these data through open access publishing), and how access to these varies across different regions. The integration of these different datasets will identify gaps in the availability of data on vascular plant diversity at a national, regional and global level. Understanding this variation in access will help form effective policy recommendations to focus future activities.