Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand.
Faculdade de Filosofia, Departamento de Biologia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, SP, Brazil.
PLoS One. 2022 Jun 1;17(6):e0269246. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0269246. eCollection 2022.
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.
从事分类学研究的人普遍认识到，该领域正面临一场危机，这场危机被称为“分类学障碍”。这场危机涉及到许多方面，但分类学的出版实践往往被忽视或置于次要地位。我们通过一项对全球分类学家的调查，初步探讨了这个问题，调查涵盖了所有植物学和动物学群体以及职业阶段。从人口统计学的角度来看，大多数受访者认为自己是男性（70%），在欧洲或北美工作（68%），在大学（50%）或博物馆（27%）工作。超过一半的受访者是已确立/后期职业研究人员（只有约 25%的正教授是女性），早期职业研究人员和研究生（即正在接受培训的分类学家）人数较少。近 61%的男性至少在 11 年前获得了他们的最高头衔，而只有 41%的女性这样做。近 92%的受访者发表了新种描述，而分别约有 60%和 26%的受访者对种级或亚种级分类单元进行了同义化处理。总的来说，受访者认为描述新物种的行为比同义化物种的行为更容易（p = 0.05）。已确立/后期职业研究人员和男性研究人员，特别是在大洋洲和北美，发现发表新物种描述等命名行为更容易，而早期职业研究人员的行为更常受到质疑。我们的结果再次证实了该领域学术认可度低、研究和出版费用缺乏特别是在全球南方、以及寻找专门渠道（和那些期刊的低影响因子）困难等问题在分类学中仍然存在。受访者提出的其他重大问题包括同行评议过程中的道德问题、领域中新来者面临的来自既有研究人员或委员会的偏见，以及分类学破坏行为。
