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This paper describes a set of guidelines for the citation of zoological and botanical specimens in the European Journal of Taxonomy. The guidelines stipulate controlled vocabularies and precise formats for presenting the specimens examined within a taxonomic publication, which allow for the rich data associated with the primary research material to be harvested, distributed and interlinked online via international biodiversity data aggregators. Herein we explain how the EJT editorial standard was defined and how this initiative fits into the journal’s project to semantically enhance its publications using the Plazi TaxPub DTD extension. By establishing a standardised format for the citation of taxonomic specimens, the journal intends to widen the distribution of and improve accessibility to the data it publishes. Authors who conform to these guidelines will benefit from higher visibility and new ways of visualising their work. In a wider context, we hope that other taxonomy journals will adopt this approach to their publications, adapting their working methods to enable domain-specific text mining to take place. If specimen data can be efficiently cited, harvested and linked to wider resources, we propose that there is also the potential to develop alternative metrics for assessing impact and productivity within the natural sciences.

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In order to consider the effects of online publishing on the career of researchers, as well as to encourage both its recognition and its improved positioning within the field and beyond, the CETAF Membership organized two workshops during which specific questions about scientific publishing in taxonomy were addressed: authorship citation and Open Access. The present opinion paper is the result of those workshops held on 19 October 2016 in Madrid and on 4 October 2017 in Heraklion. The discussions were aimed at reconciling the requirements of the relevant nomenclatural codes with recommendations for best practices that are adapted to the evolving landscape of e-publishing. By evaluating the different policies of a range of journals regarding authorship citation, we were able to recognise the conflicting and incoherent practices related to the citation of taxon authorships; an issue that is important to clarify for scientific (explicit source), practical (findability of source) and reputational (citation index) reasons. A collective policy on authorship citation also fits into the wider challenge faced by researchers and institutions, whereby interoperability and traceability become key priorities, both for facilitating access to scientific resources and for generating metrics that accurately represent the activities and output of the community. Publications resulting from publicly-funded research should be considered as an essential part of the research process and there has been a strong move towards Open Access, which increases visibility, citability, innovation and impact. Diverse models of Open Access have appeared in scientific publishing but while they each promote free access to the end user, they are not always equitable for the authors and funders of the original research. Herein we formulate recommendations for the relevant research communities and outline the advantages behind adopting a collective strategy towards the issues of authorship citation and Open Access.

BiCIKL is an European Union Horizon 2020 project that will initiate and build a new European starting community of key research infrastructures, establishing open science practices in the domain of biodiversity through provision of access to data, associated tools and services at each separate stage of and along the entire research cycle. BiCIKL will provide new methods and workflows for an integrated access to harvesting, liberating, linking, accessing and re-using of subarticle-level data (specimens, material citations, samples, sequences, taxonomic names, taxonomic treatments, figures, tables) extracted from literature. BiCIKL will provide for the first time access and tools for seamless linking and usage tracking of data along the line: specimens > sequences > species > analytics > publications > biodiversity knowledge graph > re-use.