correspondence
The dilemma of self-citation in taxonomy
To the Editor — Almost three centuries since
Linnaeus introduced the system of binomial
classification1, thousands of species new to
science are still described every year2. Any
research dealing with living organisms is
intrinsically dependent on taxonomy for
reproducibility, since misidentifications
may affect conclusions3. As such, published
taxonomic results should not be seen as
obscure specialized papers, but instead
as primers for taxon recognition that
allow researchers to correctly identify the
organisms they study. Yet recent controversies
around the low impact factors of taxonomic
journals4 highlight the need for more
accurate measurement of the intellectual
contribution of taxonomy5. Journals that still
publish taxonomic contributions are being
downgraded or threatened with exclusion
from current impact evaluation metrics due
to their self-citation rates6,7. But inevitably,
as the numbers of both active taxonomists
and journals publishing taxonomy decline,
self-citation becomes more frequent both
for journals and authors, exacerbating the
issue and devaluing taxonomic work to a
point where it might become unsustainable
as an academic line of research, losing out
in the competition for funding and jobs.
Setting aside this disciplinary concern, the
decreasing number of journals publishing
taxonomy and the long-standing practice
of not citing taxonomic work correctly in
other biological research result in worrying
underestimation of the impact that taxonomy
has in every field of biology — this is
especially concerning in a current climate
of biodiversity decline, mass extinction and
a pollination crisis8–10. In non-taxonomic
papers, although it is generally recommended
that author and year be given at first mention
of a species name, the reference is not usually
included in the literature cited. But in some
of the most high-profile non-taxonomic
journals, the inclusion of full taxonomic
references would increase the manuscript
by no more than one and a half references
2
per printed page3. For those papers in which
vast numbers of taxonomic works require
citation (for example, studies mentioning
thousands of species), an alternative method
for referencing the relevant papers would be
to link either by DOI or as discrete metafiles
that would be checked by citation tracking
databases (for example, Scopus, SciELO and
Web of Science) to ensure that the references
are incorporated in impact metrics. This
solution would require buy-in from both
journals, by providing discrete references
metafiles, and citation database developers
and managers, by including these metafiles
in the citation tracking process. We, and
the 1,312 signatories, urge all researchers
to consider these solutions and propose
additional measures in order to ensure
appropriate recognition of the science
of taxonomy.
❐
Douglas Zeppelini ✉, Ana Dal Molin 2,
Carlos J. E. Lamas 3, Carlos Sarmiento4,
Cristina A. Rheims 5,
Daniell R. R. Fernandes 6, Elison F. B. Lima 7,
Evandro N. Silva8, Fernando Carvalho-Filho9,
Ľubomír Kováč 10, James Montoya-Lerma11,
Oana T. Moldovan 12,
Pedro G. B. Souza-Dias 13,
Peterson R. Demite 14,
Rodrigo M. Feitosa 15,
Sarah L. Boyer 16, Wanda M. Weiner17 and
William C. Rodrigues 18
1
Departamento de Biologia, Universidade Estadual
da Paraíba, João Pessoa, Brasil. 2Departamento
Microbiologia e Parasitologia, Centro de Biociências,
Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Natal,
Brasil. 3Museu de Zoologia da Universidade de São
Paulo, São Paulo, Brasil. 4Laboratorio de Sistemática
y Biología Comparada de Insectos, Instituto de
Ciencias Naturales, Universidad Nacional de
Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia. 5Laboratório de
Coleções Zoológicas, Instituto Butantan, São Paulo,
Brasil. 6Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia,
Manaus, Brasil. 7Universidade Federal do Piauí,
Campus Amílcar Ferreira Sobral, Floriano,
Brasil. 8 Departamento de Ciências Biológicas,
1
Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana,
Feira de Santana, Brasil. 9Coordenação de Zoologia,
Entomologia, Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi,
Belém, Brasil. 10Department of Zoology, Institute
of Biology and Ecology, Faculty of Science,
P.J. Šafárik University, Košice, Slovakia. 11Universidad
del Valle, Cali, Colombia. 12Emil Racovitza Institute
of Speleology, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. 13Museu
Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro,
Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. 14Universidade Federal do
Mato Grosso, Cuiabá, Brasil. 15Departamento de
Zoologia, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba,
Brasil. 16Biology Department, Macalester College,
Saint Paul, MN, USA. 17Institute of Systematics and
Evolution of Animals, Polish Academy of Sciences,
Kraków, Poland. 18Entomologistas do Brasil,
EntomoBrasilis, Vassouras, Brasil.
✉e-mail: zeppelini@daad-alumni.de
Published online: 10 November 2020
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-01359-y
References
1. Linnaeus, C. Systema Naturæ 1st edn, 1–12 (Holmiae, 1735).
2. Zoological Records (Clarivate Analytics, 2020); https://go.nature.
com/37TaGuL
3. Vink, C. J., Paquin, P. & Cruickshank, R. H. BioScience 62,
451–452 (2012).
4. Journal of Citations Report (Clarivate Analytics, 2020);
https://go.nature.com/2HNF6nb
5. Hoagland, K. E. Assoc. Syst. Coll. Newslett. 24, 61–62 (1996).
6. Title Suppressions (Clarivate Analytics, 2020); https://go.nature.
com/3kDFtzy
7. Major Indexing Service Reverses Decision to Suppress Two Journals
from Closely Followed Metric (Retraction Watch, 2020);
https://go.nature.com/2TCJ9FP
8. UN Report: Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’;
Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’ (United Nations, 2019);
https://go.nature.com/37O15pf
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10. Martin, C. Curr. Biol. 25, R811–R815 (2015).
Acknowledgements
We thank all 1,312 signatories for supporting this article;
a full list of signatories and their affiliations appears in the
Supplementary Information.
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Supplementary information is available for this paper at
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-01359-y.
NATURE ECOLOGY & EVOLUTION | VOL 5 | JANUARY 2021 | 2 | www.nature.com/natecolevol
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