Authorship for Museum Collections?

A recent paper in Zootaxa by Rouhan and colleagues (here, though paywalled) advocates that collections make such important contributions to published science that they should be recognized as coauthors. The paper is entitled “The time has come for Natural History Collections to claim co-authorship of research articles.” When I began reading their article, I was opposed to the idea. I give credit to the authors, though, for by the time I was finished, I was at least open to the concept. Importantly, they are not advocating for individual museum staff to be coauthors, but rather that an institution or group name for the collection should be used. That was a key distinction for me: I would not want to see collections’ contributions get confused with those of their associated staff. From another perspective, however, when I write a paper that uses many different collections, I would not want to appear as a scientific minion among a small forest of institutions that I happened to use in pursuing my questions. (Imagine the institution shopping that human authors would use!)

The problem Rouhan et al. (2017) are addressing is that museum collections make huge contributions to published science, but those contributions are often unrecognized and difficult to track. Here at the University of Alaska Museum Bird Collection we’ve attempted to solve this in a different way (here), in which we keep track of publications that used our collection in a Google Scholar profile (we published on this here). We were careful not to use the term “author,” however (e.g.,“as if the collection were an author”), and we do not advocate a change to that status for collections. We believe our method serves the purpose quite well without unduly abusing the already contentious issue of authorship.

That said, I do think that museum staff should be authors more often on projects when they make substantial contributions, and that this would happen more often with careful consideration of widely accepted authorship criteria (e.g., here).

But as I noted, my mind is open to the concept of collections as authors if a consensus were to develop that these other two solutions under the present framework were inadequate. It is very uncommon to see institutions or consortia listed as authors, although it is becoming more common in large-scale genomics research.

The 2017 Checklist of Alaska Birds

Changes in the 23rd edition—2017 (downloadable at right)

Four species ADDED in 2016 to Checklist of Alaska Birds (in taxonomic order)

Calliope Hummingbird Selasphorus calliope: Hatching-year male, 3-5 Sep 2016, Auke Bay, photos by Gus B. van Vliet and Patty Rose.  Casual, because of its long, enigmatic, unsubstantiated past in se Alaska.  Its history in Alaska began with Willett’s 1921 statement (in Bird notes from southeastern Alaska.  Condor 23:156-159): “According to [local resident F. H.] Gray, quite common at Wrangell in spring and fall during some years; other years apparently absent.”  In the absence of any pre-1921 published mention of this species in Alaska, however, Willett’s explicit intention (op. cit.:156) “to include only species regarding which some fact or facts have come to light that add to previously published matter regarding them” would seem to make his 1921 report enigmatic.  Four+ (silent) decades later, there were six (unsubstantiated) reports from the late 1960s through the 1980s (male, [no date] May 1967, Juneau, Richard J. Gordon; female, 6 May 1968, Juneau, RJG; at least one, summer 1968, Juneau, fide RJG; one, 27 Jul 1974, Juneau, Evelyn S. Dunn; male, 14 Aug 1975, Little Port Walter, Baranof Island, Alex C. Wertheimer; and female, 18 Jun 1988, Mitkof Island, Peter J. Walsh).  Insert in Family Trochilidae following Rufous Hummingbird Selasphorus rufus.

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Love Notes for Dead Birds 6

A truly marvelous epistle, written on notepaper celebrating “Love is in the air.” A woodpecker flew into a window despite obstacles and visual deterrents, landed comfortably (though dead) on some pillows, and, well, read the details…

 

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(Turns out that it was an adult female.)

About the Love Notes for Dead Birds: We receive a lot of birds that people find dead and route to us through places like wildlife agencies, rehabilitation clinics, etc. What makes these specimens scientifically useful is to write the location and date down with the bird and freeze it until it can be gotten to us. People often write a little more than necessary, and we’re pleased to share some of those.

Avian influenza update, Alaska

Several years ago, Dan Gibson and I published a paper on Asian birds coming to North America through Alaska entitled “The Asia-to-America Influx of Avian Influenza Wild Bird Hosts Is Large.”  In this paper we reversed the conclusions of a popular model of the global spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI). We suggested that wild birds are a greater risk than domestic poultry for bringing HPAI into North America. Since then, our model proved the more accurate, presaging the arrival in North America in fall 2014 of a pure Asian strain of H5N2. Wild birds were implicated, and we inferred passage through Alaska. This strain of HPAI went on to cause the worst poultry disease outbreak in U.S. history, resulting in billions of dollars in economic losses.
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Love Notes for Dead Birds 5

Condition: “Super Excellent”.

Except, you know, for the fact that it’s dead…

Condition given as "Super Excellent," overlooking the fact that the bird is quite dead.

Condition given as “Super excellent,” overlooking that the bird is in fact quite dead.

About the Love Notes for Dead Birds: We receive a lot of birds that people find dead and route to us through places like wildlife agencies, rehabilitation clinics, etc. What makes these specimens scientifically useful is to write the location and date down with the bird and freeze it until it can be gotten to us. People often write a little more than necessary, and we’re pleased to share some of those.

Love Notes for Dead Birds 4

It came bringing the dove of peace and killed itself against a window. Oh, and the “dove” was a European Starling.
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About the Love Notes for Dead Birds posts: We receive a lot of birds that people find dead and route to us through places like wildlife agencies, rehabilitation clinics, etc. What makes these specimens scientifically useful is to write the location and date down with the bird and freeze it until it can be gotten to us. People often write a little more than necessary, and we’re pleased to share some of those.

Love Notes for Dead Birds 3

We receive a lot of birds that people find dead and route to us through places like wildlife agencies, rehabilitation clinics, etc. What makes these specimens scientifically useful is to write the location and date down with the bird and freeze it until it can be gotten to us. People often write a little more than necessary, and we’re pleased to share some of those.
Continue reading →