This document discusses the integration between IPNI and PhytoKeys. IPNI holds nomenclatural data for vascular plants as a collaboration between RBG Kew, Harvard University Herbaria, and the Australian National Botanic Garden. Data is entered from literature scanning and user reports, and around 7400 names are entered annually. PhytoKeys currently emails name details to IPNI, but future integration could involve PhytoKeys submitting structured data to IPNI services, which would create records and return IDs to embed in publications automatically. This would resolve nomenclatural issues pre-publication and seed IPNI identifiers into literature more efficiently.

1. IPNI & PhytoKeys
Integration
Nicky Nicolson (RBG Kew)

2. What is IPNI?
Nomenclator for vascular plants.
Collaboration btw RBG Kew (UK), Harvard
University Herbaria (US) and Australian
National Botanic Garden, Canberra (AU)
Composed of three parts:
• Data
• Expertise
• Services

3. What data does IPNI hold?
• What data types:
– ICN governed nomenclatural acts
– Standardised author list
– Publications
• Which groups:
– Vascular plants
• Which ranks:
– Family and below

5. How is data entered?
• Data entry:
– From literature scanning, journals received by
library at Kew, Harvard, Canberra
– User reports of missing nomenclatural acts,
usually accompanied by a link to digitised
literature page (BHL)
• How many?
– About 7400 names entered in average year
– About 6100 nomenclatural acts published / year
– … of these about 2800 are tax. novs.

6. Curation - after data entry
• Full audit history on core objects – names /
authors / publications.
• Average 300,000 edits on name records / year
• Standardisation effort ongoing :
– Assessment of nomenclatural status
– Epithet
– Author citation
– Publication title
– Collation
– Year

7. Current Phytokeys “integration”
• Phytokeys staff email details to IPNI
• IPNI editor creates record and returns IDs to
Phytokeys
• ID embedded in publication
email != integration
…but it is an opportunity to converse about the
content of the nomenclatural act, and an
opportunity to correct if necessary

8. Future Phytokeys integration
• Phytokeys submits structured (XML) message
to IPNI service
• IPNI service creates record “on-demand” and
returns ID to Phytokeys in structured response
• ID embedded in publication
IPNI retains control of un-suppression
No human communication – but we need to still
have the opportunity to correct

9. Evaluating it
Benefits
• Nomenclatural problems resolved pre-
publication (workflow slower, but quality
higher)
• IPNI editorial role switched from keying to
checking
• IPNI identifiers seeded into literature
• Published data more usable
• Useful (automated) route into IPNI
Costs (some but far smaller) :
• Development / testing time

10. Future
• Extend this model to work with other
publishers
• A step towards registration? This changes the
game:
– Currently: a name missed is to IPNI's detriment -
our dataset is deficient
– With registration: a name missed will not be valid
under the code