Hi Daniel, in general I‘d agree that it had at least a bad taste. But I can think of some constellations that might be an explanation for that. For example, if the person that has discovered the plant and has no scientific background whatsoever, it might be a nice move to add her/him to the list of taxonomic authors but since her/his scientific input is zero, he cannot be a coauthor of the study. This seems legit to me to honor her/his efforts during the discovery.

The main thing is that the naming is correct :)

I would support the opinion in the original post, and agree with Daniel that a description with multiple authors looks unethical. Regarding the case of a "person who has no scientific backgroung" (Tilo's explanation), I would suggest mentioning him and his role in the discovery of the new species in the text of the paper. In this way, his name is preserved for the history of science. There are many examples to this in the past. Alternatively, the new species may be named after the person who discovered it, even if he or she has no scientific background. Again, there are several examples to it both in botany and zoology.

Thanks Daniel for starting this debate. I already encountered the same dilemma. We were 3 working on a topic, but only 2 on the paper and mainly myself on the diagnosis. I only had suggested to the main author of the paper to change the order of authorities for the new taxon, putting myself first. Maybe it as not completely ethical, but maybe it would be also not completely ethical to deleted the 3rd person from the diagnosis. At the starting point it was a team work, but after time each author had divergent career and when the paper was finally submitted I didn't know how to do...

It's not only in plant taxonomy that this problem remains. "Trains" of authors and abusive co-autorships are unfortunately quite common and a heavy debate in natural sciences publications. I used to work in a team of southern European phytosociologists that used that strategy to inflate publications! 4 people write 1 article each and they gain 4 per year! Ethics is not for everyon! I have a radical position for that! Do not collaborate, and exclude this teams and procedure from collaborations and maybe produce a Academia leaks, like the example you gave from Peru! I know its kind of a crucifixition but I see no other alternative despite disdain!

Just to make this clear again: there is a big difference between authors of a paper and authors of a taxon! It is absolutely unethical to add authors to a publication for any reason but a valuable input to the content, at least via datasets. Being author of a paper means receiving scientific merit and "input measures" in one way or the other. Founding a publication circle as described above with four authors adding each other to four individual publications is betrayal. Conversely, being the author of a taxon is meaningless in that sense and has only symbolical meaning. The only thing to consider might be that it is not handy to have a lengthy list of taxonomic authors when citing the taxon name in full. But nevertheless, I still think that in some cases it might be better to add a person that played a crucial role in the discovery of a taxon to the respective authorities. It is often much better than naming the taxon after that person for several reasons (dedication names should honor scholars etc. not unrelated persons, descriptive or geographic names might be more practical, etc.) or just mentioning them in the text or acknowledgements (if the person has an intrinsic interest in the subject this might be too little involvement). It doesn´t hurt a all and is not violating or abusing any scientific ethos. Just for the record: I haven´t done that thus far in my taxonomic works, but I would´nt rule it out if I think its justifiable. And of course, the taxon should be valid, otherwise the whole exercise is completely pointless.

The casuistry to explain the presence of several authors in a paper with new taxa can be varied; from the coordinated effort where each one is an expert in stratigraphy (I think in paleontology), another in comparative anatomy, computerized data processing, to simply being grateful for having suggested a new taxon. However, I consider that the work has to be divided into parts such as "geological environment" and "systematic", in such a way that at the beginning, under the title it must be very clear who is responsible for each part. Naturally, the author of the taxon is the author of the systematic part.

I appreciate all the answers to this question. The main issue here is who should be an author of a newly described species. I have myself described Paronychia sanchez-vegae (Caryophyllaceae) which involves 5 authors in the article, all the authors have worked in different sections of the manuscript BUT the species epithet is only followed by two of the five authors because only two of us worked on the species description while the other three authors did not. I have seen several articles describing new species with this correct format but of course there are few cases in which all the authors of the article are the same authors of the species, that is not consistent and as said before, I digged a bit more into this and found out that one of the authors had no idea he was involved in the description of the new taxon, unethical form of doing taxonomy from my point of view.

Daniel B. Montesinos-Tubée what is "the correct format"? Who is a legitimate author of the sole description or better: what is the sole description? Is the diagnosis part of it? So what if theres a colleague who´s able to write a latin diagnosis, is it legitimate to list him as an author of the species if he was part of the team already? What about the type specimen citation? Is this part of the description? It certainly belongs to the name! Doesn´t this mean its legitimate to add the collectors to the taxonomic authors (again if they are part of the team already). I think its difficult to draw a meaningful line here and its to some extent up to anyones individual ethos. The rules are and must be much stricter for the authors of an article (merits etc. as mentioned earlier), but I think there is a certain freedom regarding the taxonomic authors. Or to turn things around: what if you want to name one species after one of the people involved? You´d have to exclude her/him from the list of taxonomic authors since its unethical to name a taxon after oneself. Isn´t this problematic as well since you conceal an author then?

I have over 80 new taxa described by me and/or my co-authors. Although the taxonomic descriptions of the taxon/taxa was mostly my work and analysis, in my earlier papers I thought it was unethical to claim authorship of the taxon/taxa in the same multi-authored publication. Now, having read several papers where the actual describer(s) of the new name(s) in a multi-authored publication claims the authorship of the name, I no longer find it unethical to claim the taxon/taxa in a co- or multi-authored publication and now find it "immoral", for want of a better word, to also include the names of those co-authors who might have just helped in other aspects, eg. statistical analyses, line-drawings, photographic images, EM micrography, etc. So there is nothing wrong and, in fact, most accurate to only include those names of persons who have actually helped distinguish the new taxon/taxa.

Hey guys! Did you hear about a thing called "teamwork"? Science now works like that (I believe).

Pedro, teamwork works like that, a manuscript can have several authors, in case of describing new taxa, even six authors for a single species but the issue here is when describing the taxa itself, if you revise taxonomic descriptions you will never find a species described with 5 authors in a row, that is my question, why does this happen when it is impossible. I describe a new Senecio for instance, I do all the description and because I am a nice person, I invite 4 other authors to co-authorship my species when they did nothing in the description at all, that is completely wrong. Several authors in the paper is common but several authors in the new taxa description is not correct. As said, I investigated here and a third party confirmed that he had no idea he suddenly was co.authorship of the species name, what do you think about that? We are talking of two completely separate parts of a taxonomic manuscript here. One is the authors of the entire article, another is the authors of the description of the species.

Daniel, a couple of points:

1. "why does this happen when its impossible": it isn´t! Show me where in the code a maximum number of authors is suggested and why. I had a chat with Nick Turland about that a couple of years ago, there is no rule how many authors a taxon should "ideally" have.

2. Pedro and others are pointing on a more general phenomenon here: teamwork. Back in the days, taxonomist rather worked individually or with a stricter hierarchy (Professors vs. students, etc.) and a much stricter author hierarchy was applied when describing taxa. Linneaus clearly didn´t even think about attaching one of his numerous helpers name to one of the thousands of taxa he described. Times have changed since then in several ways. First of all, taxonomy and describing taxa has lost much of its merit and people likely easier are willing to share the little fame related to it. Secondly, hierarchies have been broken up and e.g. junior scientists are more openly invited to contribute today. The same is true for interational cooperations. When I started working with Peruvian plants 20 years ago, there have been a handful of Peruvian botanists able (technological obstacles, language issues, etc.) and willing to cooperate. Gladly this has changed and there is a lot of exchange of ideas, materials and knowledge, nowadays leading often to a diverse team of scientist from different countries coauthoring a study and consequently also a taxonomic description. And thirdly, taxonomic results often arise as a side-effect of larger scientific studies (e.g. phylogeny, biogeography), were different techniques are applied and logically more people involved. Many taxa nowadays are rather discovered in the lab than in the field, hence the molecular biologist or the bioinformatician might acutally be the one that has "discovered" the taxon and lately is even delivering characters (i.e. motifs, barcode sequences) describing the taxon.

This might all be not the case in the example you are refering to and there are certainly people that are violating an unwritten codex in different ways. But I have the feeling that the positive points behind multi-authored taxa prevail and I´d suggest a relaxed perception of this topic.

Please read my answer to this question- it is not very different from Daniel's. I feel it is unethical in a multi-authored publication containing new taxon/taxa to include names of all authors of the publication as authority to taxa they no nothing about.

The question appears to be if it is possible that a greater number of authors can contribute something that justifies a co-authorship (otherwise you may consider it unethical), and, dear Daniel, you answered your question by referring to an article you published together with more than three colleagues. Cheers

Robert, no! I am refering to an artile in which you describe a new species and the new species itself has 5 authors, I don´t refer to the main article which can have several authors itself! Please note the difference between the two issues here. It is impossible that I will answer my same question. Look at Xenophyllum oscartovari or Prosopis calderensis , look then at Paronychia sanchez-vegae.

I think it is possible to separate the taxonomical authorship indicating how to cite the taxonomical reference in the Systematic section, moreover, pointing who contributes to the specimens' description and classification in the contributions section of the paper. Some articles indicate separately taxonomic authorship like this example: Barnes et al. 1994. Classification and distribution of Oligocene Aetiocetidae (Mammalia; Cetacea; Mysticeti) from western North America and Japan. Thus, the authors need to recognize their contribution in a paper with new species or taxa. I think is part of being ethical and doesn´t mean demerit the research team's work. But at the end is a personal election, a question of communication, or may follow a political manoeuvre to achieve specific goals. Humans!

I don't think there is anything wrong with multi-authored taxonomy provided all authors have made some sort of contribution to the process. For example, there may be different authors responsible for naming, discussing phylogeny, writing comparative notes, selecting holotype and paratypes etc.

Many multi-authored scientific papers these days include a statement on each authors contribution. Perhaps similar statements should accompany multi-authored taxonomy?

First of all, as an entomologist, I think the problem is related to the problem of authorship today. So the topic of discussion is very broad and what does it mean to be author of an article? requires a satisfactory answer to the question.

Being an author brings responsibilities as well as benefits to people. Shortly, to be considered an author on a manuscript, contributors to the MS must meet at least all of the following 3 criteria:

1) to make substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work, or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; 2) drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; 3) agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

As a result, only the person or persons who have the knowledge to answer any taxonomic discussion related to the new taxon or taxa and who can have the responsibilities I have mentioned above should be the author. For ICZN, there is no restriction on the number of authors who meet the broad criteria.

Related to the topic, the weirdest thing I've come across is that 5 or more authors were authors of the article in a study where only a single taxon was defined and in the text only 2 people whose taxon were mentioned as the author of the article. Secrets of science :)

Being the author of the article requires responsibility. The fact that the people to be thanked are the authors of the article can only be explained by teamwork :)

It is useless to discuss ethics when the right is not done. Therefore, I believe that if the truth is done, there will be no need to discuss ethics. Thanks.

@Huseyni. Please explain what you mean in the last paragraph of your answer "... when the right is not done," and " if the truth is not done. ". A good answer but complicated by the above.

In a broad sense and briefly, I wanted to state that the priority should be to fulfill the requirements of scientific works. As we all know, we will not encounter any ethical problem when the requirements and truths of a scientific study are fulfilled. Sorry…

In order to answer this question we need to understand behind the scene situation. As, It is not possible that all the authors of the paper simultaneously realized the novelty of the taxon. It may be the one who worked out the taxon individually. Other authors those are later associated may be these: the guide of the main author (honoree), colleagues (honoree), other top researches (may be to promote his/her work to broad audience) etc.

At most, two authors are ethical to associate with a single species; more than two authors may be inappropriate but acceptable (if they are working together on various aspects i.e. morphology and genetics) and more than three is unethical. It is strongly recommended to avoid honoree authorship; however, most of the institutes still practice such unethical acts of demanding authorship without contributing any scholarly element to science.

Dear colleagues, it seems that we are discussing two different themes: the authorship of the article and the authority of the species. From my point of view, it is completely understandable that there are several authors in the article. As already said by some colleagues, the construction of the article may have been done by a teamwork, where each one was responsible for a part of the manuscript. In this sense, each of these authors can "argue" about the party responsible for them.

On the other hand, species authority seems to be a more sensitive issue. I agree with Shahid that two authors are ethical to associate with a single species, and more than two authors may be inappropriate but acceptable. Four, five or more authorities also seem inappropriate.

My point is, which of these authorities could readily identify and differentiate this species?

Although I recommended both Shahid's and Lucas' responses, there are instances where, I definitely know that more than 3 or more authors have contributed to a particular study. Take for example that a major revision of a taxon is undertaken, on say morphological, genetic (DNA) and/or other evidence, this can be an instance where one person contributed to say the morphological study, another on say mitochondrial gene sequencing, another on nuclear analysis, another on phylogeny, etc. and after all these analyses new taxa are proposed or named. In such instances, where it is obvious that multiple authors have been involved or jointly responsible in the revision, in naming taxa, and working out phylogenies, all should be given equal credit. Hence, multiple authors to even a single large taxon is permissable under these circumstances.

It seems that everyone wants their right to eternity, without often deserving it.

Someone in this forum talks about "teamwork" with a lot of enthusiasm. OK, it will mean that even anyone including those who turn on a scanner, or make a map, or even bring a press in the field, or turn on a pcr ... will have their own authorship: I remember that there is also a section called "acknowledgments" which is equally dignified and respectable. Competence seems more and more a chimera and anything is worth just to foster one's prestige, often only wages. Perhaps less hypocrisy and more meritocracy would not hurt.

Riccardo Maria Baldini Is there anything wrong with teamwork? Or are you simply not familiar enough with it or have never experienced working in a group with equally qualified people? Is "competence" (just to use quotation marks as well) restricted to the leading scientist? You are hopefully not surrounded by incompetent people only able to turn a scanner on...

And why can taxon delimitation not be a group decision and hence the merits are shared? Aynone delivering an intellectual input to a study deserves (article!) authorship (taxonomic authors is a different topic, but you are not referring to that)! Any additional support can be honored in the acknowledgement section. All of us certainly know the difference.

Lucas C. Marinho just out of curiosity: you said "two authors are ethical to associate with a single species". Can you give any rational explanation for that? I can think of many scenarios that justify more authors. The code does not determine the maximum number. So if you come up with a reasonable explanation for your limit of two authors, then maybe you should write a proposal to amend the code accordingly.

Shahid Nawaz: speaking of unethical behavior: "...other top researches (may be to promote his/her work to broad audience)". Is this an ethical practice for you?

OH! I must have aroused irritation and touchiness in someone .... perhaps it is not clear that the authorship of a new taxon cannot involve anyone, but only the taxonomist (s); another thing is whoever collaborates in the technical realization of a scientific contribution. That's all.

Riccardo Maria Baldini: It doesnt make more sense just by repition. "perhaps it is not clear that the authorship of a new taxon cannot involve anyone, but only the taxonomist (s)". This is totally clear to anyone here! And who is a taxonomist from your point of view? Are you employed as a taxonomist? Have you studied taxonomy? Or are you a scientist that studied biology like most of us? Anyone doing taxonomic work is a taxonomist. And I did not claim with a single word that staff or any other minor supporter deserves authorship, especially not taxonomic authorship. And yes, I´m irritated by such haughty statements like yours above. According to that bossy view a student or an autodidact is unsuitable as a taxonomic authority to you? A humble look around and into history might encourage you to contemplate.

No comment anymore.

Hallo Tilo Henning Maybe I expressed my idea the wrong way. What I mean is that it is unethical to be an authority on a species if you are not able to recognize it and explain why it is a different species from the rest. Thus, there may be more authors, but I believe that, normally, two are enough to recognize and describe that species.

There's nothing about it in the code. That's just my thought.

@Tilo Henning "... To promote researches to broad audience" with that statement ai meant there are people who include big chap's name just in order to reach on big screen with broad audience. That practice is unethical by any perspective if humanity. Taxonomic authorship is only for them who are aware and voluntarily contributed towards its finding and discovery. I hope my point is clear.

I agree with your general view, Daniel. There is simply far too much authorship given out, especially to senior academics who do little or none of the real work, intellectual or lab based. My concern is that academia has become highly favorable to those who know how to use any position or seniority they have to gain leverage. However, there are circumstances in which I can see how authors should be included on a paper without being authors of the taxon. For example, through the use of technical imaging equipment that requires extensive training. That said, this is another way that people in positions of power can use any resources they have at their disposal to gain easy authorship without contributing any real substance to a paper. So all in all, I agree with your general sentiment. Unfortunately, I don't see things getting any better. The academic world is completely caught up with citations.

However, there are circumstances in which I can see how authors should be included on a paper without being authors of the taxon.

https://www.editage.com/insights/ethical-declarations-that-authors-should-provide-at-the-journal-submission-stage

Although not covered in the Code, I agree it is not desirable to have a long list of authors in description of new taxa. It is quite common practice to have a paper with wider scope to have more authors (the full team referred to above), and then a separate taxonomic section within, written by 1-3 taxonomists (the authors of the new taxa). If there are too many authors they will generally be ignored, as the taxon will then often be referred to as e.g. Genus taxon Author 1 et al., 2022. Nobody is keen on long lists and few will be able to remember them.

I prefer that the specialist(s) concerned with the naming of taxa to claim the authorship in the same publication as soon as a new name is introduced or diagnosed. This is the tendency at present and I am doing likewise.

The question seems to have arisen from old habits, one paddler for several captains, which is not unfortunately restricted to our field. It is even preached as the standard and thus inherited. It is all about the accepted norms in the environment, I believe. In the presented example, I sense an exploitation of the current athmosphere, in which cooperative work is a necessity. Unethical or not, the code cannot solve this issue as the code does not involve ethics with validity.

Whether article authors should as well be taxon authors...

Taxonomy in a sense is an ordinary man's job, classifying objects based on a system. But as a profession, as you know, it requires some background, access to data and fieldwork. And its history, through its entireity, is a quest for finding objective criteria to delimit taxa which seems to end in practice by implementation of molecular phylogenetic methods.

I grew up reading masters (who were largely museum workers) who ended their careers with a load of names having single authors and no students. When some software solve objectivity question today, on the other hand, all authors become equals. However, phylogenetics is not taxonomy and taxonomic expertise is required as always. Thus I do not support all team members should be added to taxon authors' list.

It is always ethical to describe new species! :=)

I reiterate that, despite several authors to a taxonomic paper, new taxa should only be claimed by specialists in those taxa and NOT by all authors who contributed to that publication. I have seen many papers where the authorship of a taxon/taxa is claimed by just a single author in those publications since she/he was responsible in its/their determinations. I feel there is nothing wrong in that practice as one, as senior author, should know who actually contributed to the recognition of the new taxon and defining it.

I've seen some papers with 10+ authors describing a new species. And this is a bit unnecessary as not all 10 will have contributed (fully) to the description of the species. Nonetheless the few occasions I know this has happened it was not the goal to cause this problem of multiple authors for describing the species, but it had the goal to raise awarness regarding the urgency of describing new species for conservational purposes. By having a partner of various large companies or projects they were able to reach out towards a large public.

Eventhough, we favor species descriptions by the specialists and not numerous additional co-authors, how can we stire in this direction when there is little to no fundamental support from governemental funds or support in order to do hardcore taxonomical research? Many species descriptions are done by amateurs, most very good at it and with a high scientific value and appreciation, but some also without the good knowledge of good science.

Hannco P.A.J. Bakker I guess here the question is more relevant to the authorship of the species rather than the paper describing it.

About your final remark, as you might recall from several recent to old examples, there are always frauds and bare-knuckled people among us under either amateur or sometimes professional skins. Amateurship should not be an excuse for poor descriptions, wrong localities, no figures etc. to which it can be an open door sometimes and thus it is better not to be glorified :).

There are various salient points that can thus be elucidated.

1) Doing & effectively carrying out research is not everyone's job. A researcher is totally unique individual who needs to have special qualities, which the majority of populance do not have. The individual many a times has to cut a lonely furrow to bring out tangible results & getting work published is quite another cup of tea.

Hence, having authorship - at least in the initial stages of an individual's career might help not only the individual but also the rest of the team - as future research works are undertaken.

2) If an animosity/acrimony gets developed - by chance - in the team for not placing a name, that doesn't bode well for the team/individual in the future.

Moreover, a researcher needs extreme focus, time, energy, & above all peace of mind to successfully undertake the work at hand.

3) For the sake of argument let's say an individual's name has been placed in a research paper, for which it was not due. The individual shall have to face periodical assessment for up-gradation to a future career.

Now, a) when relevant questions are asked concerning the paper, it's quite doubtful whether the answers given will be up to the point.

b) As the individual will have to take on greater responsibilities and higher up-gradation/post, it's quite doubtful whether the individual can successfully lead a team. So, the final loss is not only for the individual but also for the organization.

4) It has been observed that a Director of a research organization went the whole hog in mandating to place his name with every paper to be published & in the process, all of them got published, a win-win situation for all concerned.

5) On the flip side another Director of a research organization worked the other way for all the juniors - for reasons by now well known - & the result was, all the rooms at the top positions could not be filled up. ( Though this situation was rectified with post effect) but the damage was already done.

Thank you all for this interesting discussion. I agree that a general rule about authorship of either scientific paper or new taxon description will be hardly found. I suggest that two people should be on the watch for this issue, i.e. the corresponding author of the paper and the editor of the journal. The corresponding author, which normally is the leading author, has the responsibility of the choice of people to be included in the paper, because he/she should evaluate the real contribution of each author. This holds also for multiple authors describing a new taxon. The second important player is the editor, who is responsible for what is published by the journal and should keep watch whether there is an abuse about authorship. In the case, he should recommend that only who actually worked on the identification and description of the new taxon should be included as authors of the new taxon.

@Angelo Vannozi - An excellent contribution as any. I applaud your response. My only problem is that the editors may not be specialized in determining the true authorship of the taxon but should be requested to establish this in communication with the senior and/or corresponding author - the final decision must rest with her/him (i.e. the editor).

maybe it is worth to narrow this by examples:

If a zoologist is observing that a plant usally pollinated by a specific pollinator is pollinated by another and tells so a botanist working on this plant group. Was this zoologist contributing to the recognition of the new species if this is one of the major characters to distinguish this from the previously known species? sure!

The zoologist can not morphologically descibe the new species, however. Above, it was stated that a (proper) taxonomist should be able to differentiate the new species from the previously know. That could be possible for the zoologist based on pollinator pobservation.

Angelo Vannozzi as you implied, only rules can bring about a complete solution. Corresponding author may sometimes be a person other than the leading author, this is not uncommon, and editors do have rarely the knowledge about all authors of a manuscript, in the new era of diverse online journals and internationalism. Besides, editors do not take responsibility to criticize author composition according to my personal experience. Who or what can measure the value and effort added by a particular author, anyway?

If we are talking about misuse and exploitation, and not kindness and encouragement, I cannot find anything other than the immediate athmosphere around the teams that enables or disables such behavior. It can be dealt by national committees effectively in extreme cases, however, for the species authorities nothing can be done, name would stay there.

Thank you @https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Uemit-Kebapci for your comment. I just wanted to recall the responsibility of both the corresponding/leading author and the editor of the journal. As everyone knows, journals and their reputation are not equivalent to each other. Further, I guess that in several cases, perhaps bona fide, taxon authorship is simply derived from the list of authors in the article. I think the editors should use their authority and invite the authors to revise authorship of the new taxa according to their real contribution. Anyhow, my opinion is that rigid rules will not be able to solve the problem. As you and several other colleagues wrote, nobody but the authors exactly knows the real contribution of each person involved in the discovery of the new species. If, strictly speaking, we want to reduce taxon description to the definition of the distinguishing characters, of course a single author will be sufficient. Nevertheless, my experience is that working in team is often beneficial to arrive at the right conclusion.

Dear Angelo Vannozzi,

The knob in the question, I guess, lies in the dark zone outside the scientific ethics borders where bossy team leaders or department heads are rising up in taxonomic experts lists without any contributions or knowledge, which cannot be solved by editorship, nor code(s), being entirely an ethics issue.

I previously pointed out that the contemporary milieu favoring team work may have been exploited. Though nothing to do with validity, if I see a zoonym with authorship X et al. 2022 or X, Y, and Z 2022, I expect at least X and Y to be taxonomists/experts. Repeated instances of otherwise would let me to thinking of taxonomic vandalism (ie vague species descriptions or type localities etc.). As you suggested, these extreme cases can be handled by editors. There are a lot of probabilities resting in grey field though, difficult to judge. With increasing citizen since and access to data, none of us would I guess challenge a newbie as they did to Rafinesque or discourage a non-expert from describing new species on the other side of the medal.

Note: You can include names by putting @ in front of the name, then choosing the name.