In a letter by the leadership of the ASPT ("Letter re GLOVAP from ASPT Leadership to Society"), concern was raised in April of 2018 regarding "a controversial, self-published and apparently non-peer reviewed manuscript appeared online, proposing an unprecedented number of taxonomic changes for vascular plants" :

https://aspt.squarespace.com/news-blog/2018/letter-re-glovap-from-aspt-leadership-to-society#.XFGRCoXjGlk

... a major incidence of violating long-standing, ethical research practices!

Here an extract of the main allegations made therein:

"There are serious allegations from many sources that the work of a number of researchers has been “scooped” in the GLOVAP publication....

.... this would be contrary to accepted practice in our community. Because the legitimacy of names is based on the principle of priority, authorship of the new names now belongs to the GLOVAP authors and not to the taxonomic specialists on whose research the changes were based, and whose opportunities for proposing revised nomenclature and publishing taxonomic decisions have now been curtailed....

.... the botanical community has long maintained the ethical position that scientists do not publish new nomenclature based on the work of others without due diligence to work collaboratively. This is a norm of ethical conduct practiced across scientific disciplines, ....

Many groups, even after years of study, remain in a state of phylogenetic uncertainty due to common issues like limited taxon sampling or insufficient data. Proposed taxonomic changes that are based upon poorly supported or conflicting phylogenetic results are potentially wrong; therefore, experts continue their work until a high degree of confidence is achieved, through additional data collection or analysis, prior to altering nomenclature and classification. This is why authors of phylogenetic studies often refrain from proposing nomenclatural changes until corroborating evidence is obtained....

Because the legitimacy of names is based on the principle of priority, authorship of the new names now belongs to the GLOVAP authors and not to the taxonomic specialists on whose research the changes were based, and whose opportunities for proposing revised nomenclature and publishing taxonomic decisions have now been curtailed....

We share the concerns of our community that GLOVAP represents neither good scientific practice, nor respect for taxonomic expertise and efforts by colleagues in the field of plant taxonomy...

....massive nomenclatural efforts by one or a few researchers, capitalizing on the work of many dozens of others who were excluded from the publication or from ultimately publishing the nomenclatural changes they had worked hard to define. ...

Such a demonstrable lack of solidarity among taxonomists can result in loss of confidence and unfortunate negative perceptions from those outside our field. ...

However, GLOVAP was not produced in the spirit of collaborative science cherished by our community."

Quoted from:

Specht C, Fishbein M, Doyle J et al.

Editorial, Systematic Botany (2018), 43(1): pp. 1–3

The American Society of Plant Taxonomists

DOI 10.1600/036364418X697157

Date of publication April 18, 2018

https://aspt.squarespace.com/news-blog/2018/letter-re-glovap-from-aspt-leadership-to-society#.XFGRCoXjGlk

I was curious as to how the community has meanwhile perceived and reacted to this and the repercussions of this issue.

Discussion and comments welcome!

Sincerely, Theodor C. H. Cole

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