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As silly as it sounds, Blue Moon is a sort of special beer to me now. It reminds me of my grandma, Norma (Dendooven) Zelnio, who passed away two months ago. She was a proud Belgian. While Blue Moon is from Colorado, not Belgium, it is brewed in the Belgian style of ales. It became Norma’s signature ale. After her funeral we all piled into the Belgian Village Inn in Moline, IL, where she was known quite well, and drank several Belgian beers to her name while eating Reubens. She would have been honored and flustered to see us all together, along with the over 600 people at her visitation.
When I saw Full Moon on the shelf, a seasonal ale from Blue Moon, I did not hesitate to pick up a six-pack to try out. In hindsight it was quite appropriate being a winter ale, the season my grandma died in, full of character, just like Norma, and flavorfully reminiscent of the holiday season, where most of my memories of her lay in the recesses of my mind.
A fine aroma, like hoppy incense with a slight, not-in-the-least overwhelming cinnamon on the tail wind. Like my grandma’s kitchen full of women and grandchildren making cookies, Belgian waffle cookie irons in full deploy mode tended to by my young cousins Liz and Steph. They anxiously await their time to turn the irons, mastering the art of making the most perfect golden tone that signifies a Belgian waffle cookie, with more batter at the ready while Norma tended to five thousand other things simultaneously. She was always eager to ensure the happiness of all her guests. Her only complaint was we didn’t eat enough.
The first taste of Full Moon had a malty hint of a sweet wine flavor on the back of my throat. It is quite flavorful and not in the way of a typical seasonal ale. There are no Christmas spices overloading your senses, making the beer unpalatable like sipping on potpourri. I don’t see myself drinking this on a hot summer day (hence why it is a winter ale) or crowning my glass with an orange slice, but do enjoy the brief vacation from the typical Blue Moon. They used dark malts and dark Belgian sugar in the brewing process. The flavor of the malt is apparent, but it is a bit difficult to separate out the sugar. It is probably where that caramel-wine hint comes from. Though dark, they stay true to flavor of the Belgian Abbey style. Grandma was very pleased when she unwrapped her final Christmas present from my Uncle Bill’s family – a case of Blue Moon. She would be pleased with this seasonal ale as well. I hope she got to try a bottle before she left us.
Norma’s last act was having her eight grandchildren carry her casket into the church on that icy January morning. Though most of us consider ourselves atheist, agnostic or otherwise non-christian, she would have had a convulsion of joy and delight to see us all together in the front pew of St. Mary’s Church, where she was a devoted congregant for over 80 years. If there is a heaven, grandma was smiling rainbows on that freezing, gloomy midwestern winter day.
 Grandma Norma with her two only great-granddaughters. My daughter, Freya, is on the right in purple. Photo taken by Linda in Atlantic beach, NC 2008.
 You probably have realized I have a particular fondness for India Pale ales. Bitter is better as I say. IPAs also have the added bonus of having a respectable alcohol percentage. Great flavor, satisfying on the taste buds, and gets you good and buzzed – what more could you ask for?
Harpoon IPA does not disappoint. It is hard to tell if it is my favorite IPA or merely in the top three favorite. It is that good. A bouquet that I can hang my nose over for minutes. Full of floral and citrus overtones, like the aroma of freshly harvested hops flowers.
The initial taste is very refreshing. A crisp, sparkling feeling on the back of the tongue. Those aromatic overtones come out strongly in the flavor. Subsequent sips reveal increasing pleasure as the flavors intensify and fully develop.
While this beer might not bring me closer to heaven (or in believing in one), it certainly tastes like heaven and I’ll be enjoying Harpoon IPA for times to come!
Elements of this post are taken from my article “PLoS ONE Publishes First Taxonomic Paper” on The Other 95% on May 28, 2008. I’ve reposted it here as I am collecting my thoughts about open access publishing.
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Why should one support open access publishing of taxonomic papers?
Visibility is important to the field of systematics, where the relevance is often lost amidst the taxonomic jargon. By removing the subscription barrier, taxonomists make their work accessible and noticeable to researchers all over the world. Increasingly, the need has never been greater for high quality taxonomy. The treatment of neglected tropical diseases relies on proper identification of the pathogen or parasite. Species form the fundamental unit of much of evolution and ecology. Sound knowledge of species and their attributes is basic to all other fields of biology ranging from the molecular to the Earth system. While scientists might not agree on which side of the fuzzy line a particular species lies, there is no doubt about the importance of species identification and description.
The time is now for taxonomy and systemacists to enter the digital age. New web technologies can prove effective at linking papers, potentially increasing readership and bringing disparate fields together. For instance, a paper describing a new species of pathogenic nematode can have hyperlinked keywords that summarize the findings, i.e. “Nematoda” “[Genus species] sp.nov.” “[Genus species] (of host)” “Pathogenesis” “Endoparasite” “[Locality Information]“, etc. Other non-taxonomic articles of interest with hyperlinked keywords can be linked together for researchers to uncover. Species names themselves can be linked to the original paper, so one can find basic information about that species. This will make it easier to ground-truth simple observations about a species that can affect interpretations in other research, such as where it has been described from, variation in characteristics between sexes and sites, behavioral and diet observations and life history traits.
Why should one care if PLoS ONE publishes taxonomy?
PLoS ONE is an innovative publishing model that is part of the PLoS (Public Library of Science) network. PLoS is already established as a leader in online, open access publishing of high quality research in biology and the health sciences. The importance of the papers published in PLoS journals is well-recognized by academics and funding agencies. PLoS ONE, being relatively new, has yet to acquire the same metrics as the other journals (but is now listed on Thompson ISI, including earning an impact factor in June for those concerned with such things). Seeing the diversity and quality of papers being published, there is little doubt the initial metrics will reflect positively on the mission of PLoS. The visibility and reputation that articles published in PLoS journals gain will benefit taxonomy.
PLoS ONE’s model allows for post-publication tools such as annotating and commenting on articles. Instead of articles being the final word on an experiment or hypothesis, they become the beginning of a conversation. For taxonomy, one can comment on new observations or developments in that species. You can drop a link in the article’s comments to a revision you did or another paper investigating that species physiology, for example. In short, the PLoS ONE model lets a paper, or species description, have a permanent home on the web where it can be used as a record of its existence and any discussion of that particular species. Conversely, as noted by Rod Page on my last post on open access taxonomy, the commenting and annotation system is not well utilized by the scientific community. This may be a generational issue, where the first generation resists change while subsequent generations become more amenable to new ways of doing science. Time will tell how useful the community at large will find these article-level tools and metrics. More importantly perhaps, how agreeable tenure and hiring committees will be to their use. PLoS might speed it slightly by applying this model to all of their journals to show that they really believe in it and it is not just an experiment.
Some barriers exist to publication in a journal like PLoS ONE or BMC. Taxonomy is not a wealthy science despite its unsung significance. In the open access model, the author pays a publication fee to offset the journal’s costs to make the paper freely available online and in perpetuity. It is a trade-off, but it prevents publishing houses from double dipping into funds by charging institutions for access to content while charging authors page fees. Libraries and institutions worldwide can openly access content irrespective of their financial status, as can members of the public whose tax dollars pay for a good chunk of research in the United States. One obvious solution is for more funding to taxonomy and systematic research. Publication fees can be written into new grants or possibly the creation of special grants using money saved from journal subscriptions can be used to pay open access fees. PLoS journals also make sure that the ability of authors to pay publication charges is not a consideration in the decision whether to publish. They can provide fee waivers for authors without grants and researchers from developing countries that lack the financial resources enjoyed by developed nations.
This may encourage more papers being published to include a synthesis of many taxa or to be written in monographic style encompassing the fauna of a region per se. Putting more taxa into the paper may increase the bang for the buck. You may pay less in fees (per page charges are eliminated in online publishing) and perhaps make the paper more citable. I am not suggesting this works in all cases, more information in a paper certainly doesn’t a better paper make. Certainly there are situations where grouping taxa into a single article may make sense, i.e. The Crustacea of Coastal Norway instead of 2 papers on shrimp and a paper on crabs.
Another barrier deals with requirements by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, which promotes “stability and universality in the scientific names of animals and to ensure that the name of each taxon is unique and distinct”. One requirement (Chapter 3, Article 8.6) for articles published online is for deposition of the printed article in “at least 5 major publicly accessible libraries which are identified by name in the work itself”. PLoS ONE went out of their way to work with leading institutions in 5 countries to ensure the proper cataloging of their first taxonomic paper. This willingness to do what it takes to get quality publications published irrespective of their discipline highlights their commitment to PLoS’ core principles, in particular those of Breadth, Cooperation, Internationalism, and Science as a Public Resource. Since their first publication in 2008, there are now 12 more taxonomic works in PLoS ONE (describing 21 new species), by no means mandate on change, but a hint of acceptance at least.
Should taxonomists forego traditional publishing outlets?
The better option would be for those outlets to go online and open access! If there is some success to PLoS ONE in their venture to publish papers of a taxonomic nature, hopefully it will inspire established journals to follow suit. If you believe strongly in the force of the digital age to implement positive change in science, support open access initiatives by publishing your articles there.
One may posit that hybrid journals, where authors may elect to pay an additional fee to make their article accessible online for free, is a step forward in the right direction. Noted open access proponent Peter Suber notes one should proceed with caution when electing to publish in a hybrid journal for several reasons. In particular, hybrid journal options do not free up subscription money from libraries. Because it is a risk-free strategy for journals, there is not an incentive to get rid of subscriptions fees all together, since most authors do not elect the free-access option. Many publishers still do not make their publishing model, or data on the efficacy of the hybrid option, available. This makes it difficult to police whether they are reducing subscription fees in relation to author uptake of the free-access option, where high fees are paid to offset subscription fees.
Though Rod Page argued justifiably that a “PLoS Systematics” gives branding and little else, is this not a step forward? Part of the issue with taxonomic publishing is the invisibility and irrelevance of the field outside of the view of the ivory museum. Maybe taxonomy needs rebranding? I do not believe it can hurt us to interact with the rest of the biological community out there. This is one (perhaps the only) of the benefits of a generalist journal. People outside of your field are more likely to browse a Science or Current Biology than say Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington or Cladistics. I am not saying this translates to more citations or awareness, but it raises the discipline to the same level as other scientific disciplines.
The next post will discuss Open Access Taxonomy and whether we should perform plastic surgery on Zootaxa and Zookeys.
Places I’ve visited. Still have so much of the world to see still! Hat tip to Björn Brembs. Like Björn, Africa is a blank spot on my lifelist that I desperately would love to fill. I also really want to visit Eastern Europe and India. Thankfully I’m still young and healthy!
visited 19 states (8.44%)
Create your own visited map of The World
visited 37 states (74%)
Create your own visited map of The United States
 Billed by Sierra Nevada as a transitional seasonal lager “bracing us against the last cold nights of winter, while its bright golden color turns our thoughts toward spring.” Glissade is in the Bock family of beers, typically strong seasonal lagers that are darker and malty. The golden bock means is a lighter bock, probably like a Hellerbock, noted for being more hoppy and more of a Spring time lager. At 6.4% Glissade falls very nicely in with the hellerbocks!
This is a very nice beer with strongly floral and caramel aromas. A slight bitter taste has you noticing the hops, but it is not pungent like an India Pale Ale. This is a wonderful, mellow beer with great taste. I could drink several of these in a sitting. They should make this a year-round beer. Its light taste and balanced maltiness and hoppiness (I’d put it between a pale ale and an IPA) make it a great spring/summer beer.
This article was originally published February 20, 2008 at The Other 95%, where a good comment thread is also archived. I am reposting because I plan on discussing open access and electronic publishing in taxonomy more and feel this article sets the mood for my future thoughts. I recently posted an update on state of systematics in PLoS ONE since this article was originally published: What Happened to ‘PLoS Systematics’?.
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Taxonomy has historically been relegated to the back alleys of the publishing world. In-house museum journals, obscure regional or specialty publications and even more obscure foreign language academy reports have hidden many species descriptions, revisions and monographs from the eyes of interested biologists. Not to say this is the only reason for current crisis in taxonomy (see Rodman & Cody 2003), but it certainly contributes. The hard work and insurmountable dedication of the taxonomist to furthering their group of interest should be rewarded and not locked away for the other 5 people in the world working on that genus of organism. Ecologists rely on species descriptions to compare the fauna they find in their studies with the published literature. The imperative nature of correct identifications of species cannot be understated in the medical, infectious disease, and parasitology literature. Without a doubt, quality taxonomic research is invaluable, in high demand and highly underappreciated by funding agencies and other scientists, even those who rely on such work (PEET not withstanding)
The lack of visibility of taxonomic research and the failure to make systematics as a whole relevant to the everyday lives of people has been a burden on the community. Much of the work is tedious yet vital to biodiversity studies, medicine and biotechnology. Irrespective of how one chooses to define a species, the species debate, the issue of perception is pervasive in this field. Many taxonomists are made to feel inferior to their colleagues doing experimental work who bring in much larger grants. The truth of the matter is that taxonomy is not a profitable venture for academic institutions why rely in part on the money they skim off of grants. It is a traditionally an inexpensive field, even with the use of molecular tools to aid in phylogenetic reconstructions. You can easily get by with a microscope, computer and digital camera. DNA extractions are relatively inexpensive and you can send the DNA product off to get analyzed elsewhere affordably, not needing to purchase expensive sequencing equipment.
Taxonomists need to improve the visibility and relevance of the field to ensure a continued, or at the least renewed, interest for the study of species, either from a theoretical, philosophical or practical framework. One way to contribute to increasing the visibility of taxonomic research is to publish in Open Access (OA). Several studies have shown there to be a citation advantage in OA papers (Eysenbach 2006). Zootaxa has taken the initiative in the taxonomy world by offering to publish any peer-reviewed taxonomic work free of charge for subscriber access and $20/page for OA. Other taxonomic “niche” journals exist with various financial differences, but have yet to attain the reputation of Zootaxa to my knowledge. But it is my own feeling that Zootaxa is only known well among other taxonomists, with the majority of other beneficiaries either unable to obtain articles because the bulk of the articles are locked behind the subscriber wall. This also has the effect of making less text available for search engines, such as Google Scholar.
The Public Library of Science (PLoS) may help to alleviate part of the problems of visibility. They have grown to represent the standard in OA publishing and have a successful business model. Their success among scientists can measured by the fact that PLoS ONE alone is publishing on average 50 high quality papers per week. This is higher than the average journal, even the weekly big names. It is clear that their model is successful and scientists are actively seeking them out to publish their research. This is a clear argument in favor of wide dissemination (Chapter 3, Recommendation 8A of the Code):
“Authors have a responsibility to ensure that new scientific names, nomenclatural acts, and information likely to affect nomenclature are made widely known. This responsibility is most easily discharged by publication in appropriate scientific journals or well-known monographic series and by ensuring that new names proposed by them are entered into the Zoological Record.”
PLoS can make nomenclatural acts widely disseminated by providing them free of charge and out in open for all interested individuals with computer access. The steadily increasing popularity of PLoS ensures taxonomic work reaches a wide audience with a broad range of backgrounds. For instance, if you are working on parasites in humans and are describing a new species of muscle tissue boring pathogenic nematode you can tag the article as “medicine”, “Nematoda”, “New species”, “Systematics”, “Pathogen”, etc. to reach audiences in non-parasitology fields.
Why would a taxonomist want to reach non-taxonomic areas of science? Citations are low in taxonomy. Species descriptions are read, the names are used in many publications, hopefully with author and year, but somehow the paper describing said species remains out of the list of references. This means indexing services like PubMed and Web of Science miss the uncited species descriptions in the tangled web of cross-reference. For example, Drosophila melanogaster Meigen, 1830, should be the most cited paper in recorded history due to the amount of work on this model organism. So what of biodiversity studies with hundreds of species? This does pose a problem. Nowadays, there is supplementary online material and the citations could be referred there so long as they are properly indexed and the gods who fiddle around with such productivity metrics recognize these citations.
Another argument to get your work widely read is that universities aren’t appearing to hire people to do basic taxonomy anymore. They need another hook, perhaps molecular evolution or ecology. Even museums are tending to hire individuals with outside specialties. I’m not sure where the future of taxonomy may lie, but larger questions need to be addressed than just what is out there. Taxonomic research helps in many areas of biological science. The more people that know of your work, the more opportunities may be to collaborate on new projects with different directions, making you a more viable applicant. Besides who wants to invest so much into something only to see it hidden away forever?
Are there any barriers to publishing a species description with PLoS? Yes, Chapter 3 of the Code, Article 8.6 states:
“Works produced after 1999 by a method that does not employ printing on paper. For a work produced after 1999 by a method other than printing on paper to be accepted as published within the meaning of the Code, it must contain a statement that copies (in the form in which it is published) have been deposited in at least 5 major publicly accessible libraries which are identified by name in the work itself.”
So species names published in an electronic format are only valid if depositions of the article in question are made at a minimum 5 public institutions. These can be public, university and museum libraries. This barrier is easily overcome if PLoS makes it easy on the authors by forging an agreement 5 institutions to deposit papers in their collections. I would recommend the Smithsonian, the Field Museum and any 3 universities in the U.S. The authors can even archive a paper in their own university’s or museum’s libraries. Conveniently, PLoS does offer itself in print version for those interested in deforestation.
Another barrier is the high cost of OA publishing. Currently, PLoS ONE charges $1250 for a research article, though they do offer fee waivers to authors who cannot the steep price. For the average working taxonomist, the price would need to drop to at most $600. This is a price I was quoted for a small american journal for a 20 something page description of a new shrimp with COI phylogeny. It was actually twice that, but I can some page charges waived for being a society member. My coauthor and I were shocked when we received the estimate. For almost the same price I could have published OA somewhere else. The costs are especially prohibitive to taxonomists from the developing world. Many of them have done a superb job and picked up the slack after north american taxonomy slipped away because of poor funding. Yet their funds are even less than ours in most cases.
In conclusion, OA publishing offers taxonomists higher visibility, potentially higher citations and a broader readership. The barriers to electronic publishing can be easily overcome with a little initial work. PLoS is the leader in OA publishing and has a strong reputation to maintain among the non-OA or hybrid journals that exist out there, thus the quality of research coming from PLoS journals is high. In particular PLoS ONE, offers several features attractive to taxonomists and idealistic scientists like myself. Their system allows any user to annotate, comment and respond to articles becoming a part of the permanent record of that article. This post-review system allows articles to become a conversation. If another taxonomist were to discover a new character 10 years after the publication of a species name, they could go that article and make an annotation or comment on that article that could then be considered by all other readers. Taxonomists have little to lose and everything to gain by publishing with PLoS and choosing OA.
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Meigen, J.W. (1830) Systematische Beschreibung der bekannten europäischen zweiflügeligenInsekten, Bd. 6. F.W. Forstmann, Aachen.
Rodman, J. E., and J. H. Cody (2003) The taxonomic impediment overcome: NSF’s Partnerships for Enhancing Expertise in Taxonomy (PEET) as a model. Syst. Biol. 52:428–435.
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