DwC field scientificNameID is not used at all

[bart-v]

This issue was moved from portal-feedback to pipelines

Example
https://www.gbif-uat.org/occurrence/search?dataset_key=740cf4e0-37ca-4389-ba8f-4e1bc5177893&taxon_key=5401803

Lists the records as Oligochaeta and appends the authority "K.Koch" just like that.
That makes these marine occurrences terrestrial plants...

While a scientificNameID urn:lsid:marinespecies.org:taxname:2036 is provided, that can be resolved to the animal class Oligochaeta.

This is a missed chance to fix homonyms in an easy way...

[MortenHofft]

Above link is using UAT (User acceptance testing). The result might be the same, but test environment and production environment is likely to be different much of the time.

I suggest that you use the production site https://www.gbif.org instead

[MattBlissett]

(UAT and the production environment are usually very similar for record interpretation.)

@mdoering can help explain what's happening here. I can see we have the name from the WoRMS checklist: https://www.gbif.org/species/105760798 but it isn't linked in to our taxonomic backbone. This one from a different checklist is, but it loses the author.

We don't yet match using the scientificNameId, we should look to support this for the ingestion pipeline rewrite (in progress this year).

Adding a kingdom will make this match to the correct name.

[mdoering]

yes, scientificNameId is pretty much ignored in both occurrence and checklist processing.
With a a scientificNameId value from occurrences pointing to another checklist or even something outside of GBIF indexed data it will not become a simple exercise. All occurrences must link to a Backbone species, not some other checklist. For that to happen the backbone would a) have to have such a species (with that authorship) and b) know about the global scientificNameIds used in other lists. Maybe sth for when we have switched the backbone to use CoL+

[ManonGros]

Most of the links on this issue are deprecated.
Plus, as far as I understand, this is not something that we can fix. Could we close this issue?

[bart-v]

This is not about dead links, but about the fileld dwc:scientificNameID being ignored by GBIF
I thinks it's a very important issue

[albenson-usgs]

Agree this is an important issue, especially for OBIS node contributions. This really is a missed opportunity for GBIF as OBIS nodes take great care in assigning an appropriate scientificNameID to each occurrence. Would hate to see any records from the OBIS-USA node end up as terrestrial species when we've taken the time to provide the marine representation.

[ManonGros]

In that case, should it be an issue for the CoL+? https://github.com/Sp2000/colplus

[mdoering]

I am wondering about a few things here:

1. why does the name have a classification? dwc:scientificNameID should point to nomenclatural information. Taxon concepts and classifications would be dwc:taxonConceptID or even just dwc:taxonID

2. We never dealt with DwC archives pointing to external information. All archive IDs can be resolved locally within the archive. This is not true for dwc:scientificNameID

3. For resolving external IDs there is no standard format, protocol or anything alike. Its quite a burden to know all variations in advance and issue http calls to resolve each ID.

4. Is there really extra information in the linked name data that would help us to better interpret the name & its classification? Isnt all that information already given in the DwC occurrence record?

Looking at one of the Oligochaeta Koch examples I see the taxonomic dwc occurrence information is very sparse: https://www.gbif.org/occurrence/1324564024
It is just the name, not even a rank, kingdom or anything else. The ID would have made a difference here. But would it be difficult to enrich the occurrence data?

http://lsid.info/urn:lsid:marinespecies.org:taxname:2036

<?xml version="1.0"?><rdf:RDF
	xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
	xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#"
	xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
	xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/"
	xmlns:dwc="http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/"

>
	<rdf:Description rdf:about="urn:lsid:marinespecies.org:taxname:2036">
		<dc:type>ScientificName</dc:type>
		<dc:date>2019-10-03</dc:date>
		<dc:subject><![CDATA[Oligochaeta Grube, 1850]]></dc:subject>
      <dc:title><![CDATA[Oligochaeta]]></dc:title>
      <dc:relation><![CDATA[http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&amp;id=2036]]></dc:relation><dc:creator><![CDATA[Timm, Tarmo]]></dc:creator><dc:creator><![CDATA[van Haaren, Ton]]></dc:creator><dc:identifier>urn:lsid:marinespecies.org:taxname:2036</dc:identifier>
      <dc:publisher>World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS)</dc:publisher>
      <dc:license>http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</dc:license>
	  <dc:language>en</dc:language>
<dcterms:bibliographicCitation><![CDATA[WoRMS (2019). Oligochaeta. Accessed at: http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=2036 on 2019-10-03]]></dcterms:bibliographicCitation><dcterms:created>2004-12-21T16:54:05+01:00</dcterms:created>
      <dcterms:modified>2017-06-01T14:33:21+01:00</dcterms:modified>
<dcterms:rightsHolder>WoRMS Editorial Board</dcterms:rightsHolder>
<dwc:kingdom>Animalia</dwc:kingdom>
      <dwc:phylum>Annelida</dwc:phylum>
      <dwc:class>Clitellata</dwc:class>
      <dwc:order></dwc:order>
      <dwc:family></dwc:family>
      <dwc:genus></dwc:genus>
      <dwc:subgenus></dwc:subgenus>
      <dwc:specificEpithet></dwc:specificEpithet>
      <dwc:infraspecificEpithet></dwc:infraspecificEpithet>
      <dwc:taxonRank>subclass</dwc:taxonRank>
      <dwc:ScientificName><![CDATA[Oligochaeta Grube, 1850]]></dwc:ScientificName>
	  <dwc:scientificNameAuthorship><![CDATA[Grube, 1850]]></dwc:scientificNameAuthorship>
	  <dwc:taxonomicStatus><![CDATA[accepted]]></dwc:taxonomicStatus>
<dwc:namePublishedIn><![CDATA[Grube, Adolf Eduard. (1850). Die Familien der Anneliden. <em>Archiv für Naturgeschichte, Berlin.</em> 16(1): 249-364.]]></dwc:namePublishedIn>
  <dwc:namePublishedInYear>1850</dwc:namePublishedInYear><dwc:scientificNameID rdf:resource="urn:lsid:marinespecies.org:taxname:2036" />
     <dwc:parentNameUsageID rdf:resource="urn:lsid:marinespecies.org:taxname:14165" />	</rdf:Description>
</rdf:RDF>

[mdoering]

The point of (dwc) archives is that it is NOT linked data. But if we had a (WoRMS) checklist that defined those IDs we could cross reference them so the taxonomic information would not have to be repeated in the occurrences.

[mdoering]

In that case, should it be an issue for the CoL+? https://github.com/Sp2000/colplus

To some degree yes, but it is primarily an Occurrence interpretation issue

[bart-v]

To answer your questions @mdoering

1. Point taken. WoRMS does not make a good distinction between names and concepts. This is work in progress.
2. We can't make all providers of Occurrence data responsible for the names, and ask them to generate a Darwin Core Taxon extension
3. True, so we need some custom code, no big deal right?
4. Yes, there is. OBIS even advises to leave out any Taxon related field and focus on the scientificNameID because it's impossible to keep track of all the names & synonyms in the long run

You have a WoRMS checklist that defines those: https://www.gbif.org/dataset/2d59e5db-57ad-41ff-97d6-11f5fb264527

[mdoering]

I think referring to a known checklist like WoRMS and reusing their taxonIDs makes a lot of sense and GBIF should support that in the long run. @timrobertson100 maybe the pipelines project can be a good way to include such a taxonID lookup.

Still there are many detail questions, I have a few popping up immediately:

• should an occurrence dataset specify which taxonomic authority checklist in GBIF they are based on? I reckon there can even be multiple?
• what about different versions used between checklist and occurrence dataset?
• if we rely on globally unique ids instead of selected checklists, how do we know which checklist is the authority in case several checklists use these ids?

[timrobertson100]

Thanks @bart-v @albenson-usgs

Currently dwc:scientificNameID just passes through ignored - but that just reflects the state of play when that codebase was written and the term was not well used. That is not the case today, and I agree GBIF should make use of it for cases when it clearly identifies e.g. WoRMS, IPNI, Index Fungorum records - especially as it is the OBIS recommendation to publishers.

I will move this issue into the gbif pipelines project, where we'll implement it working through the issues @mdoering rasies. All effort right now is on making the new ingestion pipeline live.

[timrobertson100]

For current links, all almost all Danish Mycological Society, fungal records database records contain scientificNameID pointing to Index Fungorum such as this example.

Edited to add: There are a few obscure records where this doesn't doesn't hold true, but they are rare

[bart-v]

@mdoering about finding out what checklist (version) has been used, everything is solved by using a proper and persistent GUID (like LSID): it tells you what authority has been used, on a per record basis.

I don't understand this question

if we rely on globally unique ids (...) how do we know which checklist is the authority in case several checklists use these ids?

If it's a GUID, there is only one single checklist who has assigned/generated this GUID, so there is nothing to choose from?

[bart-v]

Thanks @timrobertson100

[mdoering]

@bart-v a properly versioned LSID would tell you what it was when resolving it. But I doubt a DwC WoRMS archive contains all historical versions of a name or deleted names.

My point about a non unique GUID is that there might be various datasets, e.g. molluscabase, WoRMS, Catalogue Of Life that all use the same GUID. Knowing which is the authorative one seems trivial by looking at the domain, but I would expect we better have some metadata about that on the dataset level. I am sure GUIDs will not appear once only.

[bart-v]

WoRMS could do versions but that is usually overkill. We hardly ever change names, but create new ones ans point to them to each other. We do keep track of deletions.

I agree that some metadata on dataset level is needed, indeed.

[auspex]

My point about a non unique GUID is that there might be various datasets, e.g. molluscabase, WoRMS, Catalogue Of Life that all use the same GUID. Knowing which is the authorative one seems trivial by looking at the domain, but I would expect we better have some metadata about that on the dataset level. I am sure GUIDs will not appear once only.

There can't be a "non unique GUID". It's in the name: "Globally unique..."
As Bart says at the top, his taxa are urn:lsid:marinespecies.org:... and those in Tim's example are urn:lsid:indexfungorum:...

I don't think it matters which name list is authorative! Only that the user can see which was used. As they can, when the urn:lsid: format is used. [Note: To be fair, our scientificNameID are in the form https://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=1, as required by EurOBIS, which we have argued is wrong, particularly when they use urn: for other vocabs!]

The most distressing thing about this issue is that i can see the simple solution to my #934 is to remove scientificName from my datasets! It will make the data less useful to GBIF but at least it won't be wrong! And OBIS will be happy.

In an case, it's wrong for GBIF to make assumptions abut my data.

[timrobertson100]

Hi folks

To try and address some of the challenges I think we could make a good step forward with a fairly simple solution. What do people think about the following, please?

Taking this record as an example, it comes with:

scientificName: Megaptera novaeangliae
scientificNameID: urn:lsid:marinespecies.org:taxname:137092

In the processing we could do the following:

1. Detect that scientificNameID contains an identifier we've enabled in configuration based on the prefix of urn:lsid:marinespecies.org
2. We'd look that up against the reference checklist (we'd configure that prefix to point to the WoRMs checklist) using this API call
3. The response has the nubKey (the backbone key) which we'd then use to populate the names and necessary backbone identifiers for the record

This approach would use the identifier mapping to find things in the GBIF backbone which is a more robust mapping than the names-based lookup service.

There will always be some inconsistency due to the publishing cycle (e.g. occurrence records with names not in the latest WoRMS dataset) but it would at least 1) improve the homonym cases, and 2) improve the cases where only IDs are provided.

To get a sense of which prefixes would be suitable to map against a checklist please see this:

SELECT substring(scientificNameID, 1, 15) as prefix, count(*) AS records 
FROM prod_h.occurrence 
GROUP BY substring(scientificNameID, 1, 15) 
HAVING count(*)>250000 
ORDER BY records DESC

(removing some noise) yields:

urn:lsid:marine	66526389
urn:lsid:itis.g	15637610
urn:lsid:dyntax	2303347
urn:lsid:biosci	1454750
urn:lsid:indexf	1065547
urn:lsid:ipni.o	448138
http://www.mari	296647

What do you think? Thanks

[derek-mba]

That looks good to me. That last row returned by your query is probably all from datasets submitted to EurOBIS!

There will always be some inconsistency due to the publishing cycle (e.g. occurrence records with names not in the latest WoRMS dataset)

I had to find the ID in WoRMS before I published the dataset. The only time that could happen is if the record was deleted, but that would be exceedingly rare (generally, invalid taxa are flagged as invalid but ironically an invalid ID is just as valid for the purpose!). I would expect other authorities to do the same.

[bart-v]

Perfect @timrobertson100 !