Ocean Species Discoveries 

Ocean Species Discoveries

Aims & Scope

Ocean Species Discoveries (OSD) is a series of “mega” publications focusing on marine invertebrate taxonomy. It provides detailed descriptions and associated evidence (imagery, genetic barcodes, etc.) of new marine invertebrate taxa. Each paper is a compilation of compact taxonomic descriptions, representing a wide taxonomic and a global geographic range. A full description of each species is provided with proper supporting information. Integrative approaches to taxonomy are strongly encouraged with the inclusion of all data types necessary to make a clear species diagnosis possible. High-quality morphological data embedded in an integrative framework should be the basis for every species description in the OSD series. Molecular data are provided for the majority of taxa and used to generate DNA barcodes and molecular diagnoses.

Philosophy

The high percentage of unknown (undescribed and unnamed) marine species has been identified as one of the major bottlenecks for proper research and conservation. Accelerating species descriptions of marine invertebrates is one of the main goals of the Senckenberg Ocean Species Alliance. A major holdup in the taxonomic workflow is the publication step, which is addressed with OSD.

OSD provides an opportunity to publish new marine invertebrate taxa in a time-efficient manner. As a community effort, each publication comprises a large number of species and higher taxa covering all marine invertebrates. OSD is designed to strictly focus on the essence of species descriptions, avoiding all context unnecessary for taxonomy, a lot of which is often added to smaller taxonomic papers with the intent to increase visibility. This is a way of speeding up the publication of new taxa and reduce shelf life for the myriads of new taxa that are hard to publish on their own. Associated results, such as morphological aspects, population genetics/genomics, species differentiation, phylogenetics and community analyses should be separately published on their own and outside of the OSD series. We strictly focus on descriptions of new taxa.

The compilation of multiple descriptions in a format as concise as possible is a way of increasing the “revenue” for the contributing taxonomists in terms of networking, recognition and citation. This idea has been developed and successfully tested by the mycologist community in their series Fungal Diversity Notes.

In essence, Ocean Species Discoveries is a new, collaborative framework, to accelerate the description and naming of marine invertebrate taxa across all animal phyla by creating greater professional incentive to publish stand-alone species descriptions. By enhancing the appeal of pure taxonomy within citation metric-driven research community, we support international efforts to address the backlog of species that are awaiting classification and naming.

Guidelines

Journal and journal guidelines

The first issue of Ocean Species Discoveries is published in the Pensoft Journal Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ) under the Taxonomy & Inventories type of articles.

BDJ is a community peer-reviewed, open access journal, designed to accelerate publishing, dissemination and sharing of biodiversity-related data of any kind. As such, it follows a philosophy closely aligned to that of SOSA and represents a well-suited publication platform for Ocean Species Discoveries. All relevant journal guidelines must be followed.

Guidelines for Ocean Species Discoveries

Standardisation of terminology and nomenclature: Being aware of numerous taxon-specific conventions and traditions regarding the use of terminology, we accept and respect variability between the individual contributions. At the same time we encourage all contributors to support our attempt to increase the level of standardisation among the OSD series. As an example, in the first issue of OSD the descriptions of species belonging to three different crustacean orders have been published with a high level of standardisation. Primary points of orientation in our approach to standardised nomenclature should be wide use, consistency and homology of the terms used and their abbreviations.

Article length: The first issue served as a test case for compacting species descriptions without compromising their value for species delimitation and identification. For the ultimate goal of having standardised description templates for various taxa as bases for new descriptions, the first issue provides a starting point. All contributors are strongly encouraged to cut away all unnecessary text and supporting information (e.g., images) focusing on what is strictly essential to describe and diagnose a species as new and provide the necessary information to delineate and identify it from presently known congeners. While it is on the individual authors discretion to decide upon what characters need to be included in a species description, we encourage to focus on those characters that would be valuable in a differential diagnosis or identification key to the species of a particular genus, while complementing morphological data with molecular data, e.g., in the form of DNA barcodes and/or a molecular diagnosis.

Article structure

Every OSD article is a single scientific paper. Accordingly, standard parts like introduction and discussion do not have to be submitted with every species description (note). Each OSD article will feature one joint abstract with an overview of the taxa described, a table of contents, a brief introduction of the concept, and general methods and discussion sections. To achieve a very compact format, special methods should be preferably presented in the form of a citation to a complete methods description and will be placed at the beginning of each note. As descriptive taxonomy is the focus of OSD and systematic issues, phylogenetics, etc., are not, detailed discussions are not intended to be included. Short remarks sections are welcome where needed, e.g., to elaborate on species diagnoses or the condition of the material studied.

Figures: High-quality images (photographs, line drawings, CT scans, etc.) of the individual species’ morphology have to be included for each contribution. The applied techniques should be adequate, state-of-the-art and comprehensive but avoid redundancy. The selection of images to be included in figure plates should follow the same principle as the rest of the contribution by focusing on the body parts and characters that are (most) valuable to diagnose the species.

Diagnoses: For OSD, we aim at standardising diagnoses for new species as per the guidelines below. Prospective authors are welcome to read through them. Editorial support will be provided to redact the diagnoses in their standardised form.

Guidelines for writing OSD new species diagnoses:

To the extent possible, the diagnoses will follow a morphological progression from anterior to posterior, dorsal to ventral, proximal to distal, and basal to apical. In a sentence, the diagnostic structure or character will be referred first, followed by the diagnostic character state.

A diagnosis at the species level should contain:

• 1) the elements of a comparison “identical with” and “different from”,
• 2) the element of anchoring, in support of the comparison element “identical with”,
  •  2.1) Anchoring could be placed out of the diagnosis itself.

Example: The name Aus dus sp. nov., placed out of the diagnosis, will satisfy both the comparison elements “anchoring” to the genus through the word Aus and “identical with” other Aus species through the character states of the genus. Not mentioning Aus dus sp. nov. within the diagnosis itself will not prevent the name from being available.

• 2.2) Anchoring is not restricted to the words in a binomen or trinomen but implicitly expanded to interpolated names, unless otherwise stated.

Examples: In providing the name Aus (Bus) dus sp. nov., the authors implicitly state that they refine their “anchoring” and “identical with” diagnosis elements to subgenus Aus (Bus), unless they explicitly state not to do so on the basis of precaution towards other Aus species which are not assigned to subgenus, with which the authors also compare their new species Aus (Bus) dus. In providing the name Aus (cus) dus sp. nov., the authors implicitly state that they refine their “anchoring” and “identical with” diagnosis elements to superspecies Aus (cus).

• 3) the element of sufficiency, in support of the comparison element “different from”.
  • 3.1) Differentiation to be unambiguous. The diagnosis should unambiguously state
    • 3.1.1) the sufficient character state(s), or
    • 3.1.2) the sufficient combination(s) of character states which differentiate the new species from all the other species known to the authors to be contained within the “anchoring” element.
  • 3.2) Included species to be made explicit. Species considered by the authors as included in the “anchoring” element should be referred to, either by
    • 3.2.1) explicit mention in the work itself, or
    • 3.2.2) reference to an archived database version, or
    • 3.1.3) a combination of both.

Authorships and taxonomic authorities: The first author for each issue of Ocean Species Discoveries will be the Senckenberg Ocean Species Alliance (SOSA) as institutional author. All contributors to an issue will be listed as co-authors in alphabetical order. Taxonomic authorities will remain with the individual contributors.

The journal BDJ is integrated with Contributor Role Taxonomy (CRediT), in order to recognise individual author input within a publication, thereby ensuring professional and ethical conduct, while avoiding authorship disputes, gift / ghost authorship and similar pressing issues in academic publishing.

These rules are binding for all contributors, including SOSA leadership and other team members who do NOT automatically gain authorship.

Electronic supplements: We wish to avoid supplements of all sorts. All essential data should go into the species descriptions while all other data should be published separately outside the Ocean Species Discoveries.

Templates & examples: Templates for species descriptions are work in progress for several taxa. Until a standardised template exists for your taxon, please refer to works previously published in BDJ to format your own contribution (Cho et al. 2022; Tovar-Hernández & de León-González 2022).

Article preparation and review

Contributions to OSD will be accepted in Word, Open Document of Google Docs format with as little formatting as possible. Use previously published papers (see above) as guides.  Each note will be handled, separately reviewed and eventually migrated into the online ARPHA Writing Tool (AWT) by the SOSA guest editor Carlos Martínez.

Interested in contributing to a Future Edition of OSD?

Complete our OSD Intake Form! For any questions regarding OSD, please contact the head of our Discovery Unit, Jan Steger at jan.steger@senckenberg.de.