Improving taxonomic practices and enhancing its extensibility - an example from araneology

We downloaded nearly all the taxonomic works
documented in the WSC during the time period of 2008-2018. Each investigator documented
authorship and the number of new species described per publication; our review
focused exclusively on newly described taxa during the study time period. Only
a few non-English works were omitted from the study for which we were unable to
find a translation that allowed confident data scoring. Table 1 below lists the parameters reviewed
and how they were scored. Binary scorings were based on interrogative NO/YES
(0/1) responses, whereas others were quantitative (documenting absolute numbers
of observations or counts). Generally, we assessed the following: 1) what type
of data were used to establish species constructs; 2) how species were
illustrated; 3) was raw specimen data downloadable; 4) how many specimens were
examined for each species; and 5) what sexes were available for each species.
The number of specimens available was tabulated as (1), (2), or (>2); >2
is somewhat arbitrary and underestimates the paucity of data associated with
some species, but objectively captures the variation in the data set without
documenting the absolute number of specimens for all species. A study was
classified as ‘integrative’ if morphological data (i.e., genitalic or other)
was used in combination with at least one other data source. For species
concept, we assessed each paper to determine whether the author stated
explicitly what species concept they used to delineate taxa.The data were
tabulated in a MS Excel spreadsheet; summary statistics and bar graphs were
produced using the base R statistics packages and carried out in R-Studio [29].