BIOLOGIJA. 2021. Vol. 67. No. 2. P. 93–113 © Lietuvos mokslų akademija, 2021 Taxonomic papers as published products of the biodiversity inventory: if not the Impact Factor (IF) or Quartiles (Q), then what determines their importance estimated on the basis of the Research Interest Score? Viktorija Dobrynina1*, This study is uniquely based on the Research Interest Score (RGRI) and not on other existing bibliometric criteria for evalu- Svetlana Baryshnikova2, ation of published biological inventory products (articles and monographs). RGRI is a ResearchGate.net score that measures 1 Eduardas Budrys , scientists’ interest in the publication and is based on its citations, recommendations, and reads. Our data revealed that high RGRI 1 Jolanta Rimšaitė , scores of publications were generally not determined by the jour- nal’s Impact Factor (IF) or high quartiles (Q). However, open 3 Oleksiy Bidzilya access to publications undoubtedly creates the strongest precon- ditions for the rise of RGRI. The importance and popularity of 1 Institute of Ecology, a publications can also be affected by its various other characteris- Nature Research Centre, Akademijos St. 2, tics, for example, international collaboration of authors, ecologi- Vilnius 08412, Lithuania cal issues such as plant-insect interactions, and even the wording of the publication title. 2 Zoological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Keywords: journal ranking, diagnostics, international collabora- Universitetskaya nab. 1, tion, leaf-mining insects, new taxa, open access, plant-insect in- St. Petersburg 199034, Russia teractions, title 3 Institute of Evolutionary Ecology, the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv 03143, Ukraine * Corresponding author. Email: [email protected] 94 Viktorija Dobrynina, Svetlana Baryshnikova, Eduardas Budrys, Jolanta Rimšaitė, Oleksiy Bidzilya INTRODUCTION Opostegidae, Nepticulidae, etc.). However, tax- onomic inventories of these tiny insects can not The term ‘biodiversity inventory’ is interpreted only provide knowledge about global biota but as studies that cover the diversity of all organ- are also essential for providing tools for prompt isms, including their genetic diversity, interspe- measures in the preservation of biodiversity cific and intraspecific diversity, identification of and, along with the data on other organisms, relationships between species and ecosystems, they can provide support for hypotheses about the diversity of terrestrial and aquatic ecosys- the earlier genesis of the Earth’s biota (Sto- tems and their evolutionary and ecological pro- nis et al., 2020b). They have also been used as an cesses (Vermeulen, Koziell, 2002; Morton, Hill, express tool for monitoring biodiversity, rapid 2014). In fact, it is within the field of biological assessment of biodiversity areas of critical value, systematics or taxonomy with the ultimate task and determining priority areas from the envi- to document and understand the extent and sig- ronmental point of view in tropical America nificance of biological diversity (Vane-Wright, (Stonis, pers. comm.). On the other hand, larvae 1992, 1996). Such studies are also needed in of leaf miners are pests or potential pests of wild order to obtain detailed information on group- and cultivated plants; they mine inside green tis- ing of endangered species (Mckinney, 2002) sues and produce leaf mines (Pitkin et al., 2019; and, more importantly, to identify and protect Kirichenko et al., 2019). Although adults of leaf critical habitats. The availability and quality of miners are often among the smallest lepidopter- such information is essential for understand- ans in the world (Stonis et al., 2021b), a leaf mine ing the mechanisms of functioning of the global produced by a tiny larva can be relatively large biota (Pereira et al., 2010), including the de- and cause damage because the larva consumes velopment of methods for using incomplete data much of the photosynthetic tissues (Stonis et al., (Girardello et al., 2019). In order to manage this 2021b). Upon significant population increase or process of research, technologies for studying explosion, damage to the host plant may be sig- various aspects of biodiversity are being devel- nificant or even severe (Puplesis, 1994; Puplesis, oped (e.g., Grummo et al., 2019) and manuals Diškus, 2003; Stonis et al., 2021b). are compiled (Cutko, 2009). Biodiversity inven- Final products of the biodiversity inventory tory or biodiversity assessment has been particu- can vary between online databases (De Prins, larly relevant because of human activities, reck- De Prins, 2006–2020; Robinson, 2019; Froese, less use of natural resources, destruction and 2019; De Prins, Heughebaert, 2019; Stephen- fragmentation of habitats, industrial pollution, son, Stengel, 2020; Kitching, 2021) and issued and climate change. Biodiversity has undergone publications: taxonomic lists of regional fauna dramatic change (Puplesis, 2002; Bellard et al., or flora, identification keys, large-scale taxo- 2012; Morton, Hill, 2014) and is declining rap- nomic revisions, or global or regional cata- idly (Hallmann, 2017; Leather, 2018; Sánchez- logues, etc. For example, the Catalogue of Lepi- Bayo, Wyckhuys, 2019; Zattara, Aizen, 2021). doptera of Russia (Sinev, 2008) reveals species Another problem is that the inventory of spe- composition of this huge country, outlines geo- cies diversity is often limited to the best-known graphical distribution of individual species, and groups of organisms such as vascular plants and determines territories least studied in terms of larger vertebrates, and too little attention is be- the lepidopteran fauna. An important func- ing paid to the remaining 80–90% of taxa (Pup- tion of this catalogue is the introduction into lesis, 2002; Hawksworth, 2011). the practice of domestic research of modern It is also true as regards the research object ideas about taxonomy and applying current no- of the authors: the formerly largely neglected menclature. The catalogue also serves as a very smallest lepidopterans (Lopes-Vaamonde et al., powerful impetus for further taxonomic and 2019) and the leaf-mining moths (Gelechiidae, especially faunistic research. Therefore, a huge Gracillariidae, Bucculatricidae, Tischeriidae, amount of new information accumulated over Taxonomic papers as published products of the biodiversity inventory: if not the Impact Factor (IF)... 95 the last decade within this field of the biologi- is particularly detrimental to young researchers cal inventory resulted in the second revised and and is increasingly leading to the situation when supplemented edition of the Catalogue of Lepi- biodiversity research (especially faunistics) is to doptera of Russia (Sinev, 2019). a large extent done by amateur entomologists. Efforts to inventory and monitor global bio- The purpose of this study is to analyse diversity appear to be growing (Zhang, 2008, the significance and popularity of taxonomic 2011; Cutko, 2009; La Salle et al., 2009; Perei- publications as published products of the bio- ra et al., 2010). The task, however, is huge and diversity inventory. Various analyses of arti- the speed is far from sufficient (Schmeller et al., cle citation rates can be found in a number of 2017). Among various causes, there is a lack of publications (Falagas et al., 2008; Barreto et al., qualified professionals (Stonis, 2014). 2013; Aksnes et al., 2019). However, the change In order to speed up the global inventory, in the significance of scientific articles over time integration of DNA barcoding into an ongo- has been very little analysed (Chawla, 2018). ing inventory has been actively propagated Our study is focused exclusively on the Re- (Janzen et al., 2009; Miller, 2015; Miller et al., searchGate (researchgate.net) Research Interest 2016; Aagaard et al., 2017) and some seriously (RGRI) score and not on other existing biblio- controversial attempts have recently been un- metric criteria for the evaluation of published dertaken. It is particularly the case of a mini- products of the biological inventory (articles malist revision with description of 403 new spe- and monographs). We are not aware of any cas- cies in 11 subfamilies of Costa Rican braconid es where the indicators of scientific social net- parasitoid wasps (Sharkey et al., 2021) rejecting works (namely RGRI) are compared with usual the usual standards for species description. bibliometric indicators. Another alarming situation is that the pre- Research Interest is a ResearchGate.net score sent funding of research in some countries that measures scientists’ interest in a publica- may depend on the number of publications tion and is based on its citations, recommenda- in the journals that are highly rated (quartiles tions, and reads. It should be mentioned that Q1 and Q2 of a list ranked by the impact fac- ResearchGate.net is not simply a ‘social club’ for tor in a particular category, e.g., entomology) researchers registered at this portal: all publica- in the Clarivate Analytics Web of Science Core tions or their abstracts are available to any user Collection database (hereinafter, IF publica- via internet search engines. Therefore, the read- tions). It indirectly influences biodiversity re- ability of publications from the ResearchGate searchers who are obliged to refer to publica- and their citation appear to be important indi- tions in these high-ranked journals instead of cators of whether the published paper has at- publishing their research in journals dedicated tracted interest