Free Site For Amateur Paleontologists And Collectors To Publish Scientific Papers

[TNCollector]

Hello all, as few of you know, my background is in programming, and I wish to use those skills to benefit paleontology and TFF as best I can. Paleontology as a scientific field was begun by amateur collectors, who were merely interested in the world and curious about its past. Those days still continue, but I believe that in this age of information and knowledge, it is important to unleash our potential, and have a place for all amateurs to publish their findings, scientific thoughts and hypotheses, and share with the world the knowledge they have gained, so that everyone can have a part of it.

My idea is to create a website and database where amateurs can write formal papers or simply document their discoveries on things they have found. The site would be accessible for free, and by anybody. Of course, there would be a few guidelines, such as: the paper must be in the correct format, the work should not be obvious, and any hypotheses/conclusions should be based upon observable evidence.

Papers documenting your finds, or a description of a new collecting site, or things you hypothesize about creature A based off of feature X seen on specimen D collected at site C, etc. This information is widely available here on The Fossil Forum, that is why I and many others love this place so much, but the site I am speaking of will be for everyone to contribute to, for free. It would basically be a large knowledge database, which I believe has potential for the scientific community.

As this site would not require papers to be peer-reviewed, information published there would not necessarily be accurate or purely scientific, however that is a risk taken with all sites like this (Wikipedia for example), but these sites can still be very valuable to the scientific community. It is citizen science.

My first question is this: Who anyone be interested?

Second: Because I am making this free, and because databases and websites both cost money, I would love to have some donations to pay for the setup/continued upkeep of the site.

I am thinking that initial setup would cost somewhere between $50 and $100, and upkeep cost would depend on site traffic, so I cannot guess that cost right now.

Also of course, TFF would be sponsored on the site if it wishes.

Edit: Added a poll

Edited June 2, 2015 by TNCollector

[Auspex]

Without peer review, it sounds like a kind of moderated blogsite, just the thing to publicly float informal ideas. Do I understand it correctly?

[TNCollector]

That is a good question: the documents would not be peer reviewed in a traditional sense as journals are. Rather than submitting a paper and having it peer-reviewed for publication, it would go through an initial approval process, which would search for obvious mistakes, where the paper would then either be disapproved and sent back to the writer, or published in the "Newly Published Papers" area, where readers can then read the papers, point out mistakes and correct them, make suggestions, etc.

The purpose here is not to necessarily make an online encyclopedia, but to make a place similar to Wikipedia (which is not peer reviewed, except for select articles) where the public can input their knowledge, and also evaluate/add to others information as well. Emphasis would be on specimen and site documentation.

So no, not a moderated blog site, more like a moderated Wikipedia (Paleopedia?).

Edit: This is still a very new idea, so the details and scope of the project are not all worked out definitively. I am asking for advice, and whether there is interest.

This is a Citizen Science-like project

Edited June 1, 2015 by TNCollector

[Archimedes]

Nice ideas here, this is a Large undertaking to sponsor this, and there are a lot of capable skilled members on the TFF that can help you look over and check papers that are submitted.

Edited June 2, 2015 by Archimedes

[TNCollector]

@Archimedes Absolutely! The idea here is for this site to be mostly run by the users, and I see no better place than TFF to find people to help out. It is a community effort: citizen science. Citizen science has proved to be very useful in the scientific community for bringing to light knowledge that would have been otherwise forgotten and never discovered by professionals, and this is a way to bring that to paleontology.

[Plax]

peer reviewed then; the peers being amateurs? Paper or strictly digital? I think that some of this is already on TFF. The Pinecrest Gastropods by MikeR and MB fossils come to mind.

[TNCollector]

@Plax Yes, peer reviewed in a Wikipedia style fashion. The site would be a strictly digital database of amateur-aquired data and observations. TFF certainly does have some of this, and that is great, however this site would be accessible by anyone without any membership requirements.

The papers/datasets submitted to this site are not intended to serve the purpose of replacing professional papers and data, it is meant to be a way for the public to get involved in paleontology, and to document their discoveries in a consolidated area. This sort of thing has been used extensively in documenting local wildlife species, astronomical observation, weather phenomena, and it would certainly be useful for the paleontology community also.

Too many collectors find nice fossils, sit them on their shelves, and leave them until someday their descendants sell them off at a garage sale or throw them away. Pictures and descriptions of how/where these things were found could certainly be useful in the future. It would more or less be an updated fossil sites.com, which I know everyone has had some experience with before.

Edited June 2, 2015 by TNCollector

[Phossiker]

You could have some sort of indicator to the degree that the paper has been reviewed.

Eg. Not reviewed/read/reviewed once/reviewed twice/ 3x or more.

How would you deal with papers that were found to be scientifically inaccurate?

People can get pretty hung up on their crazy ideas and they can get very angry about criticism.

I can think of several pseudosciences that would jump at the opportunity to publish.

Having said that many important observations have been made be amateurs. Your idea is a good one.

[Auspex]

This sounds like a venue for considered speculations; call it "E-Posits".

[TNCollector]

You could have some sort of indicator to the degree that the paper has been reviewed.

Eg. Not reviewed/read/reviewed once/reviewed twice/ 3x or more.

How would you deal with papers that were found to be scientifically inaccurate?

People can get pretty hung up on their crazy ideas and they can get very angry about criticism.

I can think of several pseudosciences that would jump at the opportunity to publish.

Having said that many important observations have been made be amateurs. Your idea is a good one.

Good questions: and also really good idea about the review indicator (That will definitely be used if this becomes reality). As far as pseudoscience goes: if the pseudo-ideas are obvious enough, the article would never be accepted anyway. Unfortunately, it is impossible to avoid making everyone happy, if someone has a crazy idea that gets disapproved, then they will probably be mad.

As far as simple inaccuracies, I feel that anyone who cared about the science would be accepting of criticism. I know I would. When publishing on this site, it would be made well aware to potential authors that their articles were not always going to be permanent, and may be subject to criticism and change.

@ Auspex

Yes indeed, all scientific laws and theories that were ever formulated started out as considered speculations.

Edited June 3, 2015 by TNCollector

[FossilDAWG]

One caveat: I do not think this sort of venue would be legitimate for describing new species or other taxa. Amongst other rules (see here), new species must be published in a venue that is widely available (online would qualify) and permanent. Websites come and go. Are you prepared to commit to paying for server space forever, including creating an endowment to fund that in perpetuity? Paper copies of scientific journals exist as physical objects in libraries around the world. There are a few journals that are primarily available online, such as Zootaxa, but even they print a number of hard copies and deposit them in libraries at major museums to ensure a permanent record is available.

I'll also comment that few amateurs understand what it takes to describe a valid new species, or are in a position to do it correctly. It is critical to ensure your new species is truly different from anything that has been described before. This means you must have access to and be very familiar with the published literature. This is somewhat easier to do these days, as many resources are available online, but you'll still have to have access to a really good interlibrary loan service capable of getting their hands on documents that were published 200 years ago and exist in only three or four copies in the world. Often critical papers will be written in some language other than English, so you had better have access to an excellent translation service as well (Google translator won't cut it for scientific language I'm afraid). Even more difficult, often older descriptions are inadequate so you have to get access to actual type specimens. Some museums will loan types to qualified researchers, and some won't allow specimens to leave their hands, which requires you to travel to that museum. No museum that I am aware of will mail type specimens to amateurs, so you'd better have a budget that allows you to visit museum collections in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere.

Even without formal peer review, someone will have to dedicate a huge amount of time to editing all the submissions, and at the end of the day without peer review the research community will not pay any attention to anything published in such an outlet. What you will end up with is a blog or "magazine" aimed at the amateur collector, which will contain a mix of some really well-informed articles, some that are well meaning but based on inadequate knowledge, and some that are totally "crackpot".

As far as "publishing" trip reports, or having a vigorous and reasonably well informed discussion of identifications and sometimes deeper issues, the Fossil Forum already provides an excellent outlet. I am constantly amazed at the willingness of professionals and very well educated avocational collectors (really, only "amateur" in the sense that they don't get paid to study paleontology) to contribute to this Forum.

Don

[jkfoam]

I believe FossilDAWG's post is right-on.

Jim

[TNCollector]

@ FossilDAWG Your points are good, and I definitely agree. Between the time I wrote my first post and now, I have been thinking on it quite extensively and already started to move away from the idea of using the site as a place for papers and scientific ideas (as this sort of discussion is more geared towards TFF), to a place geared more towards consolidated site and collection documentation. Basically a large database that can easily be searched. While I certainly agree that TFF is a good outlet for trip reports, fossil ID, etc., I think that having a place like fossil sites.com with many more enhanced features (picture uploads, detailed descriptions of collections, etc.) and that could easily be modified and added to would certainly be useful to collectors AND professionals alike as it would be a single place with an easily accessible and searchable database for finding information quickly and effectively. I have used fossil sites.com to find places to collect and much of the information is very outdated, and often not thorough enough to be of much use.

As I said before, these are all just ideas, what do you guys think about the updated scope of the project?

Also thanks for the professional criticism, it is very helpful.

[FossilDAWG]

A site that is well organized and easily searchable would be useful, certainly. The Forum isn't bad in that regard, in that the search function works pretty well once you get the hang of choosing search terms. Still, people put things on the "trip reports" where they quickly get buried, and don't make much use of the available folders for state/province/country specific reports. There are some great sources of information in those folders, and I wish people would make more use of them than they currently do.

In thinking about the kind of information you want to make available, I want to caution you that people may be very reluctant to post specific details (especially location) of their best/favorite collecting sites. Putting such information online is guaranteed to result in a massive increase in collecting pressure. At best this will turn a productive site into one that is scarcely worth visiting. At worst, this will result in closure of the site, if landowners get tired of an endless stream of people requesting access, or trespassers, and picking up litter/filling in holes etc. Many sites have been closed in recent years due to such issues. Even "public" areas such as roadcuts end up posted and closed if they attract too much activity. Consider that the Forum (for example) has many many members who never post anything, and even more people access the forum each day as "guests" without registering; all of these people are looking for information, and if they read about specific directions to a good collecting site within driving distance you can be sure that they will visit sooner rather than later. Some sites, including well-known sites that are visited by hundreds or thousands of collectors each year (such as Whiskey Bridge in Texas), are so productive they can stand such pressure and still produce, but most sites will quickly be destroyed. You will perhaps notice that even when people write up their trip reports, they rarely give specifics about sites unless those sites are well known, such as quarries that restrict access to clubs, or public parks such as Mineral Wells.

Don

Edited June 3, 2015 by FossilDAWG

[piranha]

Google and Google Scholar are obviously excellent search engines, and there are also sites like academia.edu and researchgate.net that have been growing exponentially over the last few years. The content at academia.edu and researchgate.net encompasses a wide variety of publications that is not restricted to peer-reviewed material. These sites also feature a massive database of peer-reviewed papers. Many of these papers would be otherwise locked behind a paywall, were it not for the generosity of the authors / contributors who participate at these venues. Besides all the blogs, forums, and enthusiast websites, there's a lot of competition out there. Good luck!

[TNCollector]

With careful consideration and thinking, I have determined not to pursue this project. Thanks for the help and advice everyone.

But now what will I do to take up all of my free time?? My ideas are depleted.

[FossilDAWG]

I think there are many good aspects to your ideas, well worth pursuing. What about a "fossils of Tennessee" site for example? One where people could post high quality photos of good or exceptional specimens, together with a discussion of what features are important for a correct ID and to distinguish that species from others it could be confused with? People could also indicate the particular rock formation and age that yields the species, and general information about where it might be found. You could even have a map that shows dots where the species has been collected; people who find specimens could add comments, put their dot on the map, even link their own photos? Also as a form of "peer review", if people think there has been an error in an ID they can post a comment with their suggestion for an ID and state the reasons why the new ID is better. Such a database would be incredibly valuable, and would not require anyone to disclose GPS coordinates to their best sites.

Don

[TNCollector]

I think there are many good aspects to your ideas, well worth pursuing. What about a "fossils of Tennessee" site for example? One where people could post high quality photos of good or exceptional specimens, together with a discussion of what features are important for a correct ID and to distinguish that species from others it could be confused with? People could also indicate the particular rock formation and age that yields the species, and general information about where it might be found. You could even have a map that shows dots where the species has been collected; people who find specimens could add comments, put their dot on the map, even link their own photos? Also as a form of "peer review", if people think there has been an error in an ID they can post a comment with their suggestion for an ID and state the reasons why the new ID is better. Such a database would be incredibly valuable, and would not require anyone to disclose GPS coordinates to their best sites.

Don

That certainly would be helpful. I might expand it to maybe two more states other than Tennessee however. My entire region (Tennessee, Mississippi, kentucky, etc.) is not talked about very often. Other surrounding places like the Carolinas and much of the Northeast are well documented, and there are plenty of sites where information about these state's paleohistory are well documented. I am thinking a Tenessee/Mississippi site, which are both states that have a rich diversity of fossil history: beginning in the Holocene of south Mississippi, stretching to the Cretaceous of North MS and West TN, to the Precambrian in East Tennessee. It basically goes through a large portion of Earth's history in one relatively small geographic area.

[FossilDAWG]

I think there is enough overlap between Tennessee and Mississippi, especially in the Cretaceous, that it makes sense to treat them together. As you say, between the two states every period is covered, so there is a lot to include. It's a big project, but worthwhile. Good luck! When you get going, perhaps I'll be able to contribute a few photos and write-ups.

Don

[Auspex]

I kinda' like the idea of organizing by geologic paleo-zones, rather than by state; "Fossils Without Borders".

[TNCollector]

I think there is enough overlap between Tennessee and Mississippi, especially in the Cretaceous, that it makes sense to treat them together. As you say, between the two states every period is covered, so there is a lot to include. It's a big project, but worthwhile. Good luck! When you get going, perhaps I'll be able to contribute a few photos and write-ups.

Don

I will definitely appreciate anyone who can contribute! Thanks for all of the good advice.

I kinda' like the idea of organizing by geologic paleo-zones, rather than by state; "Fossils Without Borders".

As do I, I think the site will be geared towards certain geologic paleo-zones of the southeast.

I will think on it.