Be a Collaborator

---

How to become a FishBase Collaborator ... and Why

A large project such as that which led to FishBase generates enough credit to share among project collaborators, and FishBase was designed to make explicit the role played by each collaborator.

For example, the chapters of the FishBase book are authored by the FishBase staff members and collaborators who have worked with the corresponding tables, data and/or concepts. References to each work from which information was extracted are given in the database, and the names of collaborators are attached to all the records they provided or corrected.

Moreover, three explicit procedures exist in FishBase to give credit to collaborators:

• colleagues who supply data (in form of reprints, reports, unpublished theses, etc., or as FishBase data entry forms) are listed (via their collaborator number) as 'Entered:' on the 'stamp' in the Status section of the appropriate table. Also, their name appears in the Acknowledgements section of each FishBase species synopsis;
• colleagues who verify FishBase products (e.g. Synopses, country lists, common names) appear through their number as 'Checked:' on the stamp of the appropriate tables, and their name also appears on the last page of FishBase synopses;
• colleagues who supply a substantial database for distribution through FishBase have their own table (such as the GENERA table for Eschmeyer's Catalog of fishes (1998), INTRODUCTIONS table for Welcomme (1988), or LARVDYN table for Houde and Zastrow (1993)).

In addition to the above, we are working on a concept of Coordinators for certain areas such as taxonomic families, ecosystem or countries, and special topics such as relative brain size or swimming mode. Coordinators will have their name shown in the headers of the respective tables and printouts, e.g., 'Coordinated by _____.' We are still exploring this concept and invite your comments.

We believe that colleagues who opt to collaborate with us, i.e., opt to see some of their work incorporated into FishBase, benefit because:

• their published work will reach more people;
• their work will become integrated into a larger whole, and thus become easier to assimilate, while remaining theirs in terms of scientific credit;
• the integration in FishBase involves checking of at least the scientific names and generally leads to the identification of errors which, while easily corrected, may not have been noticed otherwise;
• also, once a publication is linked to a FishBase species, it is automatically updated if the scientific name changes. For example, the many publications written on Salmo gairdneri are now easily found under Oncorhynchus mykiss.