About IPNI

The International Plant Names Index (IPNI) is a database of the names and associated basic bibliographical details of seed plants, ferns and fern allies. Its goal is to eliminate the need for repeated reference to primary sources for basic bibliographic information about plant names. The data are freely available and are gradually being standardized and checked. IPNI will be a dynamic resource, depending on direct contributions by all members of the botanical community.

IPNI is the product of a collaboration between The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, The Harvard University Herbaria, and the Australian National Herbarium

NEWS - December 2009

• During October 2009 over 27,000 plant name records in IPNI underwent some sort of change. This is not unusual, or anything new! Sometimes the change is not discernible, like linking an already standardised author name to the entry in the authors database, but sometimes it involves a major overhaul including changes to several fields. You can track the changes a record has undergone by clicking on the 'View Record history' link in detail view and comparing the previous versions.

• Correction, standardisation, linking and information enhancement are going on all the time, so if you use downloaded data bear in mind that it soon becomes out of date. See the data curation figures here and find out more about what data curation involves here.

• Names from Linnaeus' Species Plantarum (approx 8900 citations) are linked to page images in the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL).

• 80% of publication titles are now standardised and linked, and 85% of author citations. See progress charts.

• The numbers and categories of names added to IPNI are recorded here. These statistics charts are automatically updated whenever we update the static webpages - usually around the beginning of each month.

• More thanks for your help in providing us with some of the references we've been unable to get hold of. Missing names have been added and corrections made as a result. List last updated on 12 November 2009.

• If your name is already in the Authors Database please check to see if you can supply us with any additional information about yourself, like date of birth or full name where we only have your initials. This may help to prevent you from being confused with someone else in the future!

• Errors in page or volume number, title or publication year which are spotted and corrected during the standardization process are listed in a table. This table now has more than 3,000 entries - mostly scanning errors. It isn't a complete listing of all errors corrected. If you come across more, please let us know. Table last updated on 8 December 2009.

TIPS

November-December 09

• You can sort your search results by family or by genus. The default is by family, but if you uncheck the Sort box just to the left of the Search button, your results will be sorted by genus.

• Keep track of record modifications in a particular family or genus by using Additional Term search. Search must be limited by at least one term. Find out more.

• If you are running a search for a particular genus it is not necessary to enter anything in the family name field.

October 09

• Some publications, like Bull. Soc. Bot. France may comprise one section with Indo-Arabic page numbers and another with Roman numeral page numbers, within the same volume.

• Scanning errors in specific epithets are still turning up. A few examples of recently corrected ones: usambarcnsis to usambarensis, djamucnse to djamuense, ripcnse to ripense, lumrum to lurorum, samthrae to sarothrae. Please let us know if you come across one.

• Keep track of record modifications in a particular family or genus by using Additional Term search. Search must be limited by at least one term. Find out more.

 

September 09

• In IK Roman numerals were used to record volume numbers for names published from 1753-1965. We are converting these numerals gradually, but carefully, as not only do they contain scanning errors (like 'i' being read as 'l', so 'lv' could be 55 or a scanning error for 4, for instance), but also typographical errors (e.g. 'ix' may have been recorded for '11' and 'xi' for '9'). See errors table for examples found and now corrected. Please let us know if you come across more.

• You can highlight recent additions to the errors table if you use Firefox, by going to the Edit menu, selecting "Find" then adding your criterion, e.g. '2007-08', to the toolbar that appears near the botton of the screen.

• Read more snippets of information and help in the archive.

August 09

• A hyperlink on author name or publication title in the detailed search results indicates standardized format. 

• What appear to be duplicate records in primary search results often hold different information when the full records are viewed.

• Names appearing in IPNI that originated from the Original Volume and first three Supplements of Index Kewensis (i.e. names published from 1753-1905) sometimes included the personal taxonomic opinion of the index compiler, so what appears in the notes field of those early records should be interpreted with this in mind. Read more about IK here.

July 09

• Publication dates are cited in the format [year1 publ. year2] when the publication year printed on the title page ('year1) is different from the actual publication date of the page in question (year2). This is common in journals that were published in parts, then bound together at a later date. 'year1' may be after or before 'year2'.

• Library catalogues usually cite the title page date only.

• Until 1970 the only ranks listed in IK were genus and species. From 1971 all ranks from family down to infraspecific level are listed.

Tips Archive....

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Page last updated 19 November 2009