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 - August 2010

• If you would be interested in trying out a bibliographic tool that will take you from a detailed plant name record in IPNI to the protologue page if available in BHL, please let us know.
  
  Limitations in the levels of standardization require a bit of lateral thinking and wildcard use, but if you are familiar with the quirks of the literature and are prepared to help the tool along a bit, you may like to give it a try. We find it really useful.

• The IPNI database is live and updated every day. From August 2010 we are displaying the current number of records in each of the IPNI databases. On the same page you can see how many names are being added to IPNI and statistics on data curation.

• Please be aware that nomenclatural novelties are not effectively published in the electronic version of a publication. In publications which have identical electronic and printed versions, the date of effective publication is the date on which the printed version is distributed. See Arts. 29-31, ICBN (2006).

• The OCR error detection process we have been using recently to clean specific and infraspecific epithets is also helping us to identify and correct an abundance of typographical errors. Spelling errors in the printed Index Kewensis, in protologues and in all the datasets have been found. We have made almost 2000 corrections to epithets in the last few months as a result of this process. Most of these are recorded in the errors table. Checking and correcting continues.

• 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 5 August 2010.

TIPS

August 10

• Check the links page for sources of digitised literature.

• Detailed view of publication title may hold useful information. For example, pdfs of articles published in Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society can be accessed by pasting the link given in the publication record into your browser.

• Our statistics tables are automatically updated whenever we update the static webpages - usually around the beginning of each month.

June-July 10

• IPNI's focus is purely nomenclatural. No opinions are given on what are currently accepted names or taxonomic synonyms. [See link to find some sources of current names.] 

• To see new names added since last year, last month, last week or yesterday use search by additional terms. Search must be limited by at least one term, like family. Find out more.

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

April-May 10

• To find the full title of a title abbreviation, enter it into the Publication Abbreviation box in the Publications Query page. Replace all punctuation with a wildcard (*) then click search.

• Very many infraspecific names published before 1971 are missing from IPNI as the information wasn't recorded in IK.

• 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. '2010-03', to the toolbar that appears near the botton of the screen.

 

 

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Page last updated 5 August 2010