DataONEorg
Re-visit taxonomic name and rank MeasurementType classes
@mbjones and I had a chat about how this EML dataset description was annotated: https://search.dataone.org/view/https%3A%2F%2Fpasta.lternet.edu%2Fpackage%2Fmetadata%2Feml%2Fedi%2F252%2F3.
Specifically, EML Attributes like taxon_rank with a definition of "Taxonomic rank of the organism." were annotated with OBOE:contains measurements of type ECSO:taxonomic classification.
For starters, ECSO:taxonomic classification hasn't been given a definition in ECSO and the term is vague enough to be confusing. In the class hierarchy, its purpose is a little more clear:
Starting from the bottom and working up, @mbjones said:
it would be nice, however, if we had clear guidinace on how to say “the literal string in this column represents a scientific name” or “the literal string in this column represents a scientific rank” and not conflate those two
Can we do this with the above class hierarchy? I don't think we have a Measurement Type for the latter and whether or not we have a Measurement Type for the former is vague at this point. Proper definitions and maybe tweaks to labels might dramatically improve things.
Note this issue discussion regarding Darwin Core and TCS, which has new activity through a new Taxonomic Names and Concepts interest group at TDWG. Sounds like they will be charged with a formal model of Taxon with associated object properties for TDWG.
