Over the last two weeks, there has been a couple of email pointing out possible errors in some citations. I am not surprised. I expect 90-95% correctness (i.e. 1 in 10 or 1 in 20) may be incorrectly entered. To improve the quality, we need independent review of the data. In one amusing case, I quoted my source correctly but that review study incorrectly cited it’s source. The data entry was right, the source document was wrong.

The articles are technical studies which often require advance reading skills and knowledge of this topic. Some of the sources are available in full on the web for free, others are behind a paywall. If you are connected with a university or college, you may have access thru your institution.

If you cannot access the full text of the source, then skip it. Extracts and summaries can contain errors.

Process

Just email me from the email account that you logged in with and I will add auditor or QA permissions to your account.

Doing it

When you logged in, you should see:

When you look at citations, you will see the ⚖️ icon (or a ✅ if someone has already checked) beside the citation.

Example for a list of citations

Note that there may be more in the study then what the titles implies. Often data is from Appendix and tables.

Clicking ⚖️ will take you to a page showing what was extracted and gives you an opportunity to correct it,

Click [Report above Issue] will send emails to me and to your self. If all of the information is correct, then click [I have verified..] and the next time you see the citation, there will be a ✅ beside it. Your email is stored beside the citation as the reviewer.

You will get an email confirming stuff

If there is information that was missed (more likely) please include the TAXON numbers of the bacteria. This speeds up the process. Often information was missed because of alternative spelling.

That’s the process. Short, simple and with the ability for me to quickly make corrections.