Publishing field notes?

[Chuck]

In the course of studying the Mid Summer Tiger Swallowtail, two other researchers have reached out with observations concerning eastern US tiger swallotails- invaluable observations! And I hear they collaborate with others, who also have their own notes.

Now, some members have (sporadically?) posted their field reports & notes here. That's useful. But I wonder- how many important notes and observations sit hidden on some computer?

Part 2

So, I thought I'd publish my field notes on the Mid Summer Tiger Swallowtail. Most of those are available here.

Problem 1: After capturing and sanitizing the 20-something internet pages of posts into a Word file it's....170 pages. To even have those printed and stapled is big bucks.

Problem 2: I used maps and images from a variety of sources, including the good old Lep textbooks, more recent Lep publications (periodicals), iNat, and sometimes from a source I can no longer identify. I'm not sure I can use these. Surely, I can't charge $1 more than my cost. But without these some of the topics are rendered virtually useless.

Thoughts?

[eurytides]

There’s gotta be a way to condense this to fewer than 170 pages….PhD dissertations summarizing several years of experiments aren’t that long. Are you trying to publish every single detail, like a day by day journal?

[eurytides]

You could publish a monograph. Like, a summary, but not every single detail, especially if they can be subsumed under generalized statements. About a decade ago, I wrote a monograph for Battus philenor and it was published by the Toronto Ento Association. It was around 30 pages, and you can read it for free on their webpage. There was nothing mysterious about this butterfly, but I wanted to publish my own observations and rearing experience.

[Chuck]

. Are you trying to publish every single detail, like a day by day journal?

In fact, yes. Daily counts, daily observations. These could be summarized while retaining potentially important content (e.g., Clark & Clark) but there's always the risk that some small- yet later important- detail is lost.

Case in point, the initial study on Late Flight by Hagen & Lederhouse ("Polymodal Emergence..., 1984): they report captures of the Early Flight tigers in numbers to me that are astronomical. They recorded daily captures that far exceed all of my Early Flight/ Spring Form captures over 40 years. And absolutely no mention of their methods, no hints as to how this could possibly be.

Worse, Hagen & Lederhouse leave no hint as to what Early Flight might be. In 1990 Scriber published on Spring Form, and in 1991 Scriber, Hagen & Lederhouse published the description of canadensis. It was widely known by 1984 that Early Flight/ Spring Form and canadensis were likely different polymorphs, if not different taxa. Clark & Clark hit on this in the 1950s even, and it goes back before that, to Jordan, 1906. Yet, there are no notes, no records, nothing, that might indicate what this Early Flight in Ithaca, NY might be. In the description of canadensis they reflect on the difference between Spring Form and canadensis with "Scriber 1982, R. Hagen, unpubl. data." Great. Where is this data? What's in it? What it comes down to is that an incredibly significant effort and subsequent publication failed to provide critical information that was readily observed/ known.

There's a lot of unpublished data. Beyond the recent Pavulaan bjorkae description, other researchers have noted similar to what Harry P reports. Aside from a relatively brief mention of polymorphs in Pavulaan, none of these field observations are published. One is pending, but I doubt it will be a daily report.

My hope is that by publishing everything I'm providing the most detailed, comprehensive data package I can.

[eurytides]

I see where you are coming from Chuck. Usually, detailed data like that are put into a supplementary table along with a shorter publication so that if anyone wants to examine the raw data on which conclusions were based, they can. It’s typically not published in the main paper.

[Chuck]

I see where you are coming from Chuck. Usually, detailed data like that are put into a supplementary table along with a shorter publication so that if anyone wants to examine the raw data on which conclusions were based, they can. It’s typically not published in the main paper.

Personally, for a new species description or similar topic, I like the Shuey approach- short and sweet. But some background info should be publicly available somewhere. One of my favorite books is Clark & Clark "Butterflies of Virginia" because they do delve into what could be considered minutiae; and yet this information is still proving useful.

I fully expect that upon making my field notes available they might be read end-to-end by nobody, but who knows, maybe there are some observations that interest two or three people. At this point I'm thinking run a couple copies spiral bound.

[adamcotton]

At this point I'm thinking run a couple copies spiral bound.

Maybe scan it all to pdf, then anyone who wants one can have a copy on request sent by file transfer website. No cost other than your time to scan it all. Once it's out there it will be passed around.

Adam.

[58chevy]

I agree with Adam. PDF is the way to go.

[adamcotton]

The other advantage is a pdf is searchable, so someone can easily find a particular word such as 'glaucus' or 'MST' without having to read the whole text if it's a huge 'tome'.

Adam.

[Chuck]

Thanks gents. I’m definitely going to PDF it. Not sure past that though.

[adamcotton]

You could either put it online somewhere that can be found in a search and downloaded by anyone, or put the information online (such as here) so that people can request a copy.

Adam.

[Chuck]

Update

I downloaded all of my notes on MST (Papilio solstitius) from both the archive and active forums into MS Word. Then I edited them to remove off-topic stuff, and to format nicely. Then PDF that.

PDFd various lists of paratypes submitted (over 40 but in the end we used only three), BOLD analyses & IDs, and various other supporting documents.

I combined the Zookeys paper, my three annual reports for the state, and the above documents using Adobe online. If you just go to Adobe it tries to get you to do a "free trial" but if you search "combine PDFs" it gives a direct link into Adobe, and I was able to combine them all into one PDF, no problems, no account, no "free trial", no credit card. Just about the only easy thing I've done in a year. 258 pages in total. The PDF is 64Mb so won't be easily mailed around.

Using Barnes & Noble self publishing online (I have a free account) I uploaded said single PDF. Note that B&N provides a set of very specific page sizes, and you MUST fit one of those sizes. Fortunately the PDF page sizes matched one of the B&N sizes (this is, unfortunately, a rare case- usually whatever document I have doesn't fit their sizes.)

B&N wants a cover design, and it too must be EXACTLY the right size. B&N's size is of course not something common like 8.5" x 11" since the cover is always a big larger than the pages. I used MS Powerpoint and was able to set the exact page size to match B&N. Then used PP to design a front cover, and a back cover, and PDFd those, and uploaded the covers to B&N.

Because of the page count B&N will only do soft cover, which stinks because I prefer hard cover. But I can't complain about price, it's $20 printed in color to my door. I should have it in a couple weeks.

As a side note, I published a hardbound 240 page reference book using Blurb, and that costs me about $100 per copy. So B&N is a bit more work up front, but it's a heck of a lot less expensive that those full-service self publishing and photo book publishing (e.g., Shutterfly) companies.

That way, if I kick (or, when I kick) there's a hardcopy reference as opposed to finding these obscure documents buried in NYS file folders and online.

[Chuck]

I received my published field notes from Barnes & Noble. 258 pages, color, with softbound color front and rear cover. $18 to my door.

Their issues:

1. It seems they squeezed some pages horizontally, so the butterflies on some pages look narrow and long. I have to check the proof and see if it was PDF or B&N.

2. The paper, though I picked glossy finish, feels cheap and the images not very bright. I wish I could have picked a heavier paper, but hey it's just field notes.

My issues:

1. I am a moron. The cover photo specimen I selected (I picked one quickly that looked very nice) is not Papilio solstitius- the specimen was captured in late May. So it's Spring Form or Papilio bjorkae. It looks great, but of all the dumb mistakes to make, I win.

2. I failed to insert any form of separation between the annual reports, so it's run-on. Nor is it easy to find where the Papilio solstitius description ends, and my annual reports start.

3. I did note for the astute reader at the start of my field notes that there are many erroneous claims, identifications, etc. throughout. It's easy to miss that though. And, flipping through the notes, along with corresponding images, they look very impressive and exude authority- so I fear the many errors could be used as references. Not sure how to address this. Ideas?

So I'll have to update it, and publish it again.