'''Web-based taxonomy''' is the effort by [[taxonomy|taxonomists]] to use the [[World Wide Web]] to create unitary taxonomies.
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In his 2002 paper on the subject<ref>[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v417/n6884/full/417017a.html Godfray, H.C.J (2002). Challenges for taxonomy. ''Nature'' 417: 17-19]</ref>, [[H. Charles J. Godfray]] called for the creation of Web-based organisations to collect all the accumulated literature on a taxonomic group into a centralized knowledge base and make this data available through the Web as a consensus taxonomy or [[unitary taxonomy]], so that it can be examined and revised. Such a platform would be owned and maintained by a taxonomic working group, governed by a editor or an editorial board.
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The notion of Web-based consensus taxonomies remains controversial because, as Australian researchers Kevin Thiele and David Yeates pointed out<ref>[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v419/n6905/full/419337a.html Tension arises from duality at the heart of taxonomy. "Nature" 419, 337 (26 September 2002)]</ref>, taxonomic names are not fixed but hypotheses, and therefore constantly changing.
== References ==
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==External links==
*[http://www.catalogueoflife.org Species 2000 / ITIS Catalogue of Life]
*[http://www.gbif.org Global Biodiversity Information Facility]
