opisska
rabid twitcher
I have nothing to do with taxonomy, but maybe I could weigh in on the scientific process. These days, peer-review per se doesn't mean much, because the process is done in a badly organized and inefficient way. It is also quite hard to assess what should count as "good" publication and making a distinction between "online" and "printed" has been silly since the century started and nobody really cares anyway.
In the parts of science where I move about, the only reasonable measure of "good" science is the citations. I can imagine this can also be different in something like taxonomy where I can see a lot of valid research simply not attracting much attention, because there is a plenty of species and the research will be heavily fragmented and if you happen to study something that's not popular, you might find yourself ignored. Thus really the only way to go is independent replication - simply, taxonomical decisions should not be made based on a single work. After all, where is the harm from the decision being delayed a few years (unless the taxa in question are endangered and splitting would aid conservation, but that should be probably dealt with separately anyway).
In the parts of science where I move about, the only reasonable measure of "good" science is the citations. I can imagine this can also be different in something like taxonomy where I can see a lot of valid research simply not attracting much attention, because there is a plenty of species and the research will be heavily fragmented and if you happen to study something that's not popular, you might find yourself ignored. Thus really the only way to go is independent replication - simply, taxonomical decisions should not be made based on a single work. After all, where is the harm from the decision being delayed a few years (unless the taxa in question are endangered and splitting would aid conservation, but that should be probably dealt with separately anyway).