• Home
• Science Strategy
• Science Teams
• Projects
  • International Plant Names Index (IPNI)
• People
• Publications
• Acronyms

International Plant Names Index (IPNI)

Search page of IPNI © IPNI & Kew

The International Plant Names Index (IPNI) is a database of the names of all seed plants, ferns and fern allies with bibliographic reference to the place of first publication of each name.  Its goal is to provide a tool for systematists and eliminate the need for repeated reference to primary sources for basic bibliographic information about plant names. The data are freely available online, and downloads of data have been given to a number of projects for use in generating checklists and as authority files for other databases or programmes. The website (www.ipni.org) currently receives an average of c. 10,000 searches a day.

We have agreed to make the name data available dynamically to Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) for use in the Electronic CATalogue of names of known organisms (ECAT) program and IPNI is also searchable via the ePIC interface and the Species 2000 site. We are also in discussion with the taxonomic community about the best ways of serving IPNI records via GUIDs (Globally Unique Identifiers) and of launching IPNI as a web service.

In early 2004 over 50,000 fern names were added from the Index Filicum making the data available on the internet for the first time. Work continues on standardising the data. By the end of 2005, 800,000 of all author names (just over 50%) had been standardised and linked to the standard author record. In 2006, as part of the iPlants initiative, work started on a year long process of standardising other data fields in collaboration with Missouri Botanical Garden, which will also link IPNI and TROPICOS records together.

The new website, due for release in 2006, will make it possible for the first time for users to automatically submit corrections to the data directly from the record in question.  Later versions will extend this to all types of IPNI records (currently it just works for Authors) and to allow users to send information about omissions. We also plan to make available services to allow batch checking of data online.

We continue to keep IPNI up to date, in collaboration with Harvard University, adding between eight and nine thousand records annually.

Kew Home | Science Directory | Copyright & Privacy