EPA encourages its State cooperators to use ITIS as the nomenclatural standard to report scientific names of organisms collected and identified and reported to EPA in State-level monitoring activities. University and consulting scientists use ITIS to verify scientific names in journal articles and technical reports that they are writing, as well as in preparing class lectures. Today, more than ever before, print and electronic journalists are finding a growing market for natural history and environmental articles, which require accurate biological information. ITIS is a grand new tool in the arsenal of environmental research, and for the first time is enabling the scientific community, resource managers, and the general public to have a common vocabulary of species at their fingertips in an online database. It is a deceptively simple notion.
Good science depends on every party in a discussion getting the message right.