Collections and scientific publications last forever, but unfortunately plant pathologists do not! Imagine two plant pathologists from the North and South Islands of New Zealand each called A.B. Smith in publications and collections records. They might both be well known now, but decades from now how can we distinguish and attribute their works? This problem exists now for some historic researchers.
The solution is to record structured metadata on all those involved in plant pathology from researchers to field and laboratory technicians. Everyone currently alive and working should have an ORCID https://orcid.org/ and record at a minimum their name, affiliations, and area keywords (e.g. Mycology, Bacteriology, Plant Pathology, Taxonomy).
For those no longer with us they should have a Wikidata page: https://www.wikidata.org/ that anyone can contribute to.
This poster has graphic examples of how to use these websites, and how this data can be useful to collections through the website https://bionomia.net/ that disambiguates and aggregates collection and identification activities.
This is a call to help build a comprehensive record of the plant pathologists of New Zealand and Australia (and the world!).