About the encyclopedia | Fishes of Saudi Arabia

What it is

KSAFISH — the Saudi Marine Encyclopedia, an initiative of the HUWAT ecosystem.

Fishes of Saudi Arabia (KSAFISH) is a digital reference that gathers what published sources say about the fishes of the Kingdom’s territorial waters and about the shrimp published in it, into one registry that can be reviewed. Every taxon in it has a stable identifier of the form HWT-FISH-0001 (HWT-SHRIMP-0001 for the other groups) that does not change when a name changes, and every published fact carries its source and its location inside that source.

The register holds 448 published taxonomic records (447 species and 1 subspecies) in 93 families and 26 orders today. The two ranks are never added into one number called “species”.

Geographic scope

The territorial waters of the Kingdom, in the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf. Scope is recorded on the record itself rather than on the encyclopedia as a whole: a name recorded for one coast stays a name of that coast, and is neither generalised to the Kingdom nor moved to another coast.

237 of 448 published records carry a verified local name recorded for the Red Sea.
93 of 448 published records carry a verified local name recorded for the Arabian Gulf.

That is evidence about a name, not about occurrence: a name recorded for a sea does not mean the species is documented as occurring there.

Sources

The encyclopedia rests on a register of sources. Every published fact has an active citation tying it to a named source and to its location inside it, and a citation is counted in its own layer: one source supports a fact, another a name, a third establishes the rights of an image. Those are different claims and are never added into one number. Naming a source here is not a permission to reproduce what it contains.

Sources behind published facts: 74 sources of 131 registered sources.

Source layers · References · How to cite

What the encyclopedia does not claim

It is not a government body and it does not speak for any body. It is a digital reference developed by HUWAT.
It carries no approval or endorsement from any body, and it shows no organisation’s logo and no partnership.
Content being written does not mean it is scientifically approved. A share of written content is never an approval; “verified” means the register checked a name or a fact against an active citation to a source, not that a scientific review approved it.
It is not a final reference: the human scientific review of its content is not complete, and the content is under continuing review.
No image is shown without a recorded permission: 684 plates permitted for display of 831 registered plates. Showing an image does not give a right to reuse it. Content and image rights

How to read the states

Every label is printed in words; colour only reinforces the word.

Nationally approved: An Arabic name the register designates approved and verified. A reviewer’s approval alone does not make it so: it must also carry a citation to a source that printed it.
Verified: The register verified it through an active citation to a named source. That is verification, not scientific approval.
Local name, verified — not nationally approved: A name used by the people of one region, recorded with its scope. It is evidence about the name, not that the species occurs there, and it does not replace the approved name.
Under review: Not yet reviewed: it never heads a page and is counted in no figure.
Draft: It never heads a page, a card or a title. It is counted apart and enters no percentage.
Rejected: History only: it is not displayed as a name.

The state of this release

The encyclopedia is published today to be read and reviewed. Its content is under continuing review, its pages and addresses may change, and what has not been published does not appear in it. Each page states the status of what it shows as it is.

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