Electronic Publication

[Barry Hammel]

Bravo! for Peter Rauch's call for a change of focus in this discussion from
pros and cons of electronic publishing to getting down to the business of
outlining what we need to do to move, effectively, into this reality.

I have no doubt that the electronic format, very soon, is going to be the
ONLY way most of us (in science) read new documents.  As George Schatz has
pointed out, it has been already, for the last 10 years, the way all of us
(and the publishing industry) have produced documents.  Hugh Wilson ponders
that the taxonomic community will go slow on this and that there will be an
intermediate phase where both electronic and paper will be the norm.  We
are now in that phase.

As pointed out by Peter Rauch, the whole issue of electronic publishing is
very much bigger (big business) than taxonomy.  In a certain sense all this
blah, blah about permanence and even the code is trivial; usage will
determine permanence and the code will follow suit.

Nevertheless, it is certainly a good excercise to begin a want list (and
questions) for effective electronic publication:

1.  One should submit serious papers to electronic journals, not simply
post them on private "home pages."  Is this any different than what the
code requires now?  Some "Taxacomers" seem to have missassumed about the
code with regard to peer-review.  As my colleague Mike Grayum reports "the
continual concern
about peer-review....is a red herring!  Peer-review is not now,
and never has been, a Code requirement for conventional publication of new
taxa.  Phytologia published novelties for 35 years without any peer
review!  Why should we begin to impose that requirement for electronic
publication?"

2.  One of the advantages of the electronic format is that modifications
are very easy.  How will we deal with this?  Shouldn't we take advantage of
that perk to correct errors, and yet, at least in terms of the name (and
type?), a lock will have to be set on the effective date of publication.

3.  As pointed out by Peter Rauch, for the present we should keep links to
outside sites to a minimum or even zero; those addresses change.
Absolutely proscribed for new species should be outside linkages for all
graphics that would be considered "original material."  I don't know where
research is going on this front but the future might be that links will
send out a search for the actual name of the linked-to file rather than
making a call to a specific address.

4.  Likewise, the problem of changing addresses for the publications
themselves should be resolved with good indexes and "search engines" based
on the title, author and date, key words, subject, etc.; just like in
library card files now, but better and quicker.

5.  Assumed here is a network connection among the electronic journals or
an electronic library of congress server where all journals will send
copies.

6.  Electronic journals will surely have to charge subscription fees, just
as paper journals do, but will they have (or want to have) any better
control over copies being made?

7.  Everyone so inclined should begin now to put up electronic preprints of
their articles.

8.  Do we not already have a forum--through announcements on Taxacom of Web
publications of new species--for boldly stepping into Hugh Wilson's
intermediate phase as we prepare ourselves and this format to be effective
and acceptable?


Barry Hammel
Associate Curator
Missouri Botanical Garden
resident in Costa Rica
c/o Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad