Electronic publishing

[Doug Yanega]

Picking up where Julian left off...

Andrey Sharkov wrote:

>I am sure that all of you have received messages like "Directory is
>empty", "Document does not exist", or "Not Found. The requested object does
>not exist on this server. The link you followed is either outdated,
>inaccurate, or the server has been instructed not to let you have it."

So? I get comments like that from libraries, too, telling me they don't
have copies of the journal I want, and I'll have to wait two months for it
to arrive on interlibrary loan. There's no medium which guarantees
unlimited, instant access to everyone, everywhere. Besides, no one I'm
aware of has ever advocated having only ONE copy of an electronic
publication in existence, and the likelihood of every *electronic* copy of
a work vanishing simultaneously is no greater than every *paper* version of
a work being lost or destroyed simultaneously. Probably LESS, once
libraries start electronic archives - since it won't be a matter of half
the libraries in the world finding that a certain pub is too expensive to
obtain.

>    Taking all that in consideration, I am strongly against the SOLELY
>electronic publishing of new taxon names, or taxanomic changes (new
>synonyms, new combinations, Lectotype designations, etc.).

Why? I guess I simply don't find your previous arguments compelling enough
reason to continue relying on paper.

>    However, I think that parallel publishing of a paper in a journal and on
>WWW would be extremely helpful. In that case, the hard copy and the
>electronic version should contain a note referencing each other. This will
>help to dessiminate the information and make it more readily available to
>scientific community. The electronic version can also be expanded to include
>color illustrations, sounds, movies, etc. The only question that needs to be
>addressed and solved is what should be accepted as a date of a publication
>if its paper and electronic versions appear at different time? One of the
>possible solution could be an agreement that the electronic version of a
>paper should not be made available before its publication in a journal.

This would eliminate a number of the valuable potential benefits of using
the electronic medium in the *first* place! Who enjoys waiting a year (or
more) and paying hundreds of dollars in page charges to print 3,000 copies
(most of which are sent to people who ignore that article in the journal)
of something that *could* be processed in three months and distributed to
3,000 guaranteed readers for a tiny fraction of that cost? Just imagine -
no more piles of reprint requests! What about the potential benefit of
being able to update a work, such as an accompanying key when a new
diagnostic feature is found, or a new taxon discovered? You *lose* that
benefit if you enforce paper publication of every update.
        If I'm allowed a moment of bold advocacy, I'd counter that unless
someone can organize a paper journal devoted exclusively to taxonomic
publication that guarantees printing within one month of review and final
revision, with negligible page charges, then the paper requirement is more
of a ball and chain than a benefit. Like Julian Humphries points out,
reliable archiving is a matter of infrastructure and practice, not an
inherent property of the medium. Just imagine how the guys writing in clay
tablets must have balked at how flimsy and ephemeral paper was - who would
DARE to trust a valuable business contract or inventory record to a medium
so easily destroyed or altered! - well, guys, we face the same exact
decision today. There comes a point where the absolute durability and
immutability of a medium can be outweighed by other
considerations...otherwise there would be some mountain somewhere with the
names and descriptions of every known species carved into its face, and
we'd all consider it a sacred pilgrimage to go add to it when our time came
to publish (now there's an image for you! ;-).
        Given the situation the systematics community faces, I don't see
why we shouldn't take every opportunity to improve the speed and decrease
the costs of completing and disseminating our work. I see no hurdles that
are not trivial to overcome, and no legitimate benefits justifying a
continued reliance on paper. It's time to make the switch. Where do I sign
up?
Sincerely,

Doug Yanega       Illinois Natural History Survey, 607 E. Peabody Dr.
Champaign, IL 61820 USA      phone (217) 244-6817, fax (217) 333-4949
 affiliate, Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Dept. of Entomology
          http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu:80/~dyanega/my_home.html
  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82