Useful life of CDROM

[Geoff Read]

John S. Noyes wrote;

> To my way
> of thinking the decision to accept availability of names published on CDrom
> was taken almost unilaterally by the Commission without adequate
> consultation with the taxonomic community. The availability of names
> published on CDrom was not included on drafts of the code that were
> circulated prior to its publication although it was mentioned on their web
> site, but that seems to have been missed by most taxonomists.

The 1995 draft Article 9 in ICZN was almost unchanged from the 1985 3rd
Edition. It was laughably out of date, as was wording in Article 8 (talking of
mimeographing in 1995). So John Noyes has a good point.

However, there was subsequent extensive discussion of electronic
publishing on the ICZN-4 list and elsewhere, and the Commission seems to
have taken that on board. At least web publishing is out. We await the
details still. By the way anything AT ALL about the final code on the ICZN
web-site has only recently appeared.


--
  Geoff Read <g.read at niwa.cri.nz>