electronic publication

[Geoff Read]

> Following my earlier posting regarding electronic publication of new
> species, I came across the following interchange via the BUGNET list. Any
> further thoughts?

> >>I have just seen your paper, "Three New Species of the Wood Roach,
> >>Cryptocercus (Blattodea: Cryptocercidae), From the Eastern United States",
> >>in The World Wide Web Journal of Biology. Based on my reading of the
> >>International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, none of the new species
> >>described in that paper are valid

We all know that the 3rd zoological code predates the development of the
WWW. We all should know that bare WWW publishing will not qualify
under the 4th code next year. We can see that this attempt is against the
spirit of current recommendation 8a (for  undesirable processes).

To get legalistic, it fails to be published for the purposes of taxonomy under
8a(3) - "method that assures numerous identical copies."  The electronic
text _could_ be updated at anytime undetected, and therefore assurance of
an unaltered text does not exist. This is presumably why the 4th code
requires hard copy as well as electronic.


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