Response from NATURE

[Mary Barkworth]

Those that do not like Nature's requirement need to not submit papers
there.  Their policy does no harm and has some positive aspects. I, for
one, am prepared to accept that it was an attempt to start some movement
in a desirable direction.  

I would also like to emphasize a point that some people have made
earlier, that what we need is some place to rapidly disseminate the
information that a new taxon has been described in some group, no matter
where it was described. I, for instance, would be interested in an
automatic notification when new grass taxa are described, with
information on where they have been described. I am not wanting to have
the description published centrally, nor even require that the
legitimacy and validity of the name be checked prior to notification
being sent out.  Just a simple (relatively speaking) notification
system. For vascular plants, this would seem to be something that could
be added on to IPNI, if IPNI had the appropriate funding. Determining
whether a publication meets the requirements of the appropriate code and
what its date of effective publication was is a separate matter. I think
that at one time IPNI was planning to add comments on names about which
there were know to be problems, or that people had inquiries about. Was
this my imagination? It would be great if we could spend less time
re-investigating what someone else has already investigated.  Or could
more easily take advantage of earlier work.

Mary