[Taxacom] Darwinius and electronic publication yet again

[bti at dsmz.de]

Hi Rich,
You did ask..

Rule 25a now reads:
?Effective publication is effected under this Code by making generally  
available, by sale or distribution, to the scientific community,  
printed and/or electronic material for the purpose of providing an  
unalterable, permanent record.?
?Note. Electronic publication should follow the tradition of  
publication of printed matter acceptable to this Code.?
(Tradition of publication of printed matter means peer reiewed work!).

add

?(6) Making available electronic material in advance of publication  
(e.g. papers in press, or otherwise making unpublished manuscripts  
available in electronic format).?

Rule 25b now reads:

?The date of publication of a scientific work is the date of  
publication of the printed or electronic matter. The date given to the  
work containing the name or epithet must be regarded as correct in the  
absence of proof to the contrary.?

and as I have said in a paper in press:

The International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology (IJSEM),
published by the Society for General Microbiology, also provides an  
open access
service to the original literature published in the pages of the  
journal (ijs.sgmjournals.org). This policy makes all publications  
available free of charge two years after the date of publication. The  
journal also participates in the WHO HINARI and UN (FAO) AGORA (access  
to scienti?c literature) programmes, allowing access without charge,  
to eligible institutions in World Bank List 1 countries, immediately  
on posting on the internet. There are plans to make back issue of the  
International Journal of Systematic Bacteriology and the International  
Bulletin of Bacteriological Nomenclature and Taxonomy (predecessors of  
the IJSEM) available online. This would give access to all  
institutions now interested in these publications that have never  
subscribed to the original printed versions.
(in fact the back issues of the journal are now online).

The next issue would be to require all work published out side of the  
IJSEM and cited during the course of valid publication to be available  
at least 2 years after publication without charge in electronic form.  
Just one side issue - how foots the bill for the current "open access"  
journals? It might not be the end user, but the original authors.

Brian
PS been to the library recently and seen the drop in the number of  
journals on the shelves, because you can get instant access at any  
point behind the campus IP address to the current research journals?  
This is also one reason why BHL is scanning the inportant literature,  
because it makes works available world wide in an instant. I think  
Donat also indicated the rapid increase in Internet connections.

Quoting Richard Pyle <deepreef at bishopmuseum.org>:

>> Another posting on TAXACOM says that Ellinor Michel of ICZN
>> has advised that  'numerous identical and durable' printed
>> copies are needed for a publication to be acceptable currently.
>>
>> Defining the middle term should be easy, but 'numerous' =
>> ?how many: >2? >3? an arbitrary number such as 5 or 10?   -
>> and  'durable' = what?
>> In this context, CDs are scarcely durable (in archival/
>> scholarly library terms) given that their projected life span
>> is measured in decades not centuries.
>
> These are excellent questions, and ones that the ICZN Commissioners have
> been wrestling with themselves for years now.
>
> As for "numerous", there seems to be a general (though reluctant)
> acknolwegement that "numerous", strictly speaking, means "more than one" (Oy
> vey!)  However, on the "recommendation" (i.e., not Code-compliance) side of
> things, it seems like "50" has been bounced around as a reasonable number.
>
> There is some indirect justification for going with "at least 5", as this is
> stipulated in Article 8.6 (http://www.iczn.org/iczn/index.jsp?article=8),
> but you'd be hard-pressed to get a majority of Commissioners to see this
> indirect inference as constituting a legitimate definition of "numerous".
>
> I think the word "durable" simply implies physical copies (as opposed to
> "electronic signals", as used in Art. 9.8).  Most people assume it applies
> to CD-ROMs, but this really could apply to any physical device used to
> disseminate information (stone tablets, stamped metal sheets, drafting
> velum, CD-ROM's, memory sticks, iPods, etc.).
>
> We would all like to believe that "durable" also implies "capable of
> withstanding the ravages of time", etc. -- but, alas, this word is also
> absent from the glossary.
>
> There is another word that needs definition: "obtainable" (Arts. 8.1.2 &
> 8.1.3).  Believe it or not, this one actually is the one most open to
> interpretation (at least from my perspective).
>
>> I am not aware,
>> however, of any electronic archiving system that can
>> guarantee longevity over centuries not decades for even a
>> commercially published online journal - if anyone knows of
>> one, I'd be interested to hear of it.
>
> Obviously, no such system can purport to "guarantee" such longevity for
> electronic documents.  But if I were a betting man (and I'm not), I'd be
> looking at roughly even odds for the obtainability of the PLoS PDF for the
> description of Darwinius 250 years from now, vs. original copies of Linnaeus
> 1758 (or, for you, Linnaeus 1753) today.  Actually, it's not a realistic
> comparison, because the PDF will almost certainly either be absolutely
> unobtainable (collapse of human civilization, disappearance of affordable
> energy, absence of any human being even remotely interested in biology,
> etc., etc.) or utterly ubiquitous and instantanously accessible (think:
> "Google in 250 years").  I find it hard to imagine some middle ground
> between those two extremes, two and a half centuries hence.
>
>> For the botanists on TAXACOM: All these aspects will be
>> discussed in the ICBN context by the Special Committe on
>> Electronic Publication over the next year, and
>> recommendations on possible amendments to the ICBN will be
>> made to the next International Botanical Congress to be held
>> in Melbourne in July 2011.
>
> One wonders whether there should be established and maintained an open
> dialog between those looking to accommodate electronic publications under
> ICBN, and those addressing the same issues under ICZN.
>
> Brian Tindall (or anyone else with insights): Is IJSEM contemplating going
> all-electronic?  Is this something you folks are contemplating in the
> context of the Bacteriological Code?
>
> Aloha,
> Rich
>
>
>
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