[Taxacom] e-only from Do rogue taxonomists need rogue publishers?

[Doug Yanega]

David Campbell wrote:

>In addition to the problem of intentional rogue taxonomy, e-only makes
>accidental rogue taxonomy much easier, e.g. putting online something
>that is unpublished such as a dissertation; making and perpetuating of
>erroneous names; taxonomic changes occuring in poorly documented
>updates; etc.  We have these sorts of problems already in print; e-only
>simply allows the problem to be much bigger.

Before this gets any farther off track...

The *idea* is to allow names published in e-only *journals* to be 
taxonomically valid. The idea is NOT to validate names appearing in 
any electronic document anywhere.

No one (outside of the proverbial rogues) would support or promote a 
proposal that made the latter possible.

Also, Pat LaFollette wrote:

>So far as I have been able to discover, no form of electronic record
>is accepted as permanent by governments, business, or law.  (Apart
>from paper, only microfilm is acceptable in some cases.)  If e-only
>is not considered suitable for laws, vital records, deeds, business
>contracts, or any other record that law requires be preserved for
>more than a few (3 to 7) years, how can systematic biology find it
>acceptable for the permanent taxonomic record?

The amount of money that has been spent on the sequences stored in 
GenBank is absolutely massive. There is no "print version" of 
GenBank; they consider electronic archives to be perfectly 
acceptable. If they can accept it, WE can accept it. There is nothing 
*technically* challenging here, only a source of funding to maintain 
and upgrade the archives.

Sincerely,
-- 

Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314        skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
              http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82