[Taxacom] ICZN procedure question

[Paul van Rijckevorsel]

From: "Arthur Chapman" <taxacom3 at achapman.org>
Sent: Friday, November 12, 2010 9:59 PM

> As Richard says, it is not only a Zoological Issue, and a proposal has 
> been submitted for changes to the ICBN to change the Botanical Code for 
> e-only publication of plant names under a set of strict criteria.
> 
> The report of the Special Committee for Electronic Publication, along 
> with proposals to change the Code have already been published as a 
> preprint on TAXON's Fast Track system - they can be found at
> 
> http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/iapt/tax/pre-prints/11679chapman
> and
> http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/iapt/tax/pre-prints/596chapman
> 

***
I had not yet seen these. It will be interesting to see what happens.
On first view I am struck by the traditional unease about archiving and 
about having two versions that, although ideally published at the same
time and with the exact same contents, in practice may deviate from 
each other.

The only thing that strikes me as perhaps phrased in a less than 
optimum way is Prop. 207, as I (theoretically) can see problems arising
when a preliminary version that is not clearly marked as such is not
followed up by a final version (for example the journal going out of 
business before the issue is published) and thus unintentionally may be 
counted as effectively published. Or, a preliminary version that is 
not clearly marked as such IS followed up by a final version, but
has become widespread in the interval and becomes a source of
confusion (at first it was effectively published, but then, retroactively, 
it suddenly is not).
* * *

[...]  names [... ] for which it would be very difficult 
> to determine if perhaps they had made a few hard copies available or 
> not.  Discovery is essential. [...] The hard 
> copy need only be in 2 libraries and these may be very obscure.
> 
> From a library point of view, many of the offprints are not of Journal 
> issues, but of the papers themselves.  It is becoming a nightmare for 
> libraries to store, and document etc. lots of small reprints - and as 
> the numbers increase - this could become a bigger problem for storage 
> and discovery. 

***
Yes, which was I pointed out that the alternative is to deal with this,
as an immediate issue. If e-only publishing is not accepted into the Code,
it would appear to become an issue of some immediate importance to 
have a Rule that regulates that such an offprint would meet the 
requirements that commercially would be expected of a journal in 
a magazine rack (and not just a pile of sheets stapeled together). 
And adopt some regulation about distribution, as well.

Paul