[Taxacom] electronic publication in zoology: who are the biggest idiots?

[Eduard STLOUKAL]

This is also very "funny" information in THE mentioned article of the Chinese 
journal:

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/12/113/abstract
BMC Evolutionary Biology 2012, 12:113 doi:10.1186/1471-2148-12-113
Published: 9 July 2012
...
The complete article is available as a provisional PDF. The fully formatted 
PDF and HTML versions are in production.

SO TWO WEEKS AFTER BEEING PUBLISHED, IS IT STILL NOT PUBLISHED BUT "in 
production"?
PECULIAR ATTITUDE...

Best regards,
Edo

Eduard STLOUKAL
Department of Zoology, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia,
http://zoology.fns.uniba.sk; phone: +421-905-570149

-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu 
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Stephen Thorpe
Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2012 6:56 AM
To: TAXACOM
Subject: [Taxacom] electronic publication in zoology: who are the biggest 
idiots?

Are the biggest idiots authors/publishers who misinterpret the Code? Or the 
writers of the Code, for making it so difficult to interpret??

Here is a recent example:

Tan, J. et al. 2012: New fossil species of ommatids (Coleoptera: Archostemata) 
from the Middle Mesozoic of China illuminating the phylogeny of Ommatidae. BMC 
evolutionary biology, 12: 113. doi: 10.1186/1471-2148-12-113

The journal is e-only, but in the methods section the authors state: [quote] 
To comply with regulations of the International Code of Zoological 
Nomenclature (ICZN), we have deposited paper copies of the above article at 
the Natural History Museum, London; the American Museum of Natural History, 
New York; the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris; the Russian Academy 
of Sciences, Moscow; and the Academia Sinica, Taipei.[unquote]

the relevant articles of the Code are:

8.1.2. it must be obtainable, when first issued, free of charge or by purchase

8.6. Works produced after 1999 by a method that does not employ printing on 
paper. For a work produced after 1999 by a method other than printing on paper 
to be accepted as published within the meaning of the Code, it must contain a 
statement that copies (in the form in which it is published) have been 
deposited in at least 5 major publicly accessible libraries which are 
identified by name in the work itself

Clearly, although they don't specify, the authors think that they have 
complied with Art. 8.6, but they have not, because because paper copies are 
not the form in which the article was published, it was published 
electronically (in the form of PDFs). It is hard to know how one can deposit 
PDFs into libraries, and, as we all should know by now, Art. 8.6 was written 
in the CD ROM era, before PDFs on the web became the preferred form of 
electronic publication...

So, can we "shoehorn" this case into compliance with Art. 8.1.2? Probably not! 
The PDFs satisfy 8.1.2 (but fail 8.6), but the printed copies do not satisfy 
8.1.2. Giving them to five libraries is surely like giving them to five 
friends. It does not make them "obtainable" by general public. GP can perhaps 
read the copies in the libraries, but I don't think that makes the copies 
"obtainable"?

All the authors/publishers had to do was to state that some number (not 
necessarily 5) of printed copies had been made on the date that the article 
was electronically published, and these copies can be purchased, or are freely 
available, by writing to the authors/publishers until stocks run out ...

There is an urgent need to clarify these matters relating to electronic 
publication ...

Stephen
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