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

[Gerwin Kasperek]

Quoting Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>:
>  
> 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, (...)

It is not! Many libraries have recognized the challenges involved in  
collecting, archiving and making available electronic documents, and  
they have build electronic repositories which solve many of the  
pertinent issues, and which provide a very good perspective regarding  
long-term availability. Beside institutional repositories, there are  
several subject-specific repositories for biological publications:  
PubMed Central is widely known; another one is vifabioDOC, established  
by the University Library Frankfurt (which has the largest collections  
of biology literature in Germany). I suppose that at least some of the  
five libraries mentioned by the authors are running repositories as  
well.

   
> 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. (...)

Here are some essential facts about academic libraries. In many many  
countries, documents not available in one library can be ordered via  
inter-library loan from other libraries, or can be ordered via  
document delivery services (such as http://www.subito-doc.de/,  
provided by numerous central European libraires). In my eyes, it is  
impossible to do taxonomy without using services like these; one  
reason is, a great deal of the taxonomic literature will only be  
available in print for many years to come. Everything else is just  
wishful thinking.

In the case of the open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology, all  
articles will be archived in electronic format at PubMed Central.

Regards
Gerwin


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Dr Gerwin Kasperek
Virtual Library of Biology
http://www.vifabio.de/?lang=en
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