[Taxacom] Intellectual rights

[John Grehan]

That's an interesting question about websites being a formal publication or
not. I would not have thought so, but I will be interested to see what
those on this list acquainted with the code have to say (its probably been
gone over in past discussions, in which case I have lost track of that). I
manage a web site for a taxonomic group and have never assumed it is a
publication of the form that would require recognition for any taxonomic
changes I might make on that web site, and if I wanted to be sure of
recognition I would not put it on my website (as in the case of a proposed
synonymy that is in the pipeline in a journal publication, but not on the
website until the journal article is published). But publication or not it
does seem less than straightforward that in your case the authors should
read and cite an article referring to your proposed taxonomic change that
they later make, raising the question of whether or not they actually read
the article they cite.

John Grehan

On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 5:09 AM, Dr Brian Taylor <
dr.brian.taylor at ntlworld.com> wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> I wonder if any of you have any suggestions as to how to deal with a
> publication on Zookeys where the authors claim to have separated a
> previously well known ³species² into being a new junior synonym of two
> other
> species.  I ask this because, after examining fresh specimens, I posted
> that
> synonymization on my two websites, both archived by the British Library Web
> Archive, in 2009. The main website has been on-line in an evolving form
> since 1998.  The Zookeys authors make no reference of any sort to my works.
> They and other researchers from the organisation in question, headed by the
> subject editor for the present instance, have published a number of papers
> in Zootaxa and Zookeys over the past seven years or so but not once have
> they listed my sites as a source of information.  Many others have.  In
> 2011, an author who the Zookeys writers do cite, wrote of my finding of the
> synonymy and had my website among his references.
>
> In the BZN Discussion on Electronic Publication, March 2009, I previsaged
> this situation by posing the questions ³What constitutes a publication? Who
> is a publisher?². I note that UK copyright law the content of a website is
> automatically protected and does not have to be registered as there is no
> register.
>
> Thanks in anticipation of your responses.
>
> Brian Taylor
>
> www.antsofafrica.org
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