[CPN] Electronic publication; companion volume

[David Marjanovic]

>  I agree that we should reconsider the issue of electronic publishing
>  for the PhyloCode (I have previously sent Phil several messages about
>  this but we have not yet done anything about it). Electronic-only
>  journals are publishing papers that have nomenclatural "acts" in
>  them, it seems just as bad to ignore those "acts" as to accept them
>  with the worry that the source might disappear in the future.
>  Perhaps we could develop some sort of requirement for electronic
>  archiving as an alternative to print publication/archiving, though I
>  don't know much about the costs and limitations.

The discussion I linked to wasn't so much about electronic-only 
publishing as about publication dates. Most journals still publish on 
paper, but they publish their articles electronically several months 
before print. Should really the date of the print version become the 
date the nomenclatural act becomes valid, when everyone has read the 
paper months before, and when the exact day of online publication is 
usually much easier to determine than the exact day the print issue 
becomes available?

Some journals now even publish accepted manuscripts/uncorrected proofs 
online. That's a real headache, because it means the manuscript can 
still change before print. However, if we simply declare nomenclatural 
acts in such manuscripts invalid (as we currently do), we risk inviting 
another Aëtogate: such nomenclatural acts are out there for everyone to 
scoop and publish validly in a faster journal. Yes, such unscrupulous 
individuals really exist, as documented here: 
http://www.miketaylor.org.uk/dino/nm/

Importantly, registration as currently envisaged doesn't help with this. 
That's because Recommendation 8.1B is only a recommendation: 
"Registration of a name whose spelling or definition is identical to one 
that already exists in the database should generally be avoided (but see 
Recs. 8B, 8C). However, such names are not treated by this code as 
homonyms or synonyms until published." And besides, it wouldn't stop 
people from picking a slightly different name or wording the definition 
a bit differently (or both).

>  Progress is being made on the Companion Volume, though probably not
>  as rapid as you might hope. Summarizing what has been accomplished
>  and what still needs to be done would take more time that it is
>  worth. I can tell you that I have solicited and received reviews for
>  all of the contributions that I have received, though I have only had
>  a chance to process about half of the reviews. We hope to make a
>  push to finish the review process this year.

Sounds good.

How far has the work on the registration database progressed? I think I 
haven't had any news of it since the meeting in 2008, when it was far 
from functional and half the audience said Mike Keesey's software would 
work much better.