Chapter 3: Criteria of Publication


(See Article8Discussion)

Article 8. What constitutes published work. A work is to be regarded as published for the purposes of zoological nomenclature if it complies with the requirements of this Article and is not excluded by the provisions of Article 9.

8.1. Criteria to be met. A work must satisfy the following criteria:

8.2. Publication may be disclaimed. A work that contains a statement to the effect that it is not issued for public and permanent scientific record, or for purposes of zoological nomenclature, is not published within the meaning of the Code.

8.3. Names and acts may be disclaimed. If a work contains a statement to the effect that all or any of the names or nomenclatural acts in it are disclaimed for nomenclatural purposes, the disclaimed names or acts are not available. Such a work may be a published work (i.e. taxonomic information in it may have the same nomenclatural status as the taxonomic information in a published but suppressed work: see Article 8.7.1).

8.4. Works issued as physical copies. Works issued as physical copies are subject to the following criteria:

8.5. Works issued and distributed electronically. To be considered published for purposes of zoological nomenclature, a work issued and distributed electronically must

8.6. New methods of publication and archiving. The Commission may issue Declarations to clarify whether new or unconventional methods of production, distribution, formatting, or archiving can produce works that are published in the meaning of the Code.

8.7. Status of suppressed works. A work that has been suppressed for nomenclatural purposes by the Commission by use of the plenary power [Art. 81] and that satisfies the provisions of this Article remains published within the meaning of the Code, unless the Commission has ruled that it is to be treated as not having been published;

Recommendation 8A. Wide dissemination. Authors have a responsibility to ensure that new scientific names, nomenclatural acts, and information likely to affect nomenclature are made widely known. Authors can accomplish this by publishing in appropriate scientific journals or well-known monographic series, by entering new names and nomenclatural acts into the Offical Register of Zoological Nomenclature (ZooBank), and by sending copies of their works to the Zoological Record.

Recommendation 8B. Minimum edition of printed works. A work on paper should be issued in a minimum edition of 25 copies, printed before any are distributed.

Recommendation 8C. Electronic works. Electronic works should be structured to allow automated indexing and data extraction.

Recommendation 8D. Content immutable. The content of a work is immutable once it is published. Publishers should not allow any changes to a work after its publication, even to correct typographical errors. Such changes automatically create a new work in the sense of the Code. Corrections should instead be made through notices of errata or other separate publications. This is particularly true for electronic works and works produced by print-on-demand. Second or other additional printings of a work should be clearly labeled as such, with date of publication stated in the work, even if no changes have been introduced.

Recommendation 8E. Public accessibility of published works. Copies of published works that contain new scientific names or nomenclatural acts, or information likely to affect nomenclature, should be permanently conserved in or by libraries that make their holdings publicly accessible.

Recommendation 8F. Responsibilities of authors, editors and publishers. Authors, editors and publishers have a responsibility to ensure that works containing new names, nomenclatural acts, or information likely to affect nomenclature are self-evidently published within the meaning of the Code. Editors and publishers should ensure that works contain the date of publication, and information about where they may be obtained.

Recommendation 8G. Inclusion of disclaimers. Editors and publishers should avoid including new names and the information that might appear to make the names available, or new nomenclatural acts, in works that are not issued for public and permanent scientific record (such as pre-symposium abstracts, or notices of papers to be delivered at a meeting). They should ensure that such documents contain a disclaimer (see Article 8.2), so that new names published for the first time therein do not enter zoological nomenclature unintentionally and preempt intended publication in another work.


Preamble | Articles 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 | Glossary Appendices Constitution


Markup
AFasbender   Based on personal experience and discussions with other taxonomists, even with the addition of "obtainable (or obtainable on loan from a public library)" to Article 8.1.2 there is still ambiguity as the the status of theses and dissertations as published works. One of the chief issues is the use of the phrase "numerous copies;" how many copies are quantified as "numerous?" FranciscoWelterSchultes has mentioned 50 copies below, but there are a number of dissertations/theses from which nomenclatural acts are widely recognized which did not receive such widespread production in their initial printing. Basically: if only limited copies were printed and deposited in a university library but were available by inter-library loan (not as facsimile copies) would the thesis/dissertation be considered a "published work"? Even if 50 copies were printed, how can the production of "numerous" copies be proven?

Another issue is with the use of the phrase "obtainable on loan from a public library," as loan policies change over time, especially for "historic" materials or original editions. These changes in policy are often difficult or impossible to track. For example, an original edition of a thesis printed in the 1950s and deposited in a university library may have been available for inter-library loan or direct borrowing in the 1950s and 1960s, then disseminated by photocopy from the 1970s through the early 2000s, at which point it was digitized and uploaded the university's publicly accessible thesis database from which it is currently obtainable. Would this be considered a "published work?"
2016-05-19 17:10:59 X
FranciscoWelterSchultes   Art. 8.1.1

"permanent scientific record" has been the topic of a discussion in the [iczn-list] mailing list in Dec 2014. The term "record" can have two meanings in English:
1) A thing constituting a piece of evidence about the past, especially an account kept in writing or some other permanent form [...]
2) The sum of the past achievements or performance of a person, organization, or thing [...]
The French text ("référence") restricts the meaning to the first definition. The English text should be aligned with the French text.
2014-12-23 19:49:45
FranciscoWelterSchultes   Art. 8.1.2

The term "obtainable" is not defined in the Glossary and has been the subject of debate (example in the thread "Thesis and new species" at [Taxacom], Nov 2013).
Various possible solutions to improve the unclear regulation:
1 - replace "obtainable" by "obtainable (or obtainable on loan from a public library)"
2 - define the term in the Glossary to include "obtainable on loan"

Questions arise repeatedly whether or not names established in Ph. D. theses are valid new taxa. The answer is always, it depends. If the thesis was only printed on demand, then it is not published work. If the thesis was printed in some 50 copies to be donated to a public library, which is or was an option for example in some German and Dutch universities, then these theses were obtainable on loan and they are published work. These copies were not sold on the market and the question needs to be addressed whether they fall under the term "obtainable".
Thomas Pape's proposal was to include "obtainable on loan" under this term.
I agree with this view. The idea behind the Article is not that people should personally possess something, but that people should have access to information.
2013-11-13 07:17:05
FranciscoWelterSchultes   Art. 8.1.3

The number of 50 printed copies (to be inserted as mandatory) seems to have been gained acceptance in the Taxacom and [iczn-list] communities in the past years.
This should be effective for post-2000 works.
For previously published works it is more difficult to give a restriction, because actually some works did have low copy numbers. I would perhaps not touch these, since the zoological community has been able to cope with these.
2011-02-11 17:38:21
FranciscoWelterSchultes   A new Article 8.8 should be inserted.

"Art. 8.8. Status of lost works. If a presumably published work is lost and not a single copy exists any more, the work is deemed not to have been published."

This is necessary to clarify cases where nomenclatural information is exclusively based on secondary sources, and important information cannot be verified.
Example: Several sources in the mid-1800s cited a publication as "Calcara, P. 1843. Descrizione di alcune nuove specie di conchiglie della Sicilia.", but intensive research did not yield a positive result, the work has never been found again (Riedel 1973). Sherborn's Index Animalium (1922) cited some names from secondary sources and confirmed not to have seen the work. It is possible that it was either a newspaper article or a handwritten or typewritten manuscript. The work must be considered as lost and as such, unpublished.
2009-11-05 12:44:14
80   Art.8.5 and 8.6 should be deleted and replaced by a statement that all nomenclaturally relevant publications must be printed on paper in a minimum of 100 copies. Electronical publications should not be accepted, no matter which format or version. - Hans Malicky, Austria.
2009-03-04 09:03:53 X

Article8 (last edited 2011-12-20 19:27:17 by GaryRosenberg)