submission and authentication is done prior to publication.

Date of publication should be counted

May this clarify something:

https://mapress.com/j/bn/article/view/bionomina.18.1.2

Also this could be helpful:

https://www.iczn.org/outreach/faqs/

I wonder if the early view from 2019 meets the requirements of the Code. The new taxa have ZooBank LSIDs and the paper is registrered in ZooBank, but the latter needs to be mentioned explicitly for an electronic publication to be valid in the sense of the Code.

If the electronic version from 2019 complies with the Code, the publication date of the new names is 2019. But how to cite this paper, if the issue number and final pagination wasn't available until 2021? We have the very same problem in our database.

The paper in question (at least the PDF version in the link Baran Karapunar provided), says that the article is published in 2019: "© 2019 The Palaeontological Association" at the bottom of the first page. If a document is copyrighted, then it clearly exists in a potentially copy-able form. This is therefore arguably the first date of publication and the date of record for nomenclatural acts in the article, as far as the ICZN Code is concerned.

The information at the top of the PDF "[Papers in Palaeontology, Vol. 7, Part 1, 2021, pp. 27–110]" is in brackets, and therefore, presumably not part of the actual publication. However, this is not very clear. If I were citing this paper, I would cite it as Szabo et al. 2019 (2021). The statement on the Journal's web site www.palass.org/publications/papers-palaeontology/7/1/article_pp27-110] that the publication date is Feb. 2021, is erroneous, in my opinion.

Journals that publish nomenclatural acts need to clearly and unambiguously state the date of first publication on the front page of each article, which, if it is released online as "early view" or in any other widely disseminated format prior to being printed and bound in a journal issue is, de facto, the date of publication. This is far more important than stating when the paper was received or accepted.

Some journals, such as Evolution, are beginning to "publish" articles that are not even type set and formatted to the journal's specifications as "accepted, unedited articles published online and citable" with the caveat that, "The final edited and typeset Version of Record will appear in the future." This, in my opinion, is a huge mistake. If the journal says the article is "published", then it is published. Then, I guess, they publish it again. Simply claiming that a republished version is the "version of record" does not make it so, at least not as far as nomenclature is concerned. (ICZN Code Recommendation 8D. Content immutable. "The content of a work is immutable once it is published. Corrections should be made through notices of errata or other separate publications. 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."). Fortunately, Evolution generally does not address nomenclatural matters.

Baran,

Per Krell (2015) only the Version of Record is valid in the eyes of the ICZN, but as noted by Brower above, there can be some ambiguity as to when the true Version of Record is published. In this case, I think what has happened is the authors have registered the nomenclatural acts in ZooBank whilst the paper was in press but did not select the option to say the work had not actually been published yet, instead stating (erroneously) at the time of registration that the paper was published. It does appear (based on consultation of the journal website and cross referencing against other platforms) the final Version of Record was in actuality published in 2021 which means the nomenclatural acts are from that year and not 2019. The addition of "copyright 2019" on the bottom margins of the paper are not particularly relevant. Unfortunately, the prevalence of journals uploading various "early view" versions of articles (as detailed above by others) has created many issues like that, which could be easily avoided if both authors and journal editors paid more attention to the Code. In summary, the evidence I've been able to find points to a publication date for the journal (and thus this particular article) this year and thus you should cite the paper as Szabo et al. (2021).

Kind Regards,

Danniella Sherwood

Dear Danniella,

Thank you for your answer. This article was published online in 2019. However, the first online publication date (2019) is not indicated in the publisher's website. It is also not indicated in the printed version (2021). The only hint for the online publication date is "copyright 2019". I think the online first publication (2019) is the final Version of Record. In the author guidelines of the journal (Papers in Palaeontology), it is written that authors should cite the online first versions of taxonomic papers. Therefore, I will cite the online version of the article as "Szabo et al. (2019)" without indicating the volume and issue number.

ITA_2021_v1.pdf (https://www.palass.org/sites/default/files/media/publications/for_authors/ITA_2021_v1.pdf)

"Articles that have been published online early before inclusion in a print or electronic issue should be referenced with the relevant online publication date and DOI:

HEINRICH, C., PAES NETO, V. D., LACERDA, M. B., MARTINELLI, A., FIEDLER, M. S. and SCHULTZ, C. L. 2021. The ontogenetic pattern of neurocentral suture closure in the axial skeleton of Hyperodapedontinae (Archosauromorpha, Rhynchosauria) and its evolutionary implications. Palaeontology, published online 21 March. https://doi.org/10.1111/pala.12528

• Where two citations exist (an early online publication and one with volume and issue details), the latter should always be referenced, unless it is a taxonomic citation. For taxonomic citations, the first (usually online) publication date should be given, with the DOI."

Hi Baran,

The problem I see is that in the current version viewable through the website of the publisher, there is no mention explicitly in the main text of the article that the nomenclatural acts are registered in ZooBank. As noted above by Braun, without such explicit mention that the acts are registered in ZooBank in the main body of the text of the actual article, it doesn't meet the requirements of the Code for online publication. The fact this statement isn't even in the 2021 version suggests to me the distinct possibility it may not have been in the 2019 early view. Unless you can prove beyond doubt that the 2019 early view had an explicit mention of registration of nomenclatural acts in ZooBank then it cannot be used because it violates Article 8.5.3 of the Code. If this is indeed true you'll instead have to use the printed version to derive the date because there is no mention of ZooBank in the 2021 electronic version either. These sorts of problems are why I am very much against the idea of "early view" for articles in journals, it just causes too many problems. There are also problems with ZooBank itself, as well argued recently in an article in Bionomina by Alain Dubois.

Kind Regards,

Danniella

Dear Danniella,

In both the online version (2019) and the published version (2021) of the article, it is explicitly stated that the article was registered to Zoobank. Please find the statement under the heading "Data archiving statement" just before "References". There is no violation of the Code. The nomenclatural acts are valid and published in 2019. The date of the first online publication is not stated in the article. The publication date (31 August 2019) can be seen in the Zoobank web page of the article and in the publisher's website.

Kind regards,

Baran

Hi Baran,

You are absolutely correct, I totally missed that. In this case, the 2019 version is nomenclaturally valid as you say.

Kind Regards,

Danniella

ICZN "21.3. Date incompletely specified

If the day of publication is not specified in a work, the earliest day on which the work is demonstrated to be in existence as a published work is to be adopted as the date of publication, but in the absence of such evidence the date to be adopted is

21.3.1. the last day of the month, when month and year, but not day, are specified or demonstrated, or

21.3.2. the last day of the year when only the year is specified or demonstrated."

If I understand ICZN Article 21.3 it would mean that, in journals providing only the year of publication in the work itself- e.g., Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology (at least currently), any and all new names in any and all issues of the journal for a given year (let's say 2022) are considered to have the last day of December 2022 as their date of publication. Apparently new names are in some sort of limbo (unavailable?) in the meantime. How the Principle of Priority will be applied in these instances is a bit of a mystery. How it might impact ZooBank registrations is also unclear. Why any journal in which nomenclatural acts are published would choose not to provide the day, month, and year of publication inn the work itself is known only to the editors and publishers.

If this interpretation is incorrect any clarification would be welcome:)