http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/09/zoologists-endorse-electronic-publication-for-new-species.html

This may help. 

Thanks - that pretty much confirm that one of my assumptions were correct, namely that ZooBank registration is mandatory for species described in fully electronic journals.

Its is so interesting that is mandatory for new species to be in Zoobank registration. 

It is mandatory for some journals

A ZooBank registration is mandatory for electronically published papers. Please check Art. 8.5.3 of the International Code on Zoological Nomenclature:

8.5. Works issued and distributed electronically. To be considered published, a work issued and distributed electronically must

8.5.1. have been issued after 2011,

8.5.2. state the date of publication in the work itself, and

8.5.3. be registered in the Official Register of Zoological Nomenclature (ZooBank) (see Article 78.2.4) and contain evidence in the work itself that such registration has occurred.

78.2.4. The Commission may establish and maintain an Official Register of Zoological Nomenclature (ZooBank), to record essential information about works, names and nomenclatural acts. The Official Register of Zoological Nomenclature may be maintained in electronic or paper form. The Official Lists and Official Indexes may be maintained in the Official Register.

This is especially important for electronic preprint versions of printed journals. If such articles and new taxa descibed therein are not registered in ZooBank, they are not considered as published, and therefore the taxa not available.

A ZooBank registration is not mandatory for descriptions of new taxa in printed journals.

I agree upon Ronald Fricke's statements and suggest to involve both, Georg Mayer and Ivo de Sena Oliveira (university Kassel)  in this discussion.

Please note

Zhi-Quiang Zang (2012). A new era in zoological nomenclature and taxonomy: ICZN accepts e-publication and launches ZooBank.  Zootaxa 3450:8

It states that:

The amendment to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN 2012: 1–7) allows publication in “widely

accessible electronic copies with fixed content and layout” of new names and nomenclatural acts in zoology after 2011 under

the following conditions2 (in addition to articles 8.1.1–8.1.3 of ICZN 1999):

1) the work must be registered in ZooBank before it is published,

2) the work itself states the date of publication with evidence that registration has occurred, and

3) the ZooBank registration states both the name of an electronic archive intended to preserve the work and the ISSN

or ISBN associated with the work.

Attached you can find the paper. Hope this can help.

It is correct that registration of works (papers, articles, books) in ZooBank is mandatory for electronic publications. If you want to have your names available from electronic editions of print journals (i.e. from the version of record most commonly published first in electronic form), then you should register these papers, too. If not registered, the names will be available from the later paper edition. See the attached paper (published today) explaining this. By the way, only the registration of the papers is mandatory, not of the new names, but the ICZN encourages including them in the registration.

Article Electronic publications need registration in ZooBank to be available

How about electronic publication before 2011, say 2009 for example.

Some open access journals were being used to describe and publish new taxa, before Zoobank was functional

All electronic-only publications before 2012 are unavailable, or, in other words, non-existent, for the purpose of zoological nomenclature (and for botanical nomenclature, for that matter). Some e-publishers have produced small print runs of papers containing new species descriptions and made those papers available that way, but not all of them.

If this causes substantial problems, we will certainly find a solution, but so far, I am not aware of any applications (cases) submitted to the ICZN relating to unavailable names from e-only publications.

(This is the third instance of my answer since my previous posting attempts seem to have failed. If they haven't failed, sorry for duplication.)

 Thanks Frank,

If the description was made in an e-journal in 2009, and 5 hard copies (reprints) made available to global libraries (as per BMC Parasites & Vectors) with a full description being made in the article including type material etc. Is this name now/still valid?

Please let me have your thoughts on this

Thanks in advance

Yes, the new name is available from those 5 reprints (not from the electronic version). Everybody will use the electronic version, of course, and not search for those (likely to be discarded) reprints. And everybody hopes that the electronic version is exactly the same as the elusive reprints :-) This is the practical way we deal with such situations. The new name will still be available long after those 5 reprints will have been recycled. Not an ideal situation, but that's why we have ratified the Amendment that made e-only publications available (from 2012).

In my opinion, it is a great pity that descriptions in electronic versions [or, still more so, online-only "publications"] are ever considered available: this situation produces much confusion already now, and one need not be great prophet to predict increasing chaos in future... By the way, I am rather sure that the electronic version reliably considered identical to the original will cease to exist much earlier than the 5 paper-copies in libraries "will have been recycled" [at least if museums and libraries containing taxonomic publications will not disappear at all - but then nobody will care about electronic versions either...)!

We had extensive discussions for years before we ratified the Amendment. Fact is that paper publications increasingly disappear (and libraries are not keen to preserve reprints; most get rid of their reprint collections if they ever had any). The overwhelming majority of papers is consumed or at least received electronically. Most people don't know and have no easy way to know whether a paper edition of the paper they read still is produced. Interlibrary loan of papers is electronic. Zootaxa and Zookeys produce a print run of less than 50, and decreasing. There might be increasing confusion in future, mainly due to decreasing scholarship and limited education, but sticking to paper editions is like requiring lead typesetting. Sticking to disappearing technologies wouldn't have helped.

Sorry, Frank, but this is not a question of "disappearing technologies" but of permanency and reliability of published results! As I already wrote many years ago [2001: “Crisis management in taxonomy”: medicine or poison? - Col. Bull. 55, 2: 243-247] "Publications written on paper are easily usable by me or anybody else without any sophisticated “hardware” (except for my glasses...) or “software” (except for literacy). ... Moreover, the durability (or, at least, reasonable accessibility) of any information stored “electronically” is dispairingly short and frequently cumbersome and/or unsafe: while I can easily use Linnaeus’ or Fabricius’ publications written more than two hundred years ago, I need three-step transcription-conversion process to read now (with WINWORD97 installed on my new computer) what I myself wrote as recently as five years ago (on 5¼" diskette of my “old” computer, with the then en vogue WORD 5.5 for DOS) – of course the opposite is not possible at all; to use some “attachment-files” sent to me (today!) by e-mail I would have to buy a special program (of probably also “ephemeral” use...), to “unpack” pictures – still another, etc., etc., etc.; and, at that, there is a constant menace of loss of information in consequence of some “critical error” or virus... I do not believe internet to be free of such problems (and, the less so, to remain free for decades or centuries...), so I wonder whether a description published as a “web-page” in 2001 would be accessible to more than a (richest and/or employed in major institutions, thence capable of defying the “armaments race”) fraction of taxonomists in 2015 (to say nothing of 2250...) – and even now many interested workers would not be able to use it!". Now, 15 years later, many of those texts written in 1990-s are not "transcribable-convertible" (at least for me, with my then mentioned WINWORD97 further replaced two or three times by newer gadgets...) at all! As to the libraries "getting rid" of paper publications, they do this just because of the acceptation of "purely electronic" ones, what makes the "hard copies" seemingly unimportant - if librarians know (as previously) that only "paper"-publications are ultimately decisive, no "getting rid" would be possible - in this sense your argument is invalid (in fact, circular). "Most people don't know and have no easy way to know whether a paper edition of the paper they read still is produced" - this is, indeed, a very serious problem, but irrelevant here: even if the "online" "publications" are accepted as valid, as a minimum requirement each of them should include clear and unambiguous information as to whether it is "published" only electronically or as permanent and unfalsifiable hard-copies! In the present situation "most people don't know and have no easy way to know whether a" taxon described in a publication known only from the pdf is or is not valid under the current rules making its validity dependent just upon their being "online-only" or not, registered in "Zoobank" or not, preserved in 5, 10 or any number of libraries or not, &c. - what until recently was so clear and simple becomes increasingly impenetrable chaos... 

I see somebody has "downgraded" my explanations - well, I would expect rather arguments against what I had written, but... Here I wish to make some additional (downgradeable...) comments on what I forgot to remark on previously.

"The overwhelming majority of papers is consumed or at least received electronically" - yes, and the possibility to do so is very useful and welcome! Indeed, nowadays (fortunately!) every - also published as "hard copy"! - paper or book is produced (and, so, available) also electronically, and I am very happy with this fact! But this is irrelevant to the question: the problem (especially for taxonomic publications!) is effective and durable assurance of (and real possibility to verify!) the identity of a (no matter whether paper- or electronic) copy with the original, and this (as I tried to explain in the "downgraded" - but unfortunately not counter-argumented - comment) can reliably be achieved only when the "original" does exist, i.e. if at least some ("material", not just virtual!) "voucher-copies" are preserved in at least some really publicly accessible (and of reasonable "durability"), concretely named libraries. The problem is not "disappearing technologies" of production (no matter that Linnaeus wrote his works with a goose-quill, Darwin perhaps with a pen, Simpson with a type-writer and you - like me! - do with a computer: a "hard copy" is equally readable and durable!) but the final effect!  So, "sticking to disappearing technologies wouldn't have helped", of course, but the fact that we can now produce something with better (easier, cheaper, more effective) technology is no reason to... abandon the production!

Roman, I understand your comments (I didn't downgrade!) but I also see the need to allow e-journals the ability to accept and publish descriptive works. Maybe there is another way to be able to confirm that the electronic version remains the same over time.

Of course, there is still actual type material deposited in Museums to complement and verify the written article, and having new options for type material is a bonus and fast, such as having images of electronmicrographs sent, and DNA sequence data.

 Thanks Frank,

I was told that the name I used in the 2009 Parasites & Vectors paper (Desmozoon lepeophtherii) would not be available (see Dubois et al. 2013 (Zootaxa 3735 (1)) from Table 3, quote:  "Desmozoon lepeophtherii UFC, work unavailable through online publication, despite deposition of facsimiles in five libraries announced in the publication, confirmed in the Paris Museum library"

Has something changed since this publication?

This organism was named by another researcher in 2010, and now there is total confusion as to what the correct name is. I have asked the ICZN for a statement on this (Martyn Low).

Are you still of the opinion, that the name Desmozoon lepeophtherii is available from the 5 paper copies in the libraries.

Please clarify this for me if you can

Many thanks in advance

Mark

Here we have a real case:

DESCRIPTION OF A NEW SPECIES OF THE GENUS THAUMAGLO

SSA (COLEOPTERA:

DERMESTIDAE: MEGATOMINAE) OF THE ASTRAKHAN REGION O

F RUSSIA http://easletters.com/volume3-issue4-2016/EASL-2016-3-4-12-14.pdf

The description is illustrated and a Holotype reference is mentioned, but a Zoobank registry seems to be missing. Is this a valid description? If not are we wasting taxonomy expertise and effort?

I am a great fan of digital resources, but their half-life is extremely limited (that´s why I upgraded Roman Bohdan Hołyński comments).

Institutional deposit of accessible type material is obligatory, so why not claim to deposit 5 printouts in distinct institutions (I understand that some museums still maintain libraries:::)?

To me, beyond the very acceptability or inacceptability of "online-only" publications, one basic question (with two "subquestions") remains unclear: what is the exact (formal) "diagnostic character" to distinguish between "electronic only" and "printed on paper" publications? Well, if no paper copies have been produced, then of course it is "online-only", but 1) how can I (a reader) know this from the pdf received from the author (it is obviously unrealistic to expect the reader to search among the "web-sites" of particular - often ephemeral or otherwise obscure - "e-journals")??? and 2) how many paper copies must be produced to qualify as having been normally (on paper) published (seeking the answer I found any from indefinite "some" through 5, 10, up to 100...)? And again: how can I know this??? If we - unfortunately... - accept "online-only" publications, we should at least require each so published paper to contain clearly and unambiguously stated information that no original "hard-copies" have existed or that the publication does not meet any other requirement to qualify as "published on paper"!

As to the requirement of registration in Zoobank, this is in my opinion simply "foul play", making the validity of a name depending upon factors beyond the control of the author: the reliability and good (or not so good...) will of "managers" of Zoobank! To be frank, I must say that since 1960-edition of the Code each successive regulation produces more and more chaos, introduces more and more bureaucracy, and makes taxonomic work more and more difficult...

Two points: In times where every single print product is produced electronically, I am not sure if "original hard copy" makes any sense any more.

Registration in ZooBank is all under control of the authors. Everybody can  register in ZooBank. Every author can do it easily investing a few minutes. This does not make taxonomic work any more difficult. - Some journals do the registration work for the authors. That does not make anything more difficult either.

Sorry, Frank, but these are slogans. Every "on-line" procedure is claimed (by those who require it) to be easy, quick and without troubles, and only when I try to submit (paper for publication, application for grant), or only download something I find that this or that does not work (either because I am in a wrong country, or I have wrong version of this or that program, and most frequently nobody knows why but... does not work)! I have never tried to register anything in Zoobank, but have several times heard from my Colleagues that they had registered but then tried to check and... the name is not there... And, as it is very frequently not clear whether a given publication is normally (on paper) or only electronically published, the problem is by no means trivial...

As to your doubts concerning "if 'original hard copy' makes any sense any more", "In times where every single print product is produced electronically" I do not understand your problem: an "original copy" is needed to make it possible, in case of doubt, to check the original version of the paper, irrespectively of whether it was produced by pen, typewriter or electronically! When I receive a pdf I very frequently do not know even if it is a proof-sheet, an on-line preprint of something published (or to be published) on paper, or the really final final version - and this is only a "normal" situation, when I have no reason to suppose that e.g. somebody (e.g. a teenager "for fun", to say nothing of intentional malice or swindle) falsified the content... This is why, when I download something, there often appears a remark "downloaded by XY on this-or-that date" (usually neither by original author or publisher nor immediately after publication, and frequently not even by me at the actual downloading...): with "hard copy" it is not important who or when has read it, it assuredly remains the same... No and there remain the question of permanence: as I wrote, I can easily read Linnaeus' publications written 250 years ago, but electronic versions of many of those I wrote myself some years ago are already "unreadable"!  

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318760929_My_Village_Biodiversity_Documentation_of_Western_Ghats_Biodiversity_through_Network_of_Students_and_Teachers

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331076568_Global_Warming_Mitigation_Through_Carbon_Sequestrations_in_the_Central_Western_Ghats/stats

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323180165_Salient_Ecological_Sensitive_Regions_of_Central_Western_Ghats_India

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332331409_Sustainable_Management_of_Bannerghatta_National_Park_India_with_the_Insights_in_Land_Cover_Dynamics

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301609558_Geospatial_analysis_of_forest_fragmentation_in_Uttara_Kannada_District_India

Dear Martin

Please see my following paper and some related references at the end of paper:

New ascid mite of the genus Antennoseius Berlese (Acari: Mesostigmata) from Iran

June 2018

DOI: 10.22073/pja.v7i3.38509

Antennoseius (Antennoseius) gwiazdowiczi Kavianpour & Nemati was described based on morphological characters of adult females and published in Iranian Journal of Entomology. This journal was published in electronic form only without permanent archiving and is not available now. Also, the work is not registered in ZooBank. To be considered validly published, according to the ICZN rules a work that has been issued and distributed electronically, must possess several conditions such as registration in ZooBank. Due to the absence of such a condition, this species is not available now. For this reason, the description of this species based on morphological characters of adult females is presented here.

You need to go here and follow the instructions.

https://www.iczn.org/zoobank/how-do-i-register-a-nomenclatural-act-on-zoobank/

Registering new species is complicated and time-consuming. We very much need to develop the engine. Also, I am not understand, why should I register teh genus gain if somebedy has already registered, why dont offer the menu the already registered genera. Furthermore, if I did some processing, why can't I list those species that I have registered in last week, month, months etc. just to remember the status. 

Given the confusion caused by trying to interpret print-runs and to distinguish e-papers (only) from printed papers (even if also electronic), why not extend the requirement for zoobank registration to all new nomenclatural acts? Registration really takes no time at all and should be as fundamental as cortectly labelling a holotype

To Andrew "why not extend the requirement for zoobank registration to all new nomenclatural acts?"

Because it doesn't work,. God save us vrom ZooBank. Hope, there will be other customer friendly normal site.

Otherwise, about net descriptions see: deepadaptation project and Cassandra project.