Electronic publication of nomenclatural acts is inevitable, and will be accepted by the taxonomic community with or without the endorsement of the Code

摘要

The recent description of the fossil primate Darwinius masillae in the onlinejournal PLoS ONE exemplifies an increasingly common problem: nomenclatural actsin non-print venues that are not considered 'published' under the Code's Articles 8.6and 9.8. Although the name Darwinius was subsequently validated by the publicationof hardcopy offprints of the electronic paper, other zoological names have beenpublished electronically in this and other online journals, and the broader taxonomiccommunity's acceptance of these invalidly published names suggests that it is theCode itself that is outdated in refusing to recognise names accepted by everyone else.If the Code is not quickly changed to accommodate electronic publication, it willbecome marginalised and ignored, to the detriment of sense and stability innomenclature. The increasing prevalence of electronic publishing leaves only a smallwindow of opportunity in which the Code can act to regulate nomenclatural acts inthese venues. Fears regarding the conservability of electronic documents are notjustified, as the ability to quickly and cheaply make abundant perfect copies makesan electronically published paper impossible to eradicate. Likewise, worries about the unsuitability of the ubiquitous PDF format for long-term conservation are largelygroundless now that the PDF archival format, PDF/A, is an international standard.The world has changed, and in order to remain relevant the Code must serve theworld as it actually is, not as we may wish it was.