Long-term readers will remember that waaay back in 2011, we started the process of putting together a checklist for people naming new zoological genera and species, distilling the relevant portions of the long and complex International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN). Across twelve days of intense discussion, we got as far as DRAFT v3 of the checklist, and then I … sort of forgot about it for fifteen years.

Six months into those fifteen fallow years, of course, the ICZN introduced the electronic publication amendment, which means that the checklist has spent twenty-nine 30ths of its life outdated in a critical respect. So now I am doing what I should have done fourteen and a half years ago, and finalizing the checklist.

So I present DRAFT v4 of the checklist, which quietly went up on the site last night. I’ve tweaked the wording here and there, and adjusted whitespace, but the only substantive change is in clause 2 of the Requirements section, on what constitutes published work. Here’s what it now says:

2. The work must either printed or electronic. A printed work must be produced in an edition containing numerous simultaneously obtainable identical and durable copies. Numerous copies that are not simultaneously obtainable (e.g., print on demand, paper reprints, etc.) do not constitute published works. For the purposes of priority, the Code defines the date of publication as the date on which the numerous identical durable copies were made simultaneously obtainable.  [The Code does not specify how many copies must be printed, but 50 or more is typical.] An electronic work must be registered in ZooBank before publication, and must state the date of publication and contain evidence that registration has occurred. The ZooBank registration must specify an electronic archive intended to preserve the work, and the ISSN or ISBN associated with the work.

I welcome comments on this clause — especially regarding any factual errors that might have crept in, but also on infelicities in the wording. Please hop over to DRAFT v4 to comment. (Comments on this post are closed, to avoid splitting discussion across two places.)

doi:10.59350/nvwhv-cjb98