[Taxacom] online publishing

[Dave Roberts]

Dear Paul,

the same criticisms could have been made of paper, especially in the  
early days of printing.

Paper copies do not guarantee permanence and have a significant upkeep  
cost.  It is also very hard to access.  It is hard to find a usable  
original from the 1930s from Russia these days because of the acid  
content of the paper.  We have photocopies that preserve the content.

Its not about formats: its about confidence.

Cheers,  Dave
--
On 22 Jul 2010, at 17:34, <dipteryx at freeler.nl> <dipteryx at freeler.nl>  
wrote:

> Van: Donat Agosti [mailto:agosti at amnh.org]
> Verzonden: do 22-7-2010 17:49
>
>> It is not about formats: it is about reading content online
>> rather than hard cover.
>
>> If it where about format, then I would make the argument and
>> stress, that, just as you point out with your discussion below,
>> should not have it own format but be rather generic and
>> with the content with some basic semantic mark-up.
>> The other point is, that it has to be open access and
>> archived somewhere with a high probability of sustainability.
>
>> Donat
>
> ***
> For nomenclatural purposes, it is first and foremost about permanence:
> the guarantee that the document has not been altered.
>
> As pointed out before, one of the ways to assure this for electronic
> documents would be to have copies (of the entire publication, or at
> least of the nomenclaturally relevant part) deposited, at publication,
> in a central archive. Ideally this archive would be on-line, open  
> access, etc. Another, lesser, option would be to extend special
> recognition to some high-quality e-journals, each with its own
> permanent archive.
>
> Otherwise, without deposited copies, it IS about formats, formats that
> guarantee an unaltered document. Whether that is possible? I guess  
> that even with quite limited means, PDFs can be altered: those with  
> more
> technical ability could be probably be quite convincing.
>
> Paul
>
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>
> (1) http://taxacom.markmail.org
>
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> pipermail/taxacom  your search terms here

-- 
Dr D.McL. Roberts,        Tel: +44 (0)20 7942 5086
European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy Project,
Coordinator WorkPackage 6 (Unifying Revisionary Taxonomy),
Dept. Zoology,
The Natural History Museum,
Cromwell Road,
London        SW7 5BD
Great Britain             Email: dmr at nomencurator dot org
Web page:  http://scratchpads.eu
Web page:  http://www.editwebrevisions.info/
--
"You can't just ask customers what they want and then try and give it  
to them.  By the time you get it built, they'll want something  
new." [Steve Jobs, quoted in The Guardian, Technology Section, 25 June  
09].
--