[Taxacom] OMG! DNA only descriptions! - Round Two

[Lyubomir Penev]

Mr.  Muñoz,

Your persistence in trying to involve Pensoft in a public discussion
relatеd to a whole bunch of issues on electronic publishing of
nomenclatural acts is indeed impressive. Such an insistence to speak “on
behalf of the community” might be understood and interpreted in different
ways, but since you have fixed even a deadline for answer and have used
expressions like “..*on how fast unavailable names spread to online
databases in the Internet Era, specially when they are published in
journals like Pensoft's*”, I feel I owe you some comments, even because the
readers might become misled by this thread.

In the era of electronic communication, not answering an email can mean
different things. In this particular case, the reasons are probably simpler
than one would expect:

1. The availability of names published in that particular DEZ paper has
been discussed in this email thread already. Nothing of what you bring as a
reasoning proves that the new taxa are invalidly published, hence
unavailable.

2. All, but one of the many questions you have imposed in relation to that
article are actually irrelevant to it, hence not attended.

Please find my comments below and let me start with your last question:

  "8) If I am an author and the e-version of my paper is incorrectly
registered in ZooBank by Pensoft and therefore unavailable, am I entitled
to a refund? If so, how much?"

All ZooBank IDs in that DEZ paper have been properly registered (with the
correct spelling of the UUIDs!) on 22nd of July 2019 and the article itself
was published on 25th of July, otherwise they wouldn't be present in the
article. As an aside note, the question on re-reimbursement is also
irrelevant, because DEZ (as well as quite many other journals in Pensoft's
portfolio) is a platinum open access journal, which means free to publish
and free to read.

The questions on printing is also irrelevant to this particular case,
because Article 21.9 of the Code reads: "A name or nomenclatural act
published in a work issued in both print and electronic editions takes its
date of publication from the edition that first fulfilled the criteria of
publication of Article 8 and is not excluded by Article 9.". The articles
in DEZ are published when they are ready for that, that is each article
bears its own and only one publication date, which is the date of the
online publication. Published articles are printed and bound together in 50
copies in May and December. The copies are delivered to the Library of the
Natural History Museum Berlin and used for their own purposes, including
inter-library exchange.

Immutability is an important question, I agree, although and again, it is
irrelevant to the availability of names in that paper, simply because the
Code states "immutability" as a recommendation (8D) but not as a mandatory
requirement.

The finding of “errors” in the ISSN listing of the journals is irrelevant
either, because the journals inherit two different series of the
“Mitteilungen aus dem Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin” (there is also a
third one inherited by the journal Fossil Record).


Now probably the most important part of the discussion comes. It is OUT OF
QUESTION that substantial changes ("inadmissible" errors in terms of the
Code) to an already published article should be introduced through
separately published corrigenda. Such examples are changes in authorship,
significant additions or corrections to the content that might change the
conclusions, etc., let alone changes concerning nomenclature. Anyone who
has published with Pensoft and requested a corrigendum knows how we deal
with this kind of issues. Correcting small "admissible" errors (for
example, broken links, or a forgotten grant number in otherwise fully
spelled grant acknowledgement) is something that deserves a separate
discussion. For this kind of ever increasing correction requests, deriving
in the vast majority of cases from the authors –  irrespective of the fact
that manuscripts normally go through several proof checks until authors
confirm their readiness for publication! – publishers follow their
established standards.

How to distinguish between both types of errors and how to correct these?
At Pensoft, our policy was to correct small, "admissible" typographical or
typesetting errors either through online annotations on the published
version (for example through our Comments functionality or through
hypothes.is services), which can be done by the authors themselves, or
through corrections in the published PDF. In order to avoid any possibility
of misinterpretation of our policies for Corrigenda and Errata, we have
introduced some changes in the Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement
across all journals which makes the procedure strict, explicit and
transparent. An example on how this procedure has been implemented recently
is available here <https://zookeys.pensoft.net/article/36563/list/21/>.

To shed light on what actually happened with the publication in question:
Two purely technical corrections have indeed been made in the first PDF
version of the paper a couple of days after publication. The corrections
are: a double "//" in one of the ZooBank ID was corrected to a single "/"
and a superfluous space after https://zoobank.org/ was removed in a second
one. Both errors only break the hyperlinks of fully spelled and correctly
registered ZooBank registration numbers. Also, the numbering in the header
on odd pages has been corrected from 119–146 to 119–145 (on the first page
of the publication the numbering was correct).

With this I hope I have answered your questions.

Best regards,

L.Penev

-----
Prof. Dr. Lyubomir Penev
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On Sat, Feb 8, 2020 at 3:30 PM Carlos Alberto Martínez Muñoz via Taxacom <
taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> wrote:

> Dear Dr. Zimmermann,
> Please note that you have not acknowledged receipt of my formal inquiry to
> DEZ on editorial matters, dated 21.ii.2020 and addressing the now
> longstanding issue of DEZ printed edition being Code-compliant or not. I
> remind you that this question dates back to 23.xii.2019. I consider that I
> have been kindly patient, expecting for a confirmation of receipt for 18
> days and for a clear answer for almost seven weeks now. I assume that as
> the EiC, you represent DEZ's commitment to data quality stewardship and
> that you are knowledgeable enough to fully understand the threat that
> unavailable names represent for Nomenclature and Taxonomy. I also assume
> that you are fully aware on how fast unavailable names spread to online
> databases in the Internet Era, specially when they are published in
> journals like Pensoft's. Your long silence is therefore inexplicable to me.
> Please, acknowledge receipt of this email and provide a clear reply during
> this week.
> Yours sincerely,
>
> Carlos A. Martínez Muñoz
> Zoological Museum, Biodiversity Unit
> FI-20014 University of Turku
> Finland
> ResearchGate profile
> <https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Carlos_Martinez-Munoz>
> Myriapod Morphology and Evolution
> <https://www.facebook.com/groups/205802113162102/>
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