Registration
of Existing Names
Retrospective registration of all existing names is clearly a major
attraction of ZooBank, and one for which the collaboration with
Zoological Record will prove indispensable. Zoological Record staff,
during routine scanning and databasing of published articles, will
supply ZooBank with all the data needed for registration, enabling
the ICZN Secretariat to alert authors that their data are being
registered. Similarly, Zoological Record will be alerted to any
overlooked animal names and taxonomic acts via ZooBank. Free access
to Zoological Record's Index of Organism Names (ION) will enable
ZooBank to eventually become a complete database of all animal
species. Such a complete list will serve many valuable functions
that contribute to increased stability of zoological nomenclature.
Mandatory Registration
In order for ZooBank to be a complete register of animal names
and the nomenclatural acts that affect them, registration must
be a mandatory requirement for availability according to the
Code. A voluntary system, while potentially of some use, would
negate the final aim of complete coverage. In the long term,
mandatory registration should eventually apply to all zoological
names and nomenclatural acts. A more practical approach for the
short term, however, would be to require registration for all
newly proposed names and nomenclatural acts, while accommodating
voluntary registration of previously existing names and acts.
Mandatory registration has the added advantage of ensuring that
all new names and taxonomic acts are checked for compliance with
the Code before they are made available.
Registration as Publication
Several recent initiatives, particularly the NSF-funded Planetary
Biodiversity Inventories (PBIs), are attempting to promote taxonomy
as a largely web-based discipline (e.g., http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation
/projects/solanum/).
It seems inevitable that in the near future the Code will have
to cover solely web-published taxonomic descriptions and nomenclatural
acts. One possible response would be the development of a system
whereby successful registration on the ZooBank database would
be equivalent to publication. However, the implications of equating
the act of registration in ZooBank as equivalent to publication
via more traditional means (as prescribed in the current edition
of the ICZN Code) are substantial, and demand careful consideration
by a broad spectrum of the zoological research community.
Paramount among the implications of a "registration=publication"
scenario is the issue of peer review. While current provisions
for peer review of taxonomic papers are often far from ideal, standards
in taxonomy continue to be maintained largely by consensus. The
fact that a carefully enforced peer review system would be an essential
component of any "registration=publication" initiative
provides an opportunity to reform current procedures. International
editorial boards appointed for peer review of solely web-based
taxonomic publications would need to be appointed to deal with
web taxonomic publications in a systematic way. Collaboration with
taxon-focussed learned societies could be a first step to the development
of such review boards (e.g. International Society of Hymenopterists
for Hymenoptera papers; etc), perhaps via the International Union
of Biological Sciences (IUBS).
Changing the ICZN Code
Mandatory registration as an additional criterion of availability
under the ICZN Code will require substantial changes to several
Code Articles. Changes to the Code can be implemented in one
of two ways: as amendments to the existing (4th) edition, or
in the context of a new (5th) edition. Introducing registration
as a mandatory requirement for all newly established names and
nomenclatural acts, while maintaining the current requirement
for publication of such names and acts, could be established
through amendments to the existing edition of the Code. More
sweeping changes, such as equating the act of registration (with
peer review) to publication, would probably best be introduced
with a new (5th) edition of the Code.
