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RE: Arambougiania Citation Redux

Christopher Taylor wrote:

[Disclaimer: Boring and esoteric nomenclature discussion coming up...]

As Tim has already indicated, a name could arguably be published in
an "abstract" if the volume containing the abstract was published and
made available to the general public (as opposed to only distributed
to conference attendees). The main factor to be considered in regard
to valid publication is availability (a non-peer-reviewed magazine is
validly published because it is widely on sale, a reviewed thesis is
generally not because it is not likely to be available off-campus -
[snip] 
Another point that might be relevant in this case (as well, IIRC, as
for _Gigantspinosaurus_) is that just because the volume title
includes the word "Abstract" doesn't necessarily mean that the
section in question is an "abstract" as we would generally understand
the word

The other issue (and this pertains to _Gigantspinosaurus_ too) is the actual <availability> of the abstract. Article 9.9 of the Code regards as invalid those names that are published in abstracts that are not available for public dissemination, but are issued only to participants of a certain conference. The exact wording of 9.9 is:

"abstracts of articles, papers, posters, texts of lectures, and similar material when issued primarily to participants at meetings, symposia, colloquia or congresses."

The name _Arambourgiana_ first appeared in the "Abstracts of the 33rd session of the All-Union Palaeontological Society, Leningrad". Strictly speaking, if these abstracts were available only to participants of this conference/session, then _Arambourgiana_ is not a valid name. But as I said before, this issue of availability is difficult to demonstrate.

_Gigantspinosaurus_ represents a similar case - except the conference in question was the "The Satellite Meeting of the First Youth Academic Annual Confereces by Chinese Science Association, Abstracts and Summaries for Youth Academic Symposium on New Discoveries and Ideas in Stratigraphic Paleontology, Nanjing, Dec. 1992."

In both cases (_Arambourgiana_ and _Gigantspinosaurus_) the meaning of the word "Abstract" (which Chris discussed) is just one issue. The other is the availability of the abstract outside of the conference it was explicitly published for.

I hope that made sense.

Cheers

Tim

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