Indeed. I just checked both journals... and the last issue of Biology Letters is dated from the 23rd of december (!). And Naish et al.'s paper is the 26th online first paper (or whatever they call it).. There is therefore little chance that it will be published before the end of the year - except if it belongs to some special volume, in which case the date of acceptance is not so important. Given that Buffetaut's comment will likely be published either in the last issue of 2011 or in the first of 2012, I hope very much that Buffetaut and Taquet will refrain from publishing it before the princeps description issues. I do agree with you Jaime, but I note that the same problem applies to the "accepted" / "in press" distinction. In the case of Bilogy Letters, one could think that a paper was actually published though it has only been edited to be in press after having been accepted. As you just said, there should some sort of editorial rule stating that any paper dealing with new taxa/clade names should be temporarily stored in limbo until the actual, physical issues is out. In fact, I am astonished to see that this is still not the case. It could be a mere question on a reviewer sheet: "Does this work involve the erection of a new taxon ?" "O No / O Yes - In this case, the article will be available online only after having been effectively published." Quite simple, in fact. :-| Cheers, Jocelyn Falconnet
I'm not sure the issues will assuredly publish in order to be consistent. Are the submission to print times consistent between _Biology Letters_ vs. _Annales de Paléontologie_? The problem I see here is that a note is being submitted rejecting the conclusions of a work _that isn't published_ and is noted specifically so. The only way to ensure the timeliness of these is to withhold the publication of the latter note to ensure the former is published on time. At which point the citation in the latter is off. How problematic would it have been to wait for the original descriptive note to be published before submission? Moreover, the online "openness" of the submissions and edited papers prior to print gives the illusion that the work is available, when in fact it isn't. The need for high media coverage before the fact, the prevalence of coverage before the fact, and the increasing number of works published online prior to print confuse this issue, and I do not think it will be solved until at least "online before print" stops for works like this (taxonomic or otherwise) or online print is considered as valuable and authoritative as print (even though the latter is treated this way by the media presentation of either news organizations or the authors themselves). Cheers, Jaime A. Headden The Bite Stuff (site v2) http://qilong.wordpress.com/ "Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969) "Ever since man first left his cave and met a stranger with a different language and a new way of looking at things, the human race has had a dream: to kill him, so we don't have to learn his language or his new way of looking at things." --- Zapp Brannigan (Beast With a Billion Backs) ----------------------------------------Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2011 19:57:42 +0100 From: j.falconnet@gmail.com To: martyniuk@gmail.com CC: bh480@scn.org; dinosaur@usc.edu Subject: Re: Reinterpretation of Samrukia as a pterosaur Buffetaut's paper is not an issue, here, because it does not satisfy the requirements for erecting a new name. First, the novelty of the family, genus, or species-group name must be expressed explicitly to validate the erection of such a name (Article 16.1). Buffetaut credits nevertheless Naish, Dyke, Cau, Escuillé and Godefroit, 2011 - though the paper is still in press, including in the bibliography - for the authorship of '*Samrukia*' and '*Samrukia nessovi*'. Second, Buffetaut discards the three purported autapomorphies of '*Samrukia*', considering it as a possible dubious species. He provides therefore no diagnosis which would have supported the validation of the taxon. Providing a diagnosis is not the only mean to do so, as a bibliographic reference might to the trick, but his conclusions are against the validity of '*Samrukia*' (Article 13). Anyway, I do agree that this is a pretty confusing situation. Luckily, the princeps description will issue before Buffetaut's comment. By the way, it seems to me that this comment is pretty well documented and includes striking comparisons between the holotype of '*Samrukia*' and pterosaur mandibular material (*Santanadactylus*, undeterminate pterodactyloid from Austria). Cheers, Jocelyn Falconnet Le 15/11/2011 18:50, Matthew Martyniuk a écrit :On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 12:44 PM, bh480@scn.org<bh480@scn.org> wrote:From: Ben Creisler bh480@scn.org If the Buffetaut article officially comes out first in print (likely in 2012), I think the name could be cited as: Samrukia Naish, Dyke, Cau, Escuillié, and Godefroit in Buffetaut, 2012That does looks like it would be the case: ICZN Article 50. Authors of names and nomenclatural acts. 50.1. Identity of authors. The author of a name or nomenclatural act is the person who first publishes it [Arts. 8, 11] in a way that satisfies the criteria of availability [Arts. 10 to 20] (but for certain names published in synonymy see Article 50.7). If a work is by more than one person but it is clear from the contents that only one of these is responsible for the name or act, then that person is the author; otherwise the author of the work is deemed to be the author of the name or act. If the author, or the person who publishes the work, cannot be determined from the contents, then the name or act is deemed to be anonymous (see Article 14 for the availability of anonymous names and nomenclatural acts). 50.1.1. However, if it is clear from the contents that some person other than an author of the work is alone responsible both for the name or act and for satisfying the criteria of availability other than actual publication, then that other person is the author of the name or act. If the identity of that other person is not explicit in the work itself, then the author is deemed to be the person who publishes the work. Matt-- "/As a Professor of Science, I assure you we did in fact evolve from filthy monkey men./" Hubert J. Farnworth.
-- "As a Professor of Science, I assure you we did in fact evolve from filthy monkey men." Hubert J. Farnworth.