Brave new world: Pioneering electronic publication of new plant species

"The changes to the publication requirements of new names for algae, fungi and plants accepted at the XVIII International Botanical Congress in Melbourne in July 2011 initiated several important challenges to scientists, publishers and information specialists. To address practical questions arising from the Congress decisions, the open access journal PhytoKeys will publish a series of seven exemplar papers, one each day for the first week of 2012, starting from the 1st of January. The completed journal issue will be printed as an additional, though not mandatory, form of archiving on the 7th of January 2012. "Electronic-only [and OA] publishing in botany means that publishers do not need to produce printed versions of their journals to verify that a new name has been effectively published", said Dr Sandra Knapp from the Natural History Museum London, deputy editor of PhytoKeys...."Beyond the mandatory deposition in trusted international electronic archives, such as the open access archive of the National Library of Medicine of the United States, the best possible guarantee for a proper preservation of the published information is open access. This allows an unlimited number of copies to be freely downloaded and stored in different institutional and private archives throughout the world, as well as being available to researchers, particularly in developing countries, who otherwise would not have access to many scientific serials", commented Dr Matt von Konrat from the Field Museum of Chicago...."