The work was not "registered in the Official Register of Zoological Nomenclature (ZooBank)" and does not "contain evidence in the work itself that such registration has occurred" (as required by ICZN 8.5.3). As a consequence, in any case, the electronic version (which is "distributed by means of electronic signals (e.g. via the Internet)" (cf. ICZN 9.11)) "does not constitute published work" (as per ICZN 9).
The journal produces paper copies in parallel to the online edition. These may of course be seen as a separate printed edition -- but for this edition to be published under the Code, the copies should have been made "obtainable, when first issued, free of charge or by purchase" (ICZN 8.1.2). The usual interpretation of this last article is that the public should have been offered an option to either purchase, or obtain for free, some of the "simultaneously obtainable" (ICZN 9.1.3) "numerous identical and durable copies" (ICZN 8.1.3.1) of the work at the time of their original release... (Making copies publicly obtainable would place the journal in a situation similar to that of the PLoS journals before the e-publication Amendment came in force, as described in [
this document].) Are printed copies of the journal made publicly obtainable ? My understanding is that the number of copies is kept as small as it can, and that the copies are sent to a predefined number of libraries (e.g., 3rd § [
here]), which in my view would not at all clearly satisfy 8.1.2. I guess I may be missing a part of the picture, though; if so I apologize for the fuss.
(In any case, I really think it would be preferable for a journal operating on this type of model to ask authors of nomenclatural acts to register their works with ZooBank prior to publication... If the .pdf files themselves -- what most readers will see -- were clearly published, no question could arise. The Code now makes this possible, so why not do it...?)
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PS - FWIW, there are also quite significant problems with the statement that used to come with issues of the journal (up to #13 on the website), and I'm not fully clear what these may imply either. (Or how to deal with the situation.) The statement read:
CODIGO INTERNACIONAL DE NOMENCLATURA ZOOLOGICA, ARTÍCULO 8.6: Este artículo estipula que para establecer la validez de los nombres de nuevos taxones en zoología, copias (en papel) de la publicación pertinente (en particular esto es aplicable a las publicaciones en el Internet) deben ser depositadas en cinco o más bibliotecas con acceso público. Para cumplir con este requisito, Ornitología Colombiana envía copias en papel de cada número a las siguientes bibliotecas: En Colombia: Biblioteca Nacional, Hemeroteca Nacional, Biblioteca del Congreso, Instituto de Ciencias Naturales – Universidad Nacional de Colombia y Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango. En los Estados Unidos: American Museum of Natural History, U. S. National Museum, Louisiana State University, Field Museum of Natural History, y Los Angeles County Museum. En el Reino Unido: British Museum of Natural History. En Francia: Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle. Este número de Ornitología Colombiana fue puesto en la Internet el 12 enero de 2012 y enviado posteriormente a las mencionadas bibliotecas.
This was obviously derived from the pre-Amendment version of Art. 8.6:
8.6. Works produced after 1999 by a method that does not employ printing on paper. For a work produced after 1999 by a method other than printing on paper to be accepted as published within the meaning of the Code, it must contain a statement that copies (in the form in which it is published) have been deposited in at least 5 major publicly accessible libraries which are identified by name in the work itself.
...but, unfortunately, deeply misinterpreted it. Article 8.6 was never intended to cover publication on the Internet at all (works distributed by means of electronic signals were excluded from being published by the then-in-force version of Art. 9.8); it was exclusively supposed to deal with publication
on a physical support other than paper, such as a CD-ROM. Note also that the copies of the work this Article called for were "in the form in which it is published", i.e., in the case of a CD-ROM, it's the CD-ROM that was supposed to be deposited; not a paper version of its content.
Anyway, with the Amendment, this Article is now gone; it was replaced with:
8.4.2. Works on optical disc. To be considered published, a work on optical disc must be issued, in read-only memory form, after 1985 and before 2013, and
[...]
8.4.2.2. if issued after 1999, must contain a statement naming at least five major publicly accessible libraries in which copies of the optical disc were to have been deposited.
...which is very clearly not about online publication. There is no way under the current Code that the deposition of 5, or be it 12, paper copies in libraries might 'validate' an online publication not registered with ZooBank. Without a registration, the online publication simply does not exist, which means that the deposited paper copies must stand as a publication on their own... Do they ? Or were there more copies ?