Innovative electronic publication in plant systematics: PhytoKeys and the changes to the “Botanical Code” accepted at the XVIII International Botanical Congress in Melbourne

PhytoKeys was established less than a year ago in response to four main publication challenges of our time: (1) the appearance of electronic publications as amendments or even alternatives to paper publications; (2) Open Access (OA) as a new publishing model; (3) the linkage of electronic registers, indices, and aggregators, which summarize information on biological species through taxonomic names or their persistent identifiers; and (4) Web 2.0 technologies, which permit the semantic markup of, and semantic enhancements to, published biological texts. The appearance of the journal was concomitant with lively discussions on the validity of nomenclatural acts published electronically (Knapp and Wright 2010, Knapp et al. 2010, Penev et al. 2010, Chapman et al. 2010). At the XVIII International Botanical Congress in Melbourne in July 2011 (IBC 2011) these discussions culminated in the decision to amend the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature to allow electronic-only publishing of new taxa. Even before the end of the Congress and formal acceptance of the changes PhytoKeys was able to publish a report on the main outcomes of the Nomenclature Section on electronic publishing (Miller et al. 2011). PhytoKeys 6: 1–4 (2011)