Wiersema, John H., McNeill, John, Turland, Nicholas J., Orli, Sylvia S., and Wagner, Warren L. 2015. "The foundation of the Melbourne Code Appendices: Announcing a new paradigm for tracking nomenclatural decisions." Taxon, 64, (5) 1021–1027. https://doi.org/10.12705/645.11.
A newly expanded digital resource exists for tracking decisions on all nomenclature proposals potentially contributing to Appendices II–VIII of the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants. This system owes its origins to the Smithsonian Institution's “Proposals and Disposals” website created by Dan H. Nicolson to track conservation/rejection proposals, but now also treats proposals to suppress works or requests for binding decisions. The new resource was created to accommodate the steadily expanding content of the Appendices in relation to the main body of the Code. A database is now available to generate these Appendices, as has been done for the Melbourne Code. A web interface allows users to query database content in various ways to review proposal histories or to extract all or part of the Appendices. An analysis of the underlying data was conducted to make comparisons between proposals submitted for the various editions of the Code. These include the type of nomenclatural remedy sought, the major group concerned, the numbers of names involved, the timeliness of the proposal evaluation process, the proposal success rate, and the diversity of proposal authorship. The success of proposals was also evaluated by the type of remedy sought and by major groups.
