9626806 Al-Shehbaz & Schnase The Flora of China is a collaborative project to publish, first in electronic and then in print format, the first modern English-language account of the approximately 30,000 species of vascular plants of China. The print version of the Flora of China will comprise 25 volumes of text and illustrations that treat these species in a traditional format; the publication of the final volume in the series is not expected until the year 2006. However, in its electronic version, all the manuscripts for all the volumes will be available online via the WWW home page for the Flora of China by the end of this grant period (1998). Thus, this information (metadata descriptors will be provided to indicate the level of review and editing of a given treatment at a given point in time) will be available for use by workers in basic and applied research, conservation, land management, horticulture, medicine, pharmaceutical chemistry, etc., much more rapidly than might have occurred in the past. Each treatment is co-authored by Chinese and American botanists and provided to the project headquarters electronically. Editorial functions will now be performed on the taxonomic treatments in their electronic-database form (with automatic capture of metadata about these activities); when all such functions are complete, an electronic "manuscript" can be extracted from the database, ready to go to the printer. The shift to electronic editorial procedures will both enhance (other workers in addition to the project's editors can contribute expertise to the process online) and accelerate (shipping of manuscripts among various editors and reviewers, even by anonymous ftp or e-mail will no longer be necessary) the entire process. This project represents a step into the future of botanical science and international cooperation by the several supporting partners: the Chinese Commission of Science and Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and National Natural Science Foundation of China, and Bioti c Surveys & Inventories, Database Activities, and International Programs (China) of the US National Science Foundation, as well as several private foundations in the United States.
