Dear Zooarchers,

time for a few reminders about ZOOARCH etiquette.

We have long established that pdf requests represent a valuable tool available to our community but we must avoid the list to be dominated by this kind of traffic. There are a few simple measures that can be taken, which we have discussed in the past and that I am going to reiterate:

- if the pdf that you have requested is authored by somebody who is currently active, and whose email address can easily be tracked down, it is always best to contact the author first. Most authors will only be too pleased to make their work available to others. I often read requests of papers authored even by people who are actually on this list, which puzzles me. If you want to know who is on the list please send a message with the subject content "review zooarch" (and nothing in the body of the email) to [log in to unmask]

- if you are interested in a pdf that has been requested on ZOOARCH please contact the person who made the original request privately - do not write to the whole list

- if you receive a pdf you had requested, you should circulate it to those who contacted you asking for a copy; it is discorteous not to do so and definitely not in the spirit of cooperation of ZOOARCH

- requests of pdfs of complete books should really only be made if the book is out of print.

I hope this is a helpful reminder of some very simple and easy to adopt guidelines. It does not mean to discourage requests of literature, which is a helpful service that the list provides and from which many of us have benefited.

Best wishes,

Umberto