International Committee on Systematics of Prokaryotes Subcommittee on the Taxonomy of Campylobacter and Related Bacteria. Minutes of the meetings, September 15th and 18th 2013, Aberdeen, Scotland

(1) Improving the rigour of new taxonomic descriptions. Various examples of poor quality descriptions of purportedly novel species belonging to the Epsilonproteobacteria had been discussed in previous meetings. It had been decided previously to draft letters to editors of major international publishers relating our concerns, and to request of the Judicial Commission a requirement that at least one member of the Subcommittee be appointed to review such papers to the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology describing new Epsilonproteobacteria taxa. Drafts of both letters were discussed at the meeting and suggestions made for improvement. Updated letters would be further circulated for discussion prior to submission. (2) Correction of gene sequence taxonomic affiliations in public databases. A strategy to request public databases to correct the names of sequences derived from organisms whose taxonomic position had been corrected (e.g. ‘Campylobacter hyoilei’, actually Campylobacter coli; ‘Helicobacter nemestrinae’, now Helicobacter pylori) was also discussed. A similar approach to that described above for contacting NCBI would be adopted. (3) Revised minimal standards. An outline of revised minimal standards for host-associated taxa was discussed. Further developments were agreed upon with further drafts to be circulated.