Recently agreed changes to the Statutes of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses

The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses is a committee of Virology Division of the International Union of Microbiological Societies, and its operation is governed by Statutes agreed with Virology Division. The classification and nomenclature of viruses is then subject to rules formalized into a Code (required by Statute 8.1). The need for a review of the Statutes and Code became clear during editorial work involved in production of the Ninth ICTV Report. Changes to these documents require the approval of the ICTV Executive Committee (EC) and the full ICTV membership. Changes to the Statutes also require the agreement of Virology Division. The changes to the Statutes described in this article were discussed and agreed by the ICTV EC over a period of more than two years. Many of these changes are relatively minor adaptations and clarifications. Notification of a ballot was sent to the 165 members of ICTV. Members were then requested to vote on whether or not to ratify the proposals. The return rate of votes was approximately 41 %, and all proposed changes were accepted unanimously. The proposed changes to the Statutes were then submitted to Virology Division and were approved unanimously by the Advisory Board and Executive Committee on 19 April 2013. In this article, we present the new version of the Statutes, highlighted in bold to show those parts that have recently been changed. Those changes are then explained in the sections that follow. The changes to the Code are the subject of a separate article.