Meeting of the Executive Committee of IMU

    The Executive Committee of IMU met on April 11-12, 1996, at the Courant Institute, New York, USA. The President of IMU, Professor David Mumford has invited the President of the Program Committee, Prof. Philip Griffiths, the Organizer Committee of ICM/98, Prof. Martin Groetschel, a member of ICMI, Prof. Jeremy Kilpatrick and the President of the European Math. Society (EMS), Prof. J.P.Bourguignon, as well as officials of the American Math. Society (AMS), to attend different parts of the Executive Committee of IMU meeting.

    Excerpts of this meeting:

    1. Program ``Turn of the Century"
    2. Program Committee
    3. Joint activities at ICM-98 (resolutions of the General Assembly,1994)
    4. Books/Journals for Russian Mathematicians
    5. Joint Sections with AMS
    6. Committee on Electronic Publishing
    7. Technical Advisory Committee
    8. letter sent to the committee members
    9. "IMU Committee on Electronic Publishing" Terms of Reference

    1. Program ``Turn of the Century"

     A number of meetings, including possibly some special ones, for the year 2000 to be co-sponsored or supported by IMU, were discussed. Some of them corresponds to periodic activities and thus they have already been scheduled, like ICME and the EMS Congress.

    The idea of having meetings in different regions of the world was considered, such as supporting a meeting in Latin America and possibly one in Asia and one in Africa. The IMU may also provide some financial support to other meetings/activities. J.P.Bourgignon also asked the EC to consider a project "The memory of mathematicians" to collect interesting private mathematical communications of main mathematicians. This would be jointly sponsored by IMU and EMS and possibly UNESCO. On the other hand, the EC asked Prof. Bourguignon about the possibility of planning a meeting in Europe, maybe Greece, on the History of Mathematics, to be jointly sponsored by IMU and EMS.

    2. Program Committee

     Professor Phillip Griffiths, Chairman of the Program Committee, reported on it. He pointed out that there was already a very productive meeting of the PC that took place at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, last December. The list of sections with topics initially proposed, as well as the number of talks assigned to each of them, were shown on the WWW server of ICM98. A number of suggestions by colleagues from different parts of the world were sent to Professor Griffiths concerning the sections. This helped the PC members to conclude the first stage of their work. The next meeting is set for March, 1997.

    3. Joint activities at ICM-98 (resolutions of the General Assembly,1994)

     The Executive Committee of IMU had asked the Program Committee to take steps to implement Resolutions 3, 4 and 5 of the General Assembly, 1994. About that, Prof. Griffiths reported that the collaboration with other institutions like the Committee for the International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics (CICIAM), Bernoulli Society, the future International Union of Computing Science and Informatics (IUCSI), the Mathematical Programming Society and others, are being pursued to jointly plan part of the sections, specially with respect to applications.

    Concerning ICMI, Professor Jeremy Kilpatrick attended part of the meeting and presented to the EC member some of the main activities of this IMU Commission. It was discussed, among other things, ICMI’s view about its involvement in ICM 98. Prof. Mumford pointed out the necessity of closer cooperation between the Executive Committee of IMU and its Commissions. In particular, the PC of ICM98 should have ICMI and ICHM collaboration in planning the sections on teaching and popularization of mathematics and history of mathematics. The EC suggested that some members of the panel of these sections be proposed by ICMI and ICHM to the PC. It was concluded that only the talks programmed for the sections shall appear in the Proceedings of the Congress. In view of the above, Prof. Kilpatrick said he would discuss with ICMI whether they wish to continue to hold talks outside the official sections organized by the PC.

    4. Books/Journals for Russian Mathematicians

    The Executive Committee decided to continue a contribution of US 5,000 to the a main mathematical library in Moscow through the Moscow Mathematical Society and similarly to the Steklov Institute or Euler Institute at St. Peterburg. This is a renewal of a previous grant in the same amount. On that occasion the gesture was appreciated by the Russian colleagues and the deliver of books/journals well accomplished.

    5. Joint Sections with AMS

    A meeting of the American Mathematical Society took place in New York just after that of the Executive Committee of IMU. For the occasion, IMU and AMS programmed two joint sections on Saturday, April 13. The first one was a panel discussion entitled: "The activities of IMU and Plans for ICM/98" - Members of the Executive Committee, as well as Prof. P. Griffiths, as Program Chair for ICM/98 and J. Kilpatrick on behalf of ICMI, participated on it presenting an overview of some of the main activities of IMU and plans for the near future.
    On Saturday afternoon, there was a section entitled: "International Forum: Perspectives on doing mathematics in the electronic age". A round table was formed by John Ewing, Martin Groetschel, Joachim Heinze, Andrew Odlyzko, followed by a discussion under the coordination of Lázslo Lovász. Since a number of relevant issues were raised during the meeting, like research journals, storage of information and others of continuous interest to mathematicians, an IMU committee on electronic publishing seemed appropriated. Professor David Mumford then invited L. Lovasz to chair such a committee, which is now formed by:

    Committee on Electronic Publishing

    Ned Calkin (Georgia Tech) calkin@math.gatech.edu
    John Franks (AMS) john@math.nwu.edu
    Martin Groetschel (ZIB, Berlin) groetschel@zib.de
    Joachim Heinze (Springer-Verlag) heinze@springer.de
    Peter Michor michor@esi.ac.at
    Andrew Odlyzko (AT&T Reserch) amo@research.att.com
    John Price-Wilkin (University of Michigan) jpwilkin@umich.edu
    Hans Roosendaal (Elsevier) h.roosendaal@elsevier.nl
    Laszlo Lovasz - Chair (Yale University) lovasz@cs.yale.edu

    Technical Advisory Committee

     Bernd Wegner wegner@math.tu-berlin.de
    Keith Dennis dennis@MATH.AMS.ORG
    Larry Siebenmann lcs@topo.math.u-psud.fr

    On this matter, the following letter was sent to the committee members:

      Dear Colleagues,

      Welcome to the IMU committee on electronic publishing. As you know, this committee was asked by the President of the International Mathematical Union, David Mumford, to study issues in connection with electronic publication and formulate proposals to the IMU that could facilitate a smoother transition into the electronic age. A copy of our letter of reference is enclosed.

      The President of the IMU, appointed Martin Groetschel, Andrew Odlyzko and myself as chairman to this committee and asked us to extend the committee with more members as we see best. We are happy to report that we have been successful in securing the cooperation of a group of excellent people deeply involved in these difficult issues, and I thank you all for accepting this task. A list of committee members and their e-mail addresses is enclosed.

      We have also asked some experts to give us technical advice on different issues that are bound to come up. It could well be that we'll have to approach other people for help as discussions develop.

      I propose that we do our discussions by broadcasting our opinion to the whole committee.

      My feeling is that we should take the questions posed by David Mumford in a broad sense, and, at least as a first round, I encourage committee members to raise issues concerning electronic publication in mathematics freely. On the other hand, we should keep in mind that this committee has the goal of coming up with concrete proposals to the IMU. So while I would not want to restrict the topics we consider too much, I would like to keep the discussion on the level of problems where the IMU (possibly together with other organizations) is in the position to do something.

      I know of three issues that have come up in discussions so far, and which are concrete enough so that real progress is conceivable.

      1) A document identifier system. There seem to be various attempts by libraries, publishers and others to develop such a system, and we should discuss if IMU should embrace any of them. In this respect, I'd like to ask our committee members who are librarians and publishers to bring us up to date.

      2) A standardization of the front pages of preprints, together with an information system that makes use of this and thereby promotes its acceptance. Martin Grotschel is involved in a similar project in Germany and I'd like to ask him to inform us about it.

      3) A proposal that the IMU maintains or finances some servers, where mathematicians from countries with insufficient Internet connection could submit their electronic preprints.

      Looking forward to our cooperation,

      Laszlo Lovasz

    "IMU COMMITTEE ON ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING"
    Terms of Reference

    The timely distribution of mathematical work (articles, preprints, books, scripts etc. ) is indispensable for mathematical research. It is of equal importance to guarantee quality, authenticity, longevity and retrievability. It is apparent that, at present, there is a transition from paper publication to publication in electronic form. New electronic journals appear and more and more preprint servers are set up. This development is not without problems.

    How can papers be found efficiently in electronic archives? What is the actual state of an E-script (which may change throughout its life)? Who guarantees for its quality and authenticity? Has an electronic article been published in traditional form and where? Is the electronic version one has identical with the one somebody else references? Will the paper be archived and where? What happens with an electronic article if its "digital home" ceases to exist?

    To address these and related issues, the Executive Committee of the International Mathematical Union sets up a Committee on Electronic Publishing. Its task is to write a report to the Executive Committee making suggestions how IMU could help solving the issues mentioned above.

    IMU suggests addressing questions that can be solved in the very near future by the collaborative effort of mathematical societies, leading mathematical institutes, publishers and libraries with as little bureaucracy as possible. Among such questions are:

    • Is it feasible to introduce an identification number for electronic mathematical articles (such as an ISBN number for a book)?
    • Can an international automatic registration system for new articles (preprints and papers published in journals) be set up?
    • Could there be a central or distributed archive (or a world wide directory system) for electronic preprints in mathematics?
    • What are the chances to define and agree on a standard "first page", more precisely, on some kind of meta information, for every electronic article? This should be structured in such a way that information about the paper and its location can be retrieved easily.
    • If this is possible, how can links to the reviewing journals and from the reviewing journals to the articles be made?
    • How can the way of a paper from its preprint to is final journal publication form be tracked?
    • Which versions of an article should libraries archive and which not?
    IMU would not only like to see suggestions of possible solutions, IMU expects proposals for the implementation of solutions. IMU also asks the committee to consider the costs involved.

    IMU is aware of the fact that, in several countries of the world, digital library projects are set up or in progress and that more and more and more publishers are entering the electronic publishing arena. The committee is asked to investigate these plans and use the findings for its proposal. The suggestions for electronic publishing in mathematics should also take the developments in other scientific fields into account.