[NotiAMCA] Best Practice document on Journals, Press Release

[Victorio Sonzogni]

To:   IMU Adhering Organizations and to all participants of the IMU
General Assembly 2010
From:    Martin Groetschel, IMU
Secretary

Dear colleagues,

At the General Assembly in Bangalore the document, prepared
by the Committee on Electronic Information and Communication
(CEIC), "Best Current Practices for Journals" was approved,
under the side constraint that the Executive Committee
"polishes" one statement that was intensively discussed.
This has been finished now. The final document can be found at

http://www.mathunion.org/fileadmin/CEIC/bestpractice/bpfinal.pdf

The CEIC has written a press release that is attached (see below).

My request: Please send, in your country, the press release
to journalists, scientific newsletters, other scientific
societies, funding agencies, publishers, librarians, mathematical
colleagues and other individuals who might be interested in
this subject. 

It is very difficult for the IMU secretariat to find out, in all
IMU member countries, who might be the persons/institutions
to be the best possible "multipliers" of this document. That
is why I am looking for your support in this respect.

Of course, it would be wonderful if the newsletter of your
national mathematical society would cover the topic.
Newsletters of other scientific societies might be interested in this
subject as well. Please contact them and help distribute the
"IMU opinion" on running scientific journals well.

Best regards

Martin Groetschel

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International Mathematical Union issues

Best Practice document on Journals

At its General Assembly held August 16-17, 2010 in Bangalore, India, the
International Mathematical Union (IMU) endorsed a new document giving best
practice guidelines for the running of mathematical journals
(see http://www.mathunion.org/fileadmin/CEIC/bestpractice/bpfinal.pdf). The
document deals with the rights and responsibilities of authors, referees,
editors and publishers, and makes recommendations for the good running of
such journals based on principles of transparency, integrity and
professionalism.

The document was written by the IMU Committee on Electronic
Information and Communication (CEIC) in collaboration with Professor Douglas
Arnold (University of Minnesota), President of the Society for Industrial and
Applied Mathematics, who has recently made a study* of unethical practices
such as impact factor manipulation in mathematics. Sir John Ball (University 
of Oxford), the Chair of CEIC, said “It is important that everyone involved in 
the publication process has full information on how papers are handled and on
what basis they are accepted or rejected. For example, we are uncomfortable
with the routine use of confidential parts of referee reports that are not
transmitted to authors.”

The IMU President Professor László Lovász (Eötvös Loránd University,
Budapest) commented “Well run journals play a vital role in the scientific
process. Although the document is concerned with mathematics journals, we
hope that those in other fields will find it interesting and useful.”

Contact details:

Professor László Lovász (tel +36 1381 2183/8083 , email lovasz en cs.elte.hu)
Sir John Ball (tel +44 1865 615110, email ball en maths.ox.ac.uk),
Professor Douglas Arnold (tel +1 612 626-9137, email arnold en umn.edu).

*Integrity Under Attack: The State of Scholarly Publishing

http://ima.umn.edu/~arnold/siam-columns/integrity-under-attack.pdf