Invitation to Mathematicians to start survey journals in a Math Surveys family

Probability Surveys, in operation since 2004, and Statistics Surveys, being started in 2006, are the initial journals in a planned family of open access electronic journals devoted to survey papers. See The Mathematics Survey project for the big picture. We invite mathematicians to contribute to the project by starting journals in other branches of mathematics. This document explains informally what you would need to do.

Planning stage

At the beginning you need at least These could be the same person, though hustling for money to set yourself up as Editor might be considered undignified. One, preferably both, should be high profile within the relevant branch of mathematics. We encourage you to contact us (Jim Pitman: pitman@stat.berkeley.edu) at this early stage.

Next, get some people to agree to be Associate Editors. We suggest at least 10 people. They should be both reasonably administratively competent and reasonably high profile (distinguished people lacking the talent or time for the former could be asked to be on a Advisory Board). In our experience, most people are happy to agree.

Funding

Look for a source of funding; you will need about $3,000 - $10,000 per year, depending on number of papers and where the journal is hosted. We have obtained funding from professional societies, and that is our first suggestion. If no existing society is devoted to your branch, then try national math societies in countries with traditional strength in this branch. You will need both informal approaches to individuals of influence, and a formal proposal. For the latter you may edit our proposal for society sponsorship.

Start-up phase

We started Probability Surveys by emailing 75 prominent researchers to solicit survey papers; this both gathered some papers and publicized the project. We did this before securing funding -- obviously somewhat risky. Once funding is obtained you should publicly announce the journal launch: announce at conferences, etc.

Running the journal

VTEX is willing to host further journals under the same terms as the existing journals. Effectively they provide a "turnkey" service, so you don't need to think about infrastructure. It's almost like taking over operation of an existing journal. The document proposal for society sponsorship outlines the general procedures under which the existing journals operate.

Alternatives: math society survey journals

An alternative project is to encourage national math societies to set up mathematics-wide survey journals: see for example Ensaios Matematicos by the Brazilian Mathematical Society. This may be more acceptable to societies providing funding, but may be more difficult to create an Editorial Board to cover all mathematics. VTEX would be willing to host such journals (less effort than for you to set up and run an ad hoc web site).